Oil Tycoon T. Boone Pickens: Romney Will do Something About Energy Independence, Obama Just Wants to Talk Taxes

Billionaire oil tycoon and Wall Street legend T. Boone Pickens said during an interview on CNBC that Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney is better suited than his opponent to deal with America's energy issues because all President Obama wants to do is "talk his tax."

But before we move forward, it should be noted that Pickens is a major proponent of cheap and clean alternative fuel sources. In fact, in his own words, he’s "lost [his] ass" investing in wind energy. Therefore, it would seem Pickens' support for Mitt Romney has less to do with partisan politics or protecting the oil industry than it does with his genuine invested desire to see the U.S. succeed in terms of energy independence.

The CNBC anchor started out by discussing President Obama’s claim that he has reduced oil imports by one million barrels a day and his stated goal of cutting total imports in half by 2020.

The host asked Pickens if this was a reasonable and/or realistic promise.

"The president has talked about a lot of things, one of them is cutting imports. He had nothing to do with that. Actually -- well, maybe he did," said Pickens.

He explained:

The economy's poor and that will get you less imports. So, I can tell [Obama], you can cut imports further if you have the -- if the economy gets worse.

Here you are. You've got 30 producing states, producing oil and gas in the United States. That's the greatest number we've ever had. The 30 producing states can decide this election and some of those are Pennsylvania, Ohio, Colorado, New Mexico, West Virginia.

All of those are key swing states and it would surprise me if any of those states, when they realize that Governor Romney has a plan, Governor Romney, I think, will carry his plan out and that is to advance alternative energy for transportation, which is natural gas. Now, when you -- you know, 70 percent of all the oil used every day in the world goes to transportation fuel. Wind and solar, great sources of energy, but have nothing to do with imported oil.

Pickens went on to explain why he doesn’t believe President Obama will address the issue of energy independence.

"So, President Obama talks about wind and solar all the time, but what you've got to do is develop resources in this country. We have those resources and you can get off OPEC oil," the billionaire tycoon said.

"So I believe what you're going to see in Governor Romney, he's going to step up with a plan and he’s going to carry it out. Remember, President Obama's had four years to do something and nothing has been done. All he wants to do is talk his tax," he added.

"He says the industry's doing well but we should tax them more. Tax them more, they're doing well. I can tell you, you tax them, you will cut the activity dramatically with taxes on the oil and gas industry":

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Front page photo courtesy the AP.