Pickens: U.S. spends $502,473/min on oil

DALLAS, Jan. 15 (UPI) -- The U.S. government in 2009 sent more than $500,000 every minute to foreign governments to pay for oil, energy mogul T. Boone Pickens said.

Pickens said figures from the U.S. Department of Energy show U.S. consumers used 4.35 billion barrels of oil in 2009 to the tune of $265 billion.

"Another year went by, another $265 billion siphoned out of America's struggling economy, and we still haven't adopted a real energy plan to reduce our dependence on foreign oil," complained Pickens.

Pickens, who in 2008 lauded wind energy as a potential option to diversify the U.S. energy sector, has focused his energy on natural gas as prices collapsed in the wake of the global economic recession.

Pickens called on U.S. lawmakers to pass the bipartisan NAT GAS Act of 2009. That measure would create tax breaks for alternative fuels and require the U.S. government to use natural gas to power its vehicles.

"The bipartisan NAT GAS Act would incentivize Americans to make use of the only abundant domestic alternative to foreign oil: natural gas," said Pickens.

Pickens in 2009 said abundant gas reserves in the United States made the country the "Saudi Arabia of natural gas."