Pickens At Surrey Regional Economic Summit

On March 24, 2014.

Last month, I had the opportunity to travel to Canada and discuss our energy policy here in the U.S. The truth is I ended up talking about America's lack of an energy plan. That's been the story out of Washington since President Nixon first promised to get us off foreign oil in 1973.

Since the Arab Oil Embargo of 1973, the importance of getting America the energy plan it deserves has dramatically increased. But instead of real leadership in Washington, we have different departments pointed in different directions: State is reviewing the Keystone XL Pipeline; Energy is overseeing LNG exports; and Commerce is in charge of crude oil exports. Does that sound like any sort of plan?

Key decisions are made by leaders, not by committees. No wonder we're importing nearly twice as much OPEC oil as we did 40 years ago.