NEW YORK — Boone Pickens, the billionaire Texas investor, unveiled a national energy plan designed to cut U.S. dependence on foreign oil.

The country is "very close to a disaster" as it imports nearly 70 percent of its oil, he said in an interview on CNBC yesterday. Pickens said he has launched an ad campaign for his plan at a cost so far of about $10 million.

"I am going to give a solution to the trap we have put ourselves in," said Pickens, who is developing a 4,000-megawatt wind farm in Texas. "The problem is that we are buying $700 billion of foreign oil a year. That number is not going to stay at $700 billion. It's going to move up."

Pickens, founder and chairman of Dallas-based BP Capital LLC, made his comments as Congress has been investigating how much speculators have contributed to oil's 92 percent surge over the past year. Pickens said the gains are because global demand exceeds supplies.

"It isn't driven by speculation," said Pickens, who manages funds linked to both energy commodities and equities.

Oil, which rose to a record $145.85 a barrel on July 3, fell $5.33, or 3.8 percent, to settle at $136.04 a barrel yesterday, the biggest drop since March 31.

Presidential candidates have failed to address the energy crisis the United States has drifted into since the 1970s, he said.

"I think it's the No. 1 issue in this presidential campaign," Pickens said. "This is like a war as far as I'm concerned."

The use of natural-gas powered vehicles can reduce oil imports by 38 percent, said Pickens, who is the largest shareholder of Clean Energy Fuels, a natural-gas supplier for bus and truck fleets.

Wind can generate 200,000 megawatts of power by 2010 and account for 22 percent of the electricity supply, he said.

The U.S. Department of Energy said in May that wind could account for 20 percent of the nation's power supplies by 2030, delaying new coal-fueled power plants and lowering emissions of greenhouse gases. Wind may provide more than 1 percent of U.S. power this year.