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Pickens Plan

America is in a hole and it's getting deeper every day. We import 70% of our oil at a cost of $700 billion a year - four times the annual cost of the Iraq war.

I've been an oil man all my life, but this is one emergency we can't drill our way out of. But if we create a new renewable energy network, we can break our addiction to foreign oil.

On January 20, 2009, a new President gets sworn in. If we're organized, we can convince Congress to make major changes towards cleaner, cheaper and domestic energy resources.

To get this done, I need your help. Check out the plan. If you think it's worth fighting for, please join our effort.

1st Time Hybrid Buyers

Gas is now up to $146 a barrel and travelers are going nowhere fast!

Oil prices headed into the busy Fourth of July break by racing past $145 a barrel for the first time Thursday. The story was no different at the gas pump, where the national average soared to within a whisker of $4.10 a gallon.

For a nation accustomed to hopping in the car or jetting cross-country on what is typically one of the busiest travel weekends of the year, the numbers are sobering:

--Last Independence Day weekend, drivers were paying just $2.95 a gallon for gas, about $1.15 less than today.

--Oil prices are up more than 50 percent since the start of the year. Prices rose by a similar amount in 2007 -- but it took almost the entire year for them to make that trip.

--Just this week alone, the price on a barrel of oil jumped 3.6 percent. And that was a shortened week.

Light, sweet crude for August delivery settled at a record $145.29 Thursday on the New York Mercantile Exchange, up $1.72 from the previous day. Earlier in the session, the contract rose to $145.85 a barrel, also a new high.

Oil has set trading or closing records in each of the last six trading sessions.

"Prices that you once would've associated with the lunatic fringe are now mainstream," said Tom Kloza, chief oil analyst at the Oil Price Information Service.

Drivers in about three-quarters of U.S. states are now paying more than $4 for a gallon of gasoline. Nationwide, the average retail price for regular gasoline jumped six-tenths of a penny to $4.098 a gallon, according to AAA, the Oil Prices Information Service and Wright Express.

The latest surge in oil prices was propelled by a midweek report of lower crude stockpiles in the United States, lingering concerns about conflict with Iran and comments by Saudi Arabia's oil minister suggesting his country would not boost production.