America is sending nearly $1 million a minute out of the country to pay for foreign oil.

Today we’re paying about $100 per barrel for foreign oil and, in the case of OPEC oil, often to nations that are hostile to our best interests.

Oil prices are up when they should be going down. Demand for oil globally is down while domestic production in America is up. There’s one word that describes why oil prices are up instead of down: geopolitics, much of it attributable to the seemingly never-ending turmoil in the Middle East.

But, OPEC has determined that $100 is the price they need to continue to pay off their people and keep the Royal families in 747s, so it is not the free market, but geopolitical maneuvering that is controlling the price of oil.

Any way you cut it, America is being cheated. Energy has failed to emerge as a top-tier election year issue, despite the lingering threat to our economic recovery and our national security.

For more than four decades, every presidential candidate has said something to the effect of, “Elect me, and we’ll be energy independent.” That’s four decades of failed promises.

It is time we hold our political candidates accountable. After a lengthy discussion with my dad one day, he said, “Son, you are speaking in vague generalities.” It’s easy to think the same thing when we hear our presidential candidates talk about energy. It’s time to move from vague generalities to specifics.

The fact of the matter is that you cannot control our energy future without a comprehensive energy plan, and one that focuses on transforming American transportation. Transportation accounts for nearly two-thirds of all crude oil use.

Certainly there is a role for alternatives in power generation, and Florida has emerged as a leader in that arena as home to the largest wind power generation in the nation, Next Era Energy, a division of Florida Power & Light.

If you are going to transform transportation in America, we have to find alternatives to foreign oil/diesel/gasoline. We should focus on heavy duty trucks and fleet vehicles in America, and begin moving them with natural gas, either liquefied or compressed. Sure, I’m all for the electric car, but batteries won’t move an 18-wheeler.

Targeting heavy duty trucks and fleet vehicles — about 8.5 million in all — could cut our OPEC oil dependence in half in 10 years or less.

Over-the-road trucks tend to run the same routes on the same schedule. Drivers stop in the same places to rest, eat and refuel. Putting natural gas refueling stations along the major travel routes is a relatively minor logistical issue. Building natural gas engines for those trucks would be a major job creator.

Since 2008, the biggest shift in energy resources has been the enormous reserves of natural gas contained in the vast shale deposits in Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas and Appalachia. New deposits are being tested in places like Iowa and Ohio but even now, we have a 125-year supply of domestic natural gas literally under our collective feet.

On the world market, natural gas is selling from between $12 per million cubic feet in Europe to $16 in the Middle East. The price in the United States? Less than $3 because of our massive reserves.

Getting that natural gas out of the ground and into our rolling stock is another major job creator. A recent study by PricewaterhouseCoopers suggests that by utilizing America’s shale gas resources, “U.S. manufacturers could employ approximately one million more workers by 2025.”

Once we have serious fuel competition, we can control our energy destiny, have a better grasp on our energy costs and achieve what we’ve been promised for decades. It all begins with getting on our own resources.

T. Boone Pickens, an oil and gas executive, is scheduled to speak at a private investment conference in Miami on Friday.