Wind Power Pits Father Versus Son

CNN -- Wind Power Brings Prosperity, Anger

This story shows that not everyone is happy about wind power. It is understandable that for one used to the sight of uninterrupted natural landscape and the sound of crickets putting them to sleep, that the sight and sound of wind turbines dotting the hillside is a significant change. And unless any of us have experienced living next to a wind turbine, it is difficult to appreciate the noise and visual effect they have. But my question to the younger Yancey is, "Would you rather have an oil pump and refinery in your back yard or a wind turbine?"

I will point out that at the end of this article the younger Yancey was enjoying a snowmobile race across water on his family's pond. Because of this and the fact that the trails on his family's land are a "popular gathering point for snowmobilers and all-terrain vehicle riders," I can only assume then that a perfect summer evening for Yancey is listening to the whine of the engine as he takes a ride on his ATV (we call them erosion machines). Yancey has little room to bemoan the noise pollution produced by wind turbines if he is an ATV and snowmobile enthusiast.

T. Boone Selling Energy Plan to Presidential Candidates

USA Today -- Obama Discusses Energy Issues With Pickens

What can I say they hasn't been said earlier?

Money buys you attention, as is evident with T. Boone Pickens meeting with both presidential candidates to push the Pickens Plan. To his credit, the Pickens Plan is a good short term solution to cut America's reliance on foreign oil, but it doesn't sit right that the salesman will reap huge profits if the Pickens Plan is implemented as is. I am fairly certain, however, that neither candidate seeks to be seen as buddy-buddy with the man who helped give W his second term.

T. Boone Pickens: The Plan (3 of 3)

America is addicted to foreign oil. It’s an addiction that threatens our economy, our environment and our national security. It touches every part of our daily lives and ties our hands as a nation and a people. (blue text taken from The Plan at http://www.pickensplan.com/)

I might go further and remove the word foreign and just write, “America is addicted to oil…,” but it is easy to understand why T. Boone doesn’t take it that far. He is an oilman, after-all, and still in the business of feeding America's addiction. He’s just peddling a different flavor this time.

Who is T. Boone Pickens?

T. Boone Pickens, son of a landman from Oklahoma and child of the Great Depression, has amassed a net worth of $3 billion wheeling and dealing in the oil industry. He founded Mesa Petroleum, the nation's largest independent producer of domestic oil and gas, and currently runs BP Capital Management, a hedge fund that invests largely in the petroleum industry.

Pickens has become recently critical (perfectly timed to coincide with the upcoming election) of America's increasing dependence on foreign oil and has formulated a plan to cut oil imports by harnessing the wind and shifting transportation fuel from gasoline to natural gas.

Let us take a close look at T. Boone's ideas

The Problem
In 1970, we imported 24% of our oil. Today it’s nearly 70% and growing. At current oil prices, we will send $700 billion dollars out of the country this year alone – that’s four times the annual cost of the Iraq war. Projected over the next 10 years the cost will be $10 trillion – it will be the greatest transfer of wealth in the history of mankind. Oil is getting more expensive to produce, harder to find and there just isn’t enough of it to keep up with demand. The simple truth is that cheap and easy oil is gone.

Of interesting note: President Jimmy Carter recognized the growing problem 30 years ago during the energy crises of the 70s and tried to address it. In a speech given on April 17, 1977, Carter said that the energy crises "… is a problem we will not solve in the next few years, and it is likely to get progressively worse through the rest of this century. We simply must balance our demand for energy with our rapidly shrinking resources. By acting now, we can control our future instead of letting the future control us. Further delay can affect our strength and our power as a nation." Carter called Americans to “conservation and to the use of coal and permanent renewable energy sources, like solar power.”

Wise words then and appropriate for today.

Pickens's Solution: Wind & Natural Gas
The United States is the the Saudi Arabia of wind power. Department of Energy reports that 20% of America’s electricity can come from wind. Building wind facilities in the corridor that stretches from the Texas panhandle to North Dakota could produce 20% of the electricity for the United States at a cost of $1 trillion. It would take another $200 billion to build capacity to transmit that energy to cities and towns. That’s a lot of money, but it’s a one-time cost. And compared to the $700 billion we spend on foreign oil every year, it’s a bargain.

