While the U.S. may never achieve energy independence, billionaire Texas oilman T. Boone Pickens predicts Congress will pass key energy legislation by Memorial Day that can “start us back in the right direction.”

“I think Congress is ready to address the problem. The problem is we are dependent on oil from the wrong places,” he said in a meeting Thursday with the Houston Chronicle editorial board.

The legislation, known as the Natural Gas Act, would dramatically expand the use of natural gas as a transportation fuel among heavy- duty fleets. House and Senate versions of the bill provide tax breaks for natural gas-powered vehicles and fueling stations.

Pickens, 81, has been one of the most vociferous advocates of using abundant domestic natural gas supplies in the transportation sector, which accounts for most of the 21 million barrels a day of crude oil that America consumes.

Since the summer of 2008, he has spent more than $62 million of his own money promoting his Pickens Plan, which also touts the importance of wind power.

But the plan has evolved in recent months. Pickens is no longer focused on natural gas as a fuel for everyday passenger cars and trucks.

He has turned his attention instead to heavy commercial vehicles like garbage trucks and city buses, which account for much of the petroleum used in the U.S.

Wind power also is no longer front and center after the recession and low natural gas prices made the business less profitable.

But Pickens said the guiding idea of his plan has never changed: “I'm for everything American — all of it — coal, nuclear, anything American,” he said. “I'll take anything over OPEC oil.”

Pickens has urged the Obama administration — even as it pursues reforms in health care and the financial sector — not to ignore what he calls the ongoing crisis posed by the nation's dependence on oil from the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and other sources.

Last year, the U.S. imported over 4 billion barrels of oil — more than 65 percent of what it consumed — at a cost of nearly a third of a trillion dollars. As recently as 1970, the U.S. imported just 24 percent of its oil needs.

Pickens has called it the “the greatest transfer of wealth in the history of mankind.”

His natural gas-focused plan recently has gotten a lift from major discoveries of gas in shales and other rock formations once thought too difficult to explore.

Still, getting the natural gas legislation passed by Memorial Day is a “very aggressive” goal, given the limited amount of floor time in Congress and other measures competing for lawmakers' attention, said Lou Hayden, senior director of government affairs at the American Petroleum Institute, the oil and gas industry's top lobbying group in Washington.

But Pickens said that if the measure is enacted, the U.S. can reduce its dependence on imports from OPEC by 50  percent in seven years and create millions of jobs with a new energy economy.

“You have to start somewhere,” he said.