OPEC: Energy Needs Will Spike 50% by 2030 CBS News Oil tycoon T. Boone Pickens wants to lower U.S. dependence on foreign oil with a plan that implements wind power.
Swept Up in the Winds of Change CBS News Billionaire oil man T. Boone Pickens told CBS News anchor Katie Couric he thinks the United States could meet energy conservation goals in just 10 years - if cities turn to more wind power.
Oilman T. Boone Pickens sees a shift in the wind Chicago Tribune T. Boone Pickens made his name tilting at windmills—trying in the 1980s to buy oil companies that didn't want to be bought—and now he has turned to building windmills on a parched patch of Texas scrubland instead.
The First A Bomb was tested in a remote place in New Mexico and the world would never be the same. What have we learned since?
July 17, 2008
I don't know if you'd heard of T. Boone Pickens until about two weeks ago. Self-made man. Oil baron. Now buying up water rights and talking up wind power.
A friend of mine said he was skeptical of his energy plan, which has been all over the news and, in short, says we can use wind power and natural gas to cure our dependence on foreign oil.
"T. Boone Pickens never invested a dime if he wasn't going to make a dollar," said a skeptical friend.
Maybe so, but, like it or not, that's the way the business world works. More importantly, what it told me is that a serious player was getting into the alternative energy business. That's a whole lot different from ethanol subsidies.
He was born in Holdenville, Oklahoma, which his biography calls a "speck in the grand sweep of the Great Plains." His first acquisition was a paper route. He started with 28 customers when he was 11, and by the time he was 12 had bought the routes around him, eventually growing the business to 125. After four years at Oklahoma State and a few chaffing years a Phillips Petroleum, he took $2,500 and started Mesa Petroleum. Since then, he's made enough money to allow him to give more than $600 million to charity, including $175 million to set up the T. Boone Pickens Foundation and $165 million for his alma mater to build T. Boone Pickens Stadium.
Like I said, a serious guy. And, regardless of what you think of our current dilemma, the oil patch isn't an easy place to make a buck. Much less a coupla billion.
So what's his plan? Well first off, he's pretty good at framing the debate.
He notes that in 1970, the U.S. imported 24% of its oil. Today, we import 70%. The world produces about 85 million barrels of oil a day, and demand is somewhere near 86 or 87 million barrels - and climbing. About a quarter of that demand comes from the U.S., which accounts for just 4% of the world's population.
"The simple truth is that cheap and easy oil is gone," he says.
I agree.
According to Pickens, one three-megawatt wind turbine could replace 12,000 barrels of oil a year. If we built turbines from Texas to North Dakota, we could cover 20% of our energy needs at a cost of about $1.2 trillion. That sounds like a lot until you realize that we spend $700 billion a year to buy oil from Canada, Mexico, Russia and the Middle East. If nothing changes, over the next 10 years we'll spend an estimated $10 trillion on imported oil.
We could also save a bundle if Detroit got involved and stopped making gasoline engines and switched to natural gas, which is not only abundantly available in the U.S., but 23% cleaner than diesel engines, 30% less polluting than gas engines, and already a viable technology.
Now, we can quibble about Pickens' plan (and I hope that you will). But the very fact that a guy who has spent 40 years in the oil patch has a plan that includes wind power and natural gas tells me that $150 a barrel oil and $5 a gallon gasoline has changed the dynamic in this decades-long debate.
After all, if we learned anything from the Great Depression (and in life), it's that the greatest adversity sometimes produces the greatest innovations. This could be one of those times, don't you think?
Share the Eye:
How Do I Install My Own Wind Turbine? www.awea.org If the wind speeds are below cut-in speed (7-10 mph) there will be no output from the turbine and all of the needed power is purchased from the utility. As wind speeds increase, turbine output increases and the amount of power purchased from the utility is proportionately decreased. When the turbine produces more power than the house needs, the extra electricity is sold to the utility. All of this is done automatically.
What Is Natural Gas? www.naturalgas.org Natural gas is a combustible mixture of hydrocarbon gases. While natural gas is formed primarily of methane, it can also include ethane, propane, butane and pentane.
Why Are Oil Prices So High? alt-e.blogspot.com/ Demand for oil will grow to 116m barrels a day by 2030, an increase of 37% on 2006 oil usage. In this report back in November the International Energy Agency warned the price of a barrel of oil could rise to $159 by 2030 due to high growth in demand. This estimate now looks very conservative.
A crisis whether real or not always brings a white knight to save the day. An, of course, t...
Jul. 17, 2008 12:38 PM
Will Pickens' Plan Work?
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MACKDADDY1 said...
I just heard about Mr. Pickens and his wind power plan a few days ago. Upon hearing this my initial thought was it's just another ploy to make himself millions. Well...so what if it is? As long as it helps alleviate the gas crunch we are in now. Who cares? He certainly didn't invent the concept but if this plan can actually provide a legitimate alternative means of energy...more power to Mr. Pickens. Someone (?) is going to make money off of us one way or another so why shouldn't it be an old, thin-haired, Texan billionaire that's not a politician. My words are usually simplistic and to the point as opposed to many of my fellow Peterman's Eye peers. But the point is what do we have to lose?
