In Stanley Kubrick’s landmark movie Dr. Strangelove, Slim Pickens (as Major T.J. “King” Kong) took a memorable ride astride a nuclear bomb, cowboy hat in hand, triggering an atomic Armageddon. By contrast, another “cowboy” named Pickens, oilman T. Boone, is seeking to avoid a slow motion energy Armageddon in the US, by getting astride America’s future energy policy.
Octogenarian multibillionaire T. Boone Pickens has come up with The Pickens Plan, a bold move to address America’s dependence on foreign oil. The former Phillips (now ConocoPhillips) employee became one of the first independent oil operators (through his Mesa Petroleum company) to grow an oil business through the acquisition of much larger companies (rather than through the old-fashioned drill-bit method). By the 1980s, he had achieved a reputation as a voracious corporate raider. Successful takeover bids included Hugoton Production Company, Pioneer Petroleum, and a large slice of Tenneco. Unsuccessful bids included Gulf Oil, Phillips Petroleum, and Unocal. He moved into hedge funds in 1997 founding BP Capital Management (then known as BP Energy Fund). BP Capital Management operates hedge funds Capital Commodity and Capital Equity, both of which invest heavily in oil and natural gas.
For those who only know T. Boone as an oilman, the opening lines of The Pickens Plan may come as a shock:
“America is in a hole and it’s getting deeper every day. We import 70% of our oil at a cost of $700 billion a year — four times the cost of the Iraq war.
I’ve been an oilman all my life and this is one emergency we can’t drill our way out of. But if we create a new renewable energy network, we can break our addiction to foreign oil.”
His 10 year plan, in essence, takes the 20% of electrical power that uses natural gas as its primary source and replaces it with wind energy. The natural gas that is freed from power generation then becomes primarily a transportation fuel source, supplying a new generation of natural gas-powered automobiles. In addition to reducing the US’ dependence on foreign oil by more than a third, natural gas is a cleaner burning fuel, and the US and Canada has it in abundance.
But some critics see slim pickins in The Pickens Plan:
- The $1 trillion price tag to build a massive new transmission infrastructure to tie the turbines to the national power grid has electrical power groups baulking. And what about those hot summer days when the grid is under stress and the wind does not blow?
- On the natural gas side, the premise of cheap natural gas prices is a shaky one at best. In addition, natural gas automobile engines burn gas less efficiently than the power plants, so why make the shift?
- T. Boone Pickens’ vision of the future is shaped by his own self interest. He has been investing heavily in wind power, and buying up water rights in many of the areas where the new wind power grids will be developed — the Great Plains. (Always hedging his bets, Pickens will be able to buy and sell water rights when that commodity become even scarcer than it is today). He plans a 4,000 MW wind farm, the world’s largest, in Pampa in the Texas Panhandle.
My take on The Pickens Plan?
For introducing a plan that cuts US dependence on foreign oil by 38% in 10 years, and for triggering a serious national discussion on energy policy on the eve of a US Presidential election, Pickens deserves much credit.
I see rich pickins in The Pickens Plan.
Comments
scotty Says:
July 15th, 2008 at 10:37 am
Pickens Plan Public Discussion Forum :
http://www.pickensenergyplan.com
Cheers.
m.a. Says:
July 15th, 2008 at 12:23 pm
Stuart,
Thank you for laying out ALL the facts on Mr. Pickens. I thought I was the only one who remembered Mr. Pickens’ reputation as a corporate raider! My first thoughts when I saw his television ad were: “What is his motivation?”
He is a wiley business man who needs to parlay his hard-fought fortune into another area.
I hope the resulting energy he produces will be affordable to everyone.
Is the word “monopoly” still in our vocabulary?
m.a.
kevin Says:
July 16th, 2008 at 7:05 am
His motiviation? Who cares?!? Anyone who wants to build wind farms on their own dime can do it for whatever reason they want. I’m tired of seeing the coal and oil commercials on t.v., so when I saw his commercial I had to smile. Kudos old oil man.
Forget about green house gases, rising oil costs and oil spills for a minute. In my area nitrogen pollution is a huge concern because of the effects on the Chesapeake Bay. Here, climate change has already happened with the lack of dissolved oxygen in the Bay, hurting the ecocycle - from fish to underwater grasses - and the fishing industries that go along with it.
We’re supposedly the greatest country on Earth, yet we’re a little behind on how we generate and use energy. We’ve got to be smarter.
