UPDATE 2-Pickens sees $300 oil unless U.S. cuts crude imports

(Recasts, adds latest wind figures from industry group, natural gas analyst, background; adds byline)

By Timothy Gardner

WASHINGTON, July 22 (Reuters) - Oil prices will hit $300 a barrel in 10 years if the United States fails to reduce its dependence on foreign imports, billionaire oil investor T. Boone Pickens told U.S. lawmakers on Tuesday.

The United States imports nearly 70 percent of its oil and Pickens said the world's top petroleum-consuming nation would import 80 percent in a decade if it does not aggressively tap its own natural gas and renewable resources.

"If we continue to drift, oil will hit $300 a barrel in 10 years," Pickens testified at a hearing of the U.S. Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.

He testified as the Senate planned to debate energy legislation amid calls for more oil drilling to help lower oil prices which hit a record this month of over $147 a barrel.

Pickens has been touring the country pushing a plan under which domestic natural gas supplies would be used to power cars instead of electrical power plants. The federal government and private investors would build a massive wind farm system in the middle of the country from Mexico to Canada to provide electricity.

Pickens, who heads the hedge fund BP Capital, stands to benefit from such a program. He's building a 4,000 megawatt, $10 billion wind farm in northern Texas that should start generating power in 2011.

Industry group the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) has said the Pickens plan could work if the government renews the production tax credit for renewable energy, preferably for longer than a year or two.