Tulsa Tech auto training site to focus on fuel for the future

October 5, 2011. Alternative energy advocate T. Boone Pickens was the guest of honor at the dedication of Tulsa Technology Center's newly renovated automotive training facility, which will focus on alternative fuel technology.

   Pickens and other guests, including U.S. Rep. John Sullivan and Tulsa Metro Chamber Senior Vice President of Government Affairs Chris Benge, arrived with Tulsa Tech Superintendent Kara Gae Neal in a Tulsa Transit bus fueled by compressed natural gas.

   More than 350 people attended the ribbon-cutting in one of the school's large automotive bays. The facility, which opened in 1983, now has more than 362.000 square feet of classrooms, labs and shops with new equipment especially for liquid and compressed natural gas.

   Thirteen million vehicles run on natural gas, but only 140.000 of them are in the United States, Pickens said.

   Tulsa Tech's newly renovated facility and new program - and others like it across the country - are the first step in transitioning Americans from dependence on foreign oil to a domestic resource, natural gas, he said.

   "We have more natural gas than anywhere else in the world," Pickens said. "In five years, the oil and gas industry will look vastly different."

   During a luncheon at the facility, Pickens spoke about working with Sullivan, R-Okla., to garner support for House Resolution 1380, a bill that would offer tax credits for the purchase and manufacture of natural gas vehicles.

   Sullivan, who sponsored the bill in the U.S. House of Representatives, said Oklahoma's deposit of natural gas is a "gift that God gave us." "We have 120 years of natural gas under our feet, and we need to use it," he said.

   Sullivan predicted that natural gas will be a huge boon for the state's economy and said the Tulsa Tech facility will help the industry by teaching students how to convert vehicles to CNG.