T. Boone Pickens scraps huge wind farm project

San Antonio Business