Laughing Gas: The Daily Show Explores the Pickens Plan

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart
T. Boone Pickens extended interview

T. Boone Pickens, founder of BP Capital, chatted with The Daily Show's Jon Stewart yesterday about his plan to get the U.S. off OPEC oil within 10 years. Pickens has spent $2 billion of his own money to promote the "Pickens Plan," a nationwide switch from petroleum to natural gas, beginning with the trucking industry.

The segment, in typical Daily Show style, served up serious issues with a comedic twist. When Pickens told Stewart that the U.S. has natural-gas stores equivalent to 700,000 billion oil barrels — three times what the Saudis have in oil — Stewart quipped, "Oh for God's sake, we have that in our country? We're gonna have to invade us!"

When questioned about the environmental effects of fracking, the controversial method by which natural gas is procured, Pickens said that he had not seen a case in which aquifers were polluted. "I have fracked 3,000 wells in my life," Pickens said.

While Stewart offered Pickens several chances to address the environmental issues in more concrete terms — and some anti-fracking activists may have trouble accepting Pickens's word for it — the comedian ultimately opted to leave the question in the realm of comedy with his declaration on the matter: "Let's frack this country till it can't walk!"

--Della Watson