People think it's a free market for oil. It's not a free market for oil. OPEC sets the prices. Twenty million barrels come through the Strait of Hormuz every day. Only 7 percent of that goes to the United States. But we have our military over there to protect that. According to a study by the Milken Institute, we spent $7 trillion from 1978 to 2010 on Mideast oil. A great part of that was military spending, but it's still connected to the price of oil.
"[N]atural gas prices here are at $2.78, and in Europe it's $14, in Beijing it's $14 to $16, and in Japan it's $18."
Q: Do you have a realistic number for the size of the conversion potential?
A: Eight million trucks out of 250 million vehicles in America. Heavy-duty trucks use 20,000 to 30,000 gallons a year. That totals 3 million barrels a day. We import 4.4 million barrels a day of OPEC (Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries) crude. So you can knock out 70 percent of OPEC oil by going to domestic natural gas for heavy-duty trucks.
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