Jim Says:
July 16th, 2008 at 4:27 pm
T. Boone says he’s not doing it for the money: he has $4 billion, and that’s enough for him. I tend to believe him. Obama says he’ll give the middle class a tax cut - so they can buy a few $10-a-gallon tankfuls? McCain says he’ll build nukes - over the Dems’ dead bodies? But Pickens has a plan that not only would harvest the wind, but finally whip the U.S. power grid into the 21st century. I say “Go, T-Boone, Go!” Capitalism at its finest.
Don Says:
July 17th, 2008 at 11:22 am
I thank you for the info. I wonder if Mr. pickens would bet his life on this claptrap?
Duane L. Keck Says:
July 17th, 2008 at 2:21 pm
DRILL HERE, DRILL NOW, CHEAP GAS
mike Says:
July 23rd, 2008 at 9:10 pm
Don,.. Duane…you are thick.
Austin Kuder Says:
August 5th, 2008 at 5:10 pm
John McCain’s offer of $300 million dollars to the person who invents a better battery for electric cars is cynical and a distraction from the goal of doing something now. He is saying that it’s not practical now so we have to go on with business as usual. It’s a shame that he isn’t as pragmatic as evil Rumsfeld was when he went to war with the army we have, not the army that we wish we had.
We must stop wasting oil to operate personal vehicles. We must rebuild the electric grid with windmill atop each transmission tower and save the oil for plastics, fertilizer, clothing and heavy transportation.
Austin Kuder 216-642-7922
brad Says:
August 12th, 2008 at 5:11 pm
who cares if he’s just out to make a buck; at least he’s helping to solve a problem. I can’t say the same for the government.
It’s people like Pickens and Neil Young and their energy planswho are going to help solve the energy crisis.
ed Says:
August 14th, 2008 at 5:00 pm
Wind farms take up too much land for what they give out. Also there is wind turbine syndrome affecting people living close to them. They get insomnia, headaches and other problems from the frequency of sound that comes from the blade. Plus it is too expensive to set up an infrastructure to supply the power where needed.
Dave Says:
August 18th, 2008 at 6:41 am
Yep, let’s just criticize and argue, and end up doing nothing as usual.
Maybe we can just burn our houses to keep warm when we run out of energy or it’s so expensive we can’t afford it. Great Solution!!!
Regina Huber Says:
August 25th, 2008 at 5:12 pm
I am all for Mr. Pickens plan, I hope in 10 years 20% of our electricity can run off of wind power, I also agree with the DRILL HERE AND DRILL NOW approach, regardless of other commentary that you might hear, I have Uncles that have worked on oil riggs and for various companies all their lives, I assure you that we have plenty to drive the prices down to at least where they were a year ago perhaps lower. Let’s face it that would make a HUGE impact on our economy. If you are not putting all your money in your gas tank just to get to work, you will have more money to put back into our economy to bring it to what it should be. I for the live of me can not figure out why we ever let ourselves, such a strong independent, self-sufficent country, where evereyone else in the world would like to live, (sorry I got alittle carried away) ever allow ourselves to let that much money go out of our country to support these other nations that don’t even like us. I hope all of you reading this realize that the oil coming out of Alaska,(Yes we have been drilling in Alaska for years you can confirm on any website) is piped right over to Japan for $35 to $45 a barrell. Also if you didn’t know, the oil companies pay huge dividends to the people that live in Alaska, depending on the year $3,000.00 to $4,000.00 per person that lives in Alaska. Sorta of like a tax check right before the holidays.
Now that you know how I feel about DRILLING, I hope you take some of this information and investigate it for yourself. Please don’t misunderstand, we need to totally indulge ourselves into other forms of energy such as wind, nuclear and etc. (I personally am not too keen on taking food products to produce energy when we have so many starving people in the world however if it evolves perhaps we will find away to mass produce it where our food chain is not effected).
Thanks for Letting me Vent!!
Is “Drill, Baby, Drill” the answer to high gas prices? | NewsMesh Says:
October 8th, 2008 at 11:29 am
[...] oil man turned wind power maven T. Boone Pickens advocates a bold plan that sees wind energy replacing natural gas as a power plant fuel, and natural gas replacing oil as [...]
demille Says:
October 10th, 2008 at 9:48 am
Ed, I grew up near a wind field in Eastern Washington State, and never experienced, nor heard of anyone else experiencing head aches or insomnia because of the wind turbines. That is just silly.
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