T. Boone Pickens Talks About the Oil Spill
ROMANS: A bad situation turning much worse in the Gulf of Mexico this weekend.</s>VELSHI: This massive oil slick from that leak in the Gulf of Mexico has reached land. Let's bring this conversation over to T. Boon Pickens, he is joining us now, he's the founder of B.P. Capital, he's been in the oil business for as long as there's been an oil business, Boone.</s>T. BOONE PICKENS, FOUNDER, BP CAPITAL: For about 100 years.</s>VELSHI: Let's talk about this, we get, I think the U.S. produces about a third of its own oil, we import the rest of it and about a quarter of that oil that we produce comes from the Gulf of Mexico. How big a deal is it that we have had this massive spill in the Gulf of Mexico both for our oil supply and politically?</s>PICKENS: Well, you know, these things are -- it was a bad accident is what it was. This is not something that we haven't seen around the world before so, yes, we're leaking about 5,000 barrels a day, which is a lot of oil, but they're picking it up pretty fast, so you're not going to have; it's not going to be like Prince William sound up in Alaska that was an entirely different accident up there.</s>ROMANS: Boone does this affect you know the president recently said that he was open to more drilling in some places, does this embolden the people who say, hey, wait a minute, this is an ecological disaster waiting to happen, or does this have no political ramifications at all?</s>PICKENS: When you say none, of course it's going to have some, because it's on every station every day, it has everything stirred up but I think when he's says he is going to shut down, I think he is talking about the outer continental shelf which is off the east and west coast and he talked about opening up off the west coast of Florida and now I think that governor down there, Crist has said no, we're not going to do this or somebody has. Let's just watch it, don't go crazy over it because the sad part of it is its losing 11 guys there on the Trans ocean rig. So hold your breath because I don't think that the damage we're going to have from the oil is going to be somewhat minimum when you finally analyze it.</s>VELSHI: Let's bring in something that you also know a lot about. I want to play a little bit of what the president said this week when he was in Missouri about America's role in alternative energy. Listen to this.</s>BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I don't accept second place for the United States of America. I want us to be first in wind power, first in solar power and I want us to be first when it comes to bio diesel and the technologies that are being developed in places like Poland. And that's why my energy security plan has been one of the top priorities of my administration since the day I took office.</s>ROMANS: How are we doing on that being first in all those technologies of alternative energy?</s>PICKENS: Well I'm with him on the renewables, the solar and the wind, that is good. But solar and wind do not replace foreign oil. I mean that is for power generation. And when he talks about bio-diesel that is a very, very low volume addition to what we need. I don't understand why he doesn't mention -- you see back when he accepted the nomination and in the fourth debate when asked the question about foreign oil, he said at that time in ten years, we will not import any oil from the mid east. I have not seen any plan from him yet that addresses those remarks. And he's going to have to talk about that at some point. So the only thing that we have that replaces oil from the mid east will be to use natural gas.</s>ROMANS: All right. Boone Pickens, a lot to chew over in deed on our energy needs our energy dependents and how we're going to fix that going forward. Thanks, Boone Pickens. You are really going to like this next one too. We're going to tell you how to get a college degree, a college degree and stay out of debt. A degree with no debt all at the same time next.