Touting his Pickens Plan, Dallas oilman and philanthropist T. Boone Pickens, the 82-year-old Texas oil tycoon, gave the keynote address to attendees in September at the 2010 Sunbelt Builders Show held at the Gaylord Texan.

Pickens says out of the 85 million barrels of oil produced daily across the globe, the U.S.–with 4% of the world’s population–consumes 21 million [per day] of those.

“Of the 14 million barrels we import every day, five million comes from OPEC and the Middle East; from countries where our State Department advises us not to travel.”

He adds that America has the resources that could recover that five million a day by taking advantage of natural gas reserves, “which are the largest in the world.”

“We have 4,000 trillion cu ft of natural gas, which is the oil equivalent of three times as many barrels of oil that the Saudis have. It’s cleaner, cheaper, abundant and its ours,” Pickens says.

Pickens says part of his proposed plan includes having a mandate that all federal vehicles purchased in the future use only domestic fuel.