The texan oil baron and the winds of change

Tag : Waste Oil Changer


Everything is bigger in Texas, even the wind turbines. They standtwice as high as the Statue of Liberty, with blades as wide as thewings on a jumbo jet. Each one can earn hundreds of dollars everyyear for landowners, a whole wind farm can generate hundreds ofthousands of dollars. It's hardly a surprise then that new turbinesare popping at a rate of three to four a day. Texas and oil gotogether like hound dogs and huntin', as the saying goes, but theblack stuff that made George Bush and many other oil men rich isnow running out and something else is needed to keep the lights on.The state is already facing a shortfall in electrical powergeneration. From sneering at the country's green movement, (Mr Bushcalled Al Gore "Ozone Man" when he defeated him in 2000), pragmaticTexans have suddenly embraced wind power as the answer to theirprayers.
Once known as America's oil patch, Texas now calls itself thenation's wind-power capital. Big Oil is turning into Big Wind.
For Sweetwater, known for its annual spring rattlesnake round-up,the wind-power bonanza produces enough energy to power a largecity. Today you can drive for 150 miles either side of it withoutlosing sight of a wind turbine.
Sweetwater is also home to T Boone Pickens, 80, a legendary Texasoil wild-catter, corporate raider, philanthropist and Republicanhit man, whose personal worth has reached $2.7bn (£1.4bn).
He was one of the inspirations for the rapacious capitalist GordonGekko in the movie Wall Street and in 2004 he was the bagman behindthe infamous Swift Boat Veterans for Truth campaign which helpeddestroy John Kerry's presidential ambitions.
From the prairie town of Holdenville, Oklahoma, his father made hisfortune gambling on oil leases. As a child, Pickens had a paperround, which is where he says he learnt the aggressive approach towork that would make him infamous on Wall Street in the 1980s. Hestarted the oil company, Mesa Petroleum, in 1956, with $2,500,turning it into one of the most feared companies in the US.
Fortune called him "the most hated man in corporate America" at atime when he was making a fortune using Mesa to make hostiletakeover bids for other companies. His efforts made Pickensfabulously rich.
A hate figure of the liberal left, many blame him for George Bush'sdo-nothing legacy on the environment. Although he lives smack inthe middle of one of the windiest places in America, as recently as2005 he dismissed the idea of wind energy out of hand: "I was inwind energy for a minute ... I hate it. And when I got to lookingat those damn things I said, I don't want to be a part of puttingthat on the horizon. We took a loss and got out of it and I'm gladI did."
Spool forward three years to find a country on the verge of anervous breakdown with oil heading towards $200 a barrel. Americansdo not worry much about global warming, but they care a lot aboutfilling up their gas-guzzling pick-up SUVs and worry more and moreabout how they are going to get to work and back. The "PickensPlan" is suddenly on everyone's minds in America, especially thosepulling up to their local petrol station where filling up coststwice as much as it did last year.
Mr Pickens believes in the peak oil theory that world productioncannot grow beyond 85 million barrels a day even with lots of newdrilling and production. Demand is already at 86 million barrels aday and growing. For Americans who squander so much petrol plyingthe freeways in their air-conditioned behemoths, the crisis is nolonger theoretical.
And over the coming months Mr Pickens is spending enough to ensurethat his face will be seen on American television screens as muchas either John McCain's and Barack Obama's as he bankrolls what hesays is the most expensive public policy advertising campaign ever.
Environmentalists are cheering wildly, but the Pickens Plan haslittle to do with their worries about the catastrophic dangers ofglobal warming. Mr Pickens has a plan that everyone can get theirheads around: He simply wants to end America's addiction toimported oil and use the country's abundant wind power and naturalgas resources to keep the country rolling.
"We're paying $700bn a year for foreign oil," he said. "It'sbreaking us as a nation, and I want to elevate that question to thepresidential debate, to make it the number one issue of thecampaign this year.
"Neither presidential candidate is talking about solving the oilproblem. So we're going to make 'em talk about it. Nixon said in1970 that we were importing 20 per cent of our oil and that by 1980it would be 0 per cent. That didn't happen. It went to 42 per centin 1991 with the Gulf War. It's just under 70 per cent now. Wheredo you think we're going to be in 10 years when our economy isbusted and we're importing 80 per cent of our oil?"
Windy as Sweetwater is, there are places further north in the GreatPlains which are more suitable for wind farming. Some 250 milesaway, Mr Pickens is building what is described as the world'slargest wind farm.
He has pumped $2bn into the project so far, buying nearly 700 windturbines from General Electric (GE) and he will spend another $10bnon the project before it starts generating electricity sometime in2011.
Filling the Great Plains with wind turbines to produce electricityis only half of the Pickens Plan. He wants to see America's petrolimports cut back as well by converting cars to run on natural gas.At present most of America's natural gas is used to produceelectricity. Generate electricity from the wind and that can bediverted so that as many as a third of the vehicles will be runningon natural gas within only a few years, he says.
America's big environmental organisations have become hugesupporters of the Pickens Plan. "I will be in the front row of thechorus cheering him on," said Carl Pope, executive director of theenvironmental group, the Sierra Club.
Wind currently provides only about 1 per cent of America'selectricity, but by 2020 that figure is expected to rise to 15 percent or higher with environmental organisations pushing hard forgovernment investment in a new electricity grid to take the energyfrom the sparsely populated plains to the large urban areas. Thesanctimonious preaching of the green movement has been embraced asa real business opportunity, with GE alone expected to sell$6bn-worth of turbines this year in America.
As the world burns through some 31 billion barrels of oil, sixbillion tons of coal and 100 trillion cubic feet of natural gasthis year, producing around 30 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide,the concerns about climate change are having an impact even inTexas.
A farmer who gives up a quarter of an acre to a wind farm can earn$10,000 a year from it – some 3 per cent of the value of theelectricity it produces. If he planted corn for ethanol he wouldearn $300.
The oil men-turned-wind farmers see the consequences of climatechange on their televisions like anyone else and the alarm hasalready gone out about declining yields of crops such as wheat andcorn as water supplies needed for irrigation dwindle.
Mr Pickens is now setting about getting support from people who maydespise his conservative political views. As a lifelong Republican,he says he will vote for John McCain. But he is staying at arm'slength from Mr McCain's campaign, to avoid having his plandismissed as so much campaign rhetoric.
"This has to be a bipartisan effort," said the man who offered $1mto anyone who could prove that the Swift Boat charges made againstJohn Kerry were false. When Mr Kerry himself stepped up to disprovethe charges, Mr Pickens quickly changed the offer and never signedthe cheque.
"This is not about Republicans versus Democrats," he said. "This isabout saving our country from the ruination of spending $700bn ayear on oil imports. Ninety days after the oil hits our shores,it's all burnt up, and we've got nothing to show for it. But they[foreign oil producers] still have our money. It's killing oureconomy."
Mr Pickens considered running for governor of Texas twice but sayshe is unsuited for political leadership. But he has emerged as oneof the country's leading philanthropists in recent years and madeone of the largest individual donations to the Hurricane Katrinarelief effort.
One a recent tour of his Mesa Vista Ranch for journalists, MrPickens was dressed in an army-green hunting jacket withfluorescent orange patches. He raised a shotgun to his shoulder andblasted a clay pigeon as it shot skyward. He then gave a gave atour of his spread with its seven miles of lakes and artificialstreams. There is a mansion and an equally big hunting lodge, twogyms (he is a fitness freak) and rare deer, quail, elk, turkeys andantelope roam the land.
And as he led his guests from room to room on his vast estate, hismain preoccupation was turning out the lights.