Pickens is asking America to invest as a nation by subsidizing wind energy with tax dollars. This is a reasonable request. Investing as a nation gets the ball rolling faster and cushions the financial impact on the individual consumer. But the American taxpayer better know that the plan is going to work!

Pickens has a substantial incentive in seeing that his plan be adopted. He is building the world's largest wind farm outside of Pampa, TX. He will seek tax breaks to offset construction costs and tax dollars to pay for power lines to transmit power to cities and towns.

A cheap new replacement to foreign oil. Natural gas and bio-fuels are the only domestic energy sources used for transportation. Natural gas is the cleanest transportation fuel available today. According to the California Energy Commission, critical greenhouse gas emissions from natural gas are 23% lower than diesel and 30% lower than gasoline.

Interesting note: Pickens has admitted that Global Warming is a real phenomenon. This is quite a statement coming from a man whose business it is to keep America hooked on carbon based fuel.

An economic revival for rural America. In addition to creating construction and maintenance jobs, thousands of Americans will be employed to manufacture the turbines and blades. Plus, wind turbines don’t interfere with farming and grazing, so they don’t threaten food production or existing local economies.

No argument here.

Natural gas is our country’s second largest energy resource and a vital component of our energy supply. 98% of the natural gas used in the United States is from North America. While it is a cheap, effective and versatile fuel, less than 1% of natural gas is currently used for transportation. We currently use natural gas to produce 22% of our electricity. Harnessing the power of wind to generate electricity will give us the flexibility to shift natural gas away from electricity generation and put it to use as a transportation fuel – reducing our dependence on foreign oil by more than one-third.

This is an interesting idea.

The Pickens Plan is a bridge to the future — a blueprint to reduce foreign oil dependence by harnessing domestic energy alternatives, and buy us time to develop even greater new technologies.

Pickens admits that his plan is a temporary fix. The key words are "buy us time."

The problem is that shifting transportation fuel from one petroleum resource to another petroleum resource is risky. It's a slippery slope. It is like telling a drug addict in order to get off cocaine he should start smoking crack. It is just too easy to get stuck in the same rut. America might have a large supply of natural gas, but the Middle East has more and it is to easy to see that once we outstrip domestic supply we could start importing natural gas again and be servant to the same master.

Like his wind plan, Pickens has an incentive in seeing the nation switch from gasoline/diesel to natural gas at the pumps. His company, Mesa Petroleum is one of the largest natural gas producers, and Clean Energy, another Pickens company, is the largest provider of vehicular natural gas in North America. He stands to make significant profits if his plan is implemented.

But it will take leadership. On January 20th, 2009, a new President will take office. We're organizing behind the Pickens Plan now to ensure our voices will be heard by the next administration. Together we can raise a call for change and set a new course for America's energy future in the first hundred days of the new presidency — breaking the hammerlock of foreign oil and building a new domestic energy future for America with a focus on sustainability.

This statement is an apolitical plea to Americans to support his plan. But be leery because Pickens's politics is anything but nonpartisan.

Pickens has funded almost exclusively Republican campaigns. He donated to George W. Bush’s Texas gubernatorial campaign and his two presidential wins. Pickens was a major contributor ($3 million) of the Swift Boat ads that sunk Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry in 2004.

If Pickens was interested in saving the nation from its addiction to oil maybe he should have found a different candidate to fund, rather that the current president who is no friend to alternative energy or environmental policy.

Pickens has also been critical of Gore's energy plan saying, “…Al Gore put forward a framework of a plan that is focused on global warming and climate issues. My plan is aimed squarely at breaking the stranglehold that foreign oil has on our country… Gore’s plan does not address this enormous problem. It is clear that he and I have two different objectives and our plans should be viewed with that in mind."

Why should the two plans be competing? Why not solve both problems? Or does Pickens feel he is fighting over potential customers?

So, what do we do?

Is T. Boone "out to save America", as Carl Pope believes?

