The Keystone XL oil pipeline would eliminate the United States' dependence on OPEC, says energy entrepreneur T. Boone Pickens.

"Canadians say they have 250 billion barrels [of oil]. That's exactly what the Saudis claim they have," he tells CNBC. "You're sitting there with the same amount of oil available to the United States from Canada . . . as [from] Saudi Arabia."

Meanwhile, the U.S. Navy protects the Strait of Hormuz so that 17 million barrels of oil travels through it a day, Pickens explains. Yet the United States only gets 10 percent of that supply, with much of the rest going to Europe and China.

Editor’s Note: 75% of Seniors Make This $152,000 Social Security Mistake (See Easy Fix)

"You could make them [OPEC] obsolete two or three different ways, and that [Keystone] is one of them."

The Keystone pipeline would run from Alberta to the Gulf of Mexico. President Obama must decide whether the pipeline can be built.

Pickens would like to see an oil transportation system combining the United States, Canada and Mexico.

As United States energy output, we are on pace to overtake Russia as the world's biggest producer of oil and natural gas and may already have done so, according to The Wall Street Journal.

"This is a remarkable turn of events," Adam Sieminski, administrator of the U.S. Energy Information Administration, tells the paper.

"This is a new era of thinking about market conditions, and opportunities created by these conditions, that you wouldn't in a million years have dreamed about."

Editor’s Note: 75% of Seniors Make This $152,000 Social Security Mistake (See Easy Fix)

Related Stories:

Steve Forbes: Build the Keystone Pipeline and Frack, Baby, Frack

Canada PM Won't Accept Rejection of Keystone XL