It's an opportunity you would never pass up. T. Boone Pickens wanted to talk to KRMG about energy, oil, and some of the hard questions facing our country. Of course we jumped at the chance and settled in to visit with the millionaire oilman.

Pickens made an appearance on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" last week where he talked about not understanding President Obama's current "pay your fair share in taxes" speeches. Pickens told the MSNBC folks he has paid more than 665 million dollars in taxes in the last 13 years, he wondered if that was fair. So I began the conversation by asking if The President had contacted him to straighten that out. "He called me, he called me and said" he started. "No, he didn't call me I'm just teasing" Boone chuckled. “Hell I never heard from anybody" he said.

Pickens told us his problems with taxes won't end here "when you look at the taxes I paid during my career and then they take half my estate after I die then actually I will have gotten about 35% of what I earned" Boone told me. 

A few years ago Pickens was the first to mention five dollar per gallon gas. Although we haven't quite gotten there yet we did come close a couple of times. Pickens says for now, it looks like we won't reach that five dollar mark. "It's gonna be a while before you can get it up" he began. So why will prices stay lower? "You have too many rigs running" he explained. "We have more gas in storage, 270 billion I think more in storage today than we did this time last year" he noted. 

You can listen to the entire conversation with Pickens by clicking here.

Boone has always been for lowering our dependence on OPEC oil and he has a plan to do just that. "You're overwhelmed with natural gas and you should be using natural gas for heavy duty trucks" he explained. Pickens thinks converting big rigs to natural gas is the fastest way to make it happen. "When we do eight million trucks on natural gas that'll cut out half of the OPEC oil and then you're in a position to negotiate the price of oil to OPEC" he finished. Boone isn't just talking about converting trucks, he is working to get legislation to make it happen. "That's HR1380" he started. 1380 is a resolution sponsored by Oklahoma congressman John Sullivan. "What it is, is a tax credit for heavy duty trucks to go to natural gas and it has a pay for in it" Pickens said. This one is sound enough that even Oklahoma Senator Tom Coburn supports it. Pickens knows that carries some impact. "Damn right it does" he said. "Getting Coburn on board you have to know you're not gonna have to pay for it" he laughed as he talked. 

Pickens also said he thought the Keystone pipeline would be good for our country although he didn't have specifics for how Oklahoma would benefit other than employment' "They're talking about 20,000 jobs I think on the Keystone pipeline, but I would think it would be more than that" he commented.

I had to ask the man who knows energy better than anyone about his presidential thoughts. Has any candidate put forth an energy plan he likes? "The only one who has mentioned energy and given any detail is Jon Huntsman" Pickens noted. "The rest of 'em all say we have a lot of things we want to do and energy is one of 'em" he sounded disgusted as he said. 

It was great fun spending time with a man who has meant so much to Oklahoma. The conversation went about ten minutes and we can't write it all here. We talked about OSU football and the money he has given. He beamed when he told me how much construction is happening around the state, especially in Oklahoma City. Pickens told me about his humble beginnings and how he was able to build the fortune he now holds. Every word is worth hearing and you can find the entire interview by clicking on the link at the bottom of the page.