I like to think of it this way: If a better energy plan comes along that does not heavily invest in wind energy and natural gas powered automobiles, would T. Boone step aside and say, "Good job, friend. Your ideas are superior to mine. Let us go your way," when he stands to lose billions in investments? My gut says, "No.” Pickens's business maneuvers have put him in a position to profit billions from the implementation of his plan. We should question his motives.

But, sometimes it is necessary to be the bigger man and look above the petty (money) issues. T. Boone has put forth a plan that is a step in the right direction. It's not perfect, but it is progress. If it is implemented I just hope we as a nation can stay on the right track towards ever increasing utilization of green energy without falling victim to our addiction of petroleum of a different flavor.

T. Boone Pickens: The Man (2 of 3)

Thomas Boone Pickens, Jr. was born May 22, 1928 in Holdenville, Oklahoma. He was the son of a landman, a middleman whose job it is to find landowners willing to lease mineral rights and then sell their leases to oil companies. After oil took a downturn, the Pickens family left Oklahoma and moved to Amarillo, TX while Thomas, Jr. was in high school. He attended Texas A&M for a year on a basketball scholarship, but left and continued his education at Oklahoma A&M where received a degree in geology in 1951.

Business
1951 – graduated with degree in geology from Oklahoma A&M (renamed Oklahoma State University in 1957); employed by Phillips Petroleum
1954 – left Phillips Petroleum
1956 – founded Mesa Petroleum
1997 – founded BP Capital Management (formerly BP Energy Fund), hedge fund management company that invests in petroleum and natural gas; founded Clean Energy (formerly Pickens Fuel Corp.)
1999 – founded Mesa Water

++Mesa Petroleum is the nation’s largest independent producer of domestic oil and gas and one of the largest gas producers.
++Pickens Fuel Corp., founded 1997, later reincorporated as “Clean Energy” in 2001 (taken public in 2007) is the largest provider of vehicular natural gas in North America.
++Mesa Water has purchased 200,000 acres of water rights in Roberts County, TX. Mesa Water wants to pump 200,000 acre feet of groundwater annually from the Ogallala Aquifer and send it to water deprived El Paso, Lubbock, San Antonio, or Dallas-Forth Worth.

Pickens rise in the oil industry has more to do with acquisitions than drilling. He obtained notoriety in the 1980s for several hospitable and some hostile takeover attempts over other petroleum companies. He has been accused of taking over companies, breaking them up, and putting people out of work. He has been called an entrepreneurial populist, corporate raider, and greenmailer. T. Boone Pickens amassed wealth is estimated at $3 billion and is the 117th richest man in America (Forbes).

Philanthropy
$400 million to Oklahoma State University (OSU)
$50 million to U. of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas
$50 million to U. of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center at Houston
$7 million to American Red Cross following Hurricane Katrina
$6 million to University of Texas at Dallas Center for Brain Health

Pickens has donated $400 million to OSU to date, 66% of which has been given to athletics for a remodel of the football stadium that now bears his name and the creation of an athletic village. Pickens and OSU believe that improving the athletic facilities will create a platform, or base, in which to encourage better athletes to come to the university in order to improve the school’s athletic teams. This has been done at many campuses and I have no doubt this plan will improve the calibur of athlete coming to OSU, but my advice: Pickens better include some paid tutors and tailored majors to keep the hulks academically eligible.

Pickens’s donation of $165 million to OSU Cowboy Golf Inc., an endowment set up to benefit the golf program, is the single largest charitable gift ever to a university’s athletic department. But the circumstances surrounding the gift raise a few eyebrows. See… Pickens sits on the board of the OSU golf charity and took advantage of a provision in Hurricane Katrina relief legislation that allowed him to deduct for a charitable gift equal to 100 percent of his adjusted gross income, double the normal limit. The money, under his authority, was then reinvested in BP Capital Management, Pickens’s hedge fund. The arrangement offered Pickens a huge tax break and the ability to continue to control the cash.

Pickens’s fortune is his to do with as he wishes, but I have never been a fan of glorifying the big man on campus above the rest of the student body. Despite my fondness for athletics, extra-curricular activities are just that, extra and secondary to education. It is disappointing that OSU students are not receiving an equal monetary gift from Pickens as the athletes have received. I guess this is another example of the misplaced emphasis in our schools.

