T. Boone Pickens is a pleasant guy. But the hard truth is this: he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. In fact, he doesn’t even know the most basic facts about the Pickens Plan.

I met Pickens on Tuesday in New York City. We appeared together to tape a segment for John Stossel’s new show, “Stossel,” which airs tonight on Fox Business at 8p EST. The theme of Stossel’s show: “energy independence.” And as you may know, “energy independence” is one of the key elements of the promotion of the Pickens Plan.

Before we got into the studio to tape the segment, Pickens and I started arguing in the green room. I said that while I agreed with him about the boom in US natural gas production and that America should use more of it, I said “your numbers don’t add up.” Pickens taken aback, said “what do you mean?” I explained that his claims he can cut US oil imports by one-third in ten years are simply not possible and that he is grossly exaggerating the ability of the US to make a quick transition to natural gas- fueled vehicles.

His response, “I haven’t said that.” I was stunned. But I was prepared. I pulled out a few pages on which I’d printed my talking points. On the Pickens Plan website, he claims that – and this is a direct quote — “increasing the use of our natural gas resources can replace more than one-third of our foreign oil imports in 10 years.”

I read that line to Pickens. To which he replied “I never said that.” I was incredulous. I said, “this is from your own website. I simply cut and pasted your wording.” Jay Rosser, Pickens’ media advisor, was standing nearby, and asked to see it. I handed him my paper, with the citation.

I told Pickens that even if he were somehow able to manage a 100-fold increase in the number of natural gas-fueled vehicles in the US and do so in just ten years, he couldn’t meet the target that he is claiming. (For the math on this, see below). To that, Pickens responded, as I recall, with something to the effect of, “Well, it doesn’t matter.”

Again, I was flabbergasted. For the past 18 months, Pickens has been on nearly every news outlet in the US, promoting his wacky ideas about energy independence. His website claims that more than 66,000 people have signed his petition that seeks “energy independence now.” And yet, Pickens was telling me that his own claims about reducing foreign oil use don’t matter? The billionaire went on to tell me that what he really wants is to convert long-haul diesel trucks to natural gas. If he can convert 8 million long-haul trucks, then he could save lots of diesel fuel and thereby, he said, cut oil imports.

By that time, the show’s producers were getting impatient. They were ready to pull Pickens into the studio to begin taping the segment. “Sir, we need to go,” said a headset-wearing woman standing next to Pickens. She grabbed his hand. I was ready to continue the discussion about diesel, pointing out that by displacing diesel, Pickens would only displace part of the crude oil barrel. And then we started to discuss corn ethanol, a substance that Pickens said he favored, because, he said, “it’s domestic. I’m for anything that’s domestic.”

Again, I was stunned. How could Pickens actually favor the corn ethanol scam? But by that time, the woman was nearly ready to grab Pickens by the collar in order to pull him into the studio. We continued our debate on the set. The show airs tonight. Check it out.

Buy the Billionaire A Calculator: Pickens Fails Elementary Math

The numbers in the Pickens Plan simply don’t work. The Dallas-based billionaire claims his plan can reduce foreign oil imports by one-third within ten years. Fine. Let’s run the numbers. In 2008, the US imported an average of 12.9 million barrels of oil and oil products per day.¹ One-third of that volume – the amount Pickens claims he can save – is about 4.25 million barrels of oil per day.

According to Natural Gas Vehicles for America, a Washington, D.C.-based trade association, there are about 120,000 natural gas vehicles now in use in the US.² Each of those vehicles consumes about 1,500 gasoline-gallon-equivalents per year.³ Using that 1,500-gallon-per vehicle figure, those 120,000 NGVs conserve the equivalent of about 180 million gallons of oil per year.

Now let’s multiply that number by 100. Doing so increases the US fleet to 12 million NGVs which could save 18 billion gallons of fuel per year, which is the equivalent of 1.17 million barrels of oil per day.⁴ That type of reduction is significant. But getting to that fleet size would require a Herculean effort. If the US had 12 million NGVs, that fleet would be larger than that of the current global fleet of NGVs, which numbers about 9.6 million vehicles.⁵

Building a large fleet of natural gas vehicles – and more importantly, the refueling infrastructure to support them – will take decades, not years. And yet, Pickens has led a gullible media and an even-more-gullible public, to believe that the evils of foreign oil can be overcome if only the federal government gives him a few more subsidies.