The risks and rewards scale tips heavily over to the "sounds like a better plan to me" so why not go for it. It also sounds a bit like "hope" to me which is indeed a change for the better.
Dutchman said...
It sounds like Don Quixote tilting at windmills....but we could use a few more
windmill tilters today.
Nordo said...
Let me see here....
Phoenix and Las Vegas both see over 300 days of sunshine anually....and instead of solar power, Vegas taps it's energy from a dying lake.
The wind corridor Pickens speaks of is one of the largest and most dependable sources of wind energy on the planet. It should be a national security priority to maximize these clean energy opportunities wherever they are available.
And yet we choose corn over sugar....and oil over most everything else. I wonder why?
This is so going to get me fired, but that's okay. Winds of change are in the air. Let's just say I write for a living. And let's just say I live in Detroit. And, just for the hell of it, let's say that one of our biggest client's name rhymes with Shmord.
If you're able to make the leap and assume all that's true, then crane your necks a bit futher and look inside one of my imaginary days:
I am flanked by two men, both in their fifties, whose nest eggs bob erratically in the tide of rising oil prices rolling in from the east. They used to talk tee times. Now they run in and out of each other's offices whispering about $40,000 dollar hits, over the course of one day, to their 401K's. Rest assured though, they do not talk to me. Why? Because I'm the stupid kid who blurts unintelligible sounds like "corporate blog" and "YouTube exposure" in serious strategy meetings for serious clients whose names rhyme with Shmord. Who is this punk?, they ask.
Every day I hear their scurrying become more and more frantic. I just sit, barefoot and cross-legged in my silly kid's chair and stare at the black and white picture of a young Mr. Shmord hanging above my Mac (like I said, young punk), in which he is bent intently over his Quadricycle.
I stare at him now and know, with as much certainty as one can have while in their imaginary life, that if alive today, he would be doing something similar over a rudamentory windmill.
When you market Shmords, you market its nostalgia, its history, but what you are really selling is the foresight and hutzpa of that young man. That's the story we love to tell.
Things ARE changing. And how apropos that it is in the form of wind. That explains the goosebumps.
Lovey said...
MACKDADDY1: I agree, it's like someone donating to charity to be named most charitable. Even if they do it for the wrong reasons, the results are still going to happen.
Missive ~ what a great point. Innovation is what is needed & if Pickens would like to spend millions her already has on this venture I say God Bless Him & Good Luck.
An alternative is needed, I was child in the 80's & can remember hearing from teachers in then that when I am an adult there's going to be an gas "crunch". It's one of the few things those experts & teachers were correct in their assumptions.
I personally will say I have no idea what the answer is or even what a relief for oil could or should be. Corn Ethonol really doesn't seem like a very good solution though after the spring flooding that the midwest state just had, corn will only be available if it can be planted & grown. Droughts & floods tend to hit those areas more than people realize so while if one year a crop is really good, the next year we could still be seeing $5.00+ prices for fuel.
I feel we need a lot of someones to think "outside of the box" so to speak like Mr. Shord did in the early 1900's & then maybe those "wind of Change" can be felt by all of us.
A crisis whether real or not always brings a white knight to save the day. An, of course, the white knight wants nothing in return. he does it for the good of humanity, because he wants to help his fellow man (woman).
When the white knight is the government or some "do-gooder" we just lay the ground work for another crisis. We all suffer, today or tomorrow.
If the "white knight" is T. Boone Pickens, I'm for it. He's doing it for himself and we get to enjoy the benefits of what he wants to do. He sees a problem, he sees the consequences (no more money for him) and he has a plan to stay rich.
Okay, maybe he's a "grey knight.
I'll be investing in whatever he plans to do.
Note to self: re-read "Atlas Shrugged"
more on the honor rollJ.Peterman
After contemplating centuries of hatred, pain & suffering followed only to be followed up the next day by thoughts of nuclear armagedden, I must say that today's topic, Mr. Pickin's plan, even if it were only written on the back of a cocktail napkin; is figuratively and hopefully soon to became literally; a breath of fresh air.
Thanks for the balance. This forum can tranform one's day into a very thought provoking, sometimes frightening, roller coaster ride; a day to be inspired by the great deeds of cowboys and heroes, a grin inducing stroll down memory lane or quicken one's hunger by debating where to find the very best barbacue. Good stuff and much appreciated.
Today's Question:
"Who is John Galt?"
Today's best possibe answer:
T. Boone Pickens
To PeterLake,
Thank you.
To rings90,
I sincerely hope you are right. I cannot count the number of times I have hoped to see a real live John Galt in the world only to be hopelessly disappointed by what a Taggart he actually turned out to be after all.
I must send out a hello to our new friend, missive. In only two days, your input on this forum has been a splendid new inclusion. I look forward to more.
Spinner said...
I thank you all for the kind welcome. This space is a refreshing, let's just beat this metaphor into the ground, breeze. It is good to be engaged.
Looking forward, always.
J. Peterman,
You're welcome.