Politics
Pickens has been a generous donor to Republican campaigns, including infamous names like Tom DeLay (TX), Jesse Helms (NC), Strom Thurman (SC), Larry Craig (ID), Conrad Burns (MT), John Ashcroft (MO), and Rick Santorum (PA). He contributed to George W. Bush’s Texas gubernatorial campaign in which Bush defeated popular Democratic incumbant Ann Richards in 1994. During the campaign, Karl Rove, Bush’s senior political advisor, was accused of using a poll technique in which voters were asked if they would be "more or less likely to vote for Governor Richards if [they] knew her staff is dominated by lesbians." Rove denies having been involved in circulating these rumors about Richards during the campaign.* This is not the first time smear tactics have been utilized by the Bush men. H.W. in his 1988 presidential bid used the infamous Willie Horton ad and Tank ad to raise fears concerning Michael Dukakis’s ability to keep Americans safe. Pickens obviously does not have a problem with sleezy win-at-all-costs maneuvers such as these. As a matter of fact, he not only funds them, he participates also.

In 2004, Pickens contributed $3 million to Republican 527 group Swift Vets & POWs for Truth, a group of military vets from the Vietnam War that opposed John Kerry’s nomination for president. The group stated that "Kerry's phony war crimes charges, his exaggerated claims about his own service in Vietnam, and his deliberate misrepresentation of the nature and effectiveness of Swift boat operations compel us to step forward" (link). It is interesting to note that Pickens contributed a series of donations totaling $3000 to John Kerry from 6/99 to 6/01, interesting not only because of the subsequent Swift Boat attack ads, but because it is one of the few monetary contributions given to a Democrat by Pickens. Kerry in a written letter took up Pickens’s challenge, but as of yet no money has changed hands. ABC News thought the Swift Boat allegations suspect and John McCain condemned the Swift Boat ads as “dishonest and dishonorable.” The Swift Boat ads were in reality, nothing more than an incredibly successful smear campaign and had nothing to do with Kerry’s presidential credentials.**

An interesting and humorous piece of legislation that Pickens’s has lobbied for is the American Horse Slaughter Prevention Act (HR 503), undeniably influenced by Madeleine Pickens, T. Boone’s third wife and widow of racehorse owner Allen Paulson. This legislation would permanently prohibit the slaughter of horses for human consumption as well as the exportation of live horses intended for the same purpose. It is humorous because a horse is really no different than any other farm animal. Some will be put to work and some may end up on a dinner plate. If so many were not kept as pets they would be treated no different than a steer. I’ve never eaten horse before, but I’m sure it tastes like chicken.

So now we understand a little about T. Boone Pickens’s businesses, philanthropy, and politics. This should give us a little insight into his motivations for creating and publicizing the Pickens Plan. Remember, things are not always as they seem.

*Interesting tidbit of information: Karl Rove was on George H.W. Bush’s staff during his failed run at re-election in 1992. He was fired in the middle of the campaign for leaking information to the press. Fast forward to today and the Valerie Plame CIA leak case. Hmmm… it makes you wonder.

**If it is unpatriotic to say that McCain’s “riding in a fighter plane and getting shot down is [not] a qualification to be president,” as former Gen. Wesley Clark surmised, then why is it okay to smear John Kerry’s service record in the military? I guess turnabout is not fair game with Pickens and Republicans.

T. Boone Pickens (1 of 3)

Who is T. Boone Pickens? You see his face every day in a 60 second commercial decrying America's increasing dependence on foreign oil and offering a solution, wind energy and the Pickens Plan. This oil man and chairman of his own hedge fund is pushing renewable energy! Sounds fishy, doesn't it? Yes, this is the same man who has his name all over the Oklahoma State campus. Yes, this is the same man who was a financial backer of George W. Bush's Texas and presidential campaigns. Yes, this is the same man who gave $3 million to "Swift Vets and POWs for Truth" group who attacked John Kerry in 2004.

The contradictions give me pause. I like his ideas on domestic renewable energy, but wasn't he backing the wrong horse in the last two presidential elections? I have to ask again, "Who is T. Boone Pickens?"

Starting tomorrow, let’s spend a few days learning about The Man and The Plan.