Natural Gas Booster Pickens To Speak In Williamsport Friday

Scott Detrow

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Scott Detrow is a congressional correspondent for NPR. He also co-hosts the NPR Politics Podcast.

Detrow joined NPR in 2015 to cover the presidential election. He focused on the Republican side of the 2016 race, spending time on the campaign trail with Donald Trump, and also reported on the election's technology and data angles.

Detrow worked as a statehouse reporter for member stations WITF in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and KQED in San Francisco, California. He has also covered energy policy for NPR's StateImpact project, where his reports on Pennsylvania's hydraulic fracturing boom won a DuPont-Columbia and national Edward R. Murrow Award in 2013.

September 28, 2011 | 4:57 PM

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T. Boone Pickens speaks at the National Press Club in April

T. Boone Pickens, the unofficial spokesman for domestic natural gas drilling, is speaking in Williamsport on Friday, according to the Sun-Gazette:

Pickens, a billionaire financier, oil and gas man and chairman of hedge fund BP Capital Management, will be on hand for “Powering Our Future: A Conversation with T. Boone Pickens” at 7:30 p.m. Friday at the Community Arts Center, 220 W. Fourth St.
During a recent interview, Pickens said his so-called “Pickens Plan” will wean the United States off of foreign oil, particularly Arab oil, and create millions of jobs in the nation’s energy sector.
Pickens said the plan, which he unveiled in 2008, focuses on transitioning the nation’s transportation fuel from oil to domestically-produced natural gas.
“The starting point is to get on our own resources and get off OPEC oil,” Pickens said. “We have resources in America that allow us to do that and we are foolish if we don’t do it.”

Pickens say step one in any shift to natural gas is converting more vehicles to run on the fuel. Top state House Republicans are pushing for additional conversation incentives in the Marcellus Shale legislation they’ll consider this fall. One example on the table: House Republicans’ “Marcellus Works” package, which would provide loans, grants and tax breaks to municipalities that convert their vehicles to natural gas.