$60 before $40.

T. Boone Pickens on CNBC [video] today reiterating his prediction we hit $60 a barrel before we see $40 a barrel again. He made a number of observations:

- The Russians want $50 oil.

- The Saudi Arabians are doubling their active rig count, but he believes it's probably more to try to maintain their current production capacity than increase it.

- He believes Saudi Arabia is now also more inclined toward $50 oil, versus the $40 they were favoring recently.

- In response to a question on oil sands and their potential, he noted that it takes an investment of $20 billion to create the infrastructure to produce 1 million barrels a year of oil from them.

- His view is that using natural gas to generate power is a waste; nuclear and coal should be used to produce power and we should shift to using natural gas as a transportation fuel as they already are in other parts of the world. [The WSJ has a front page article [$] about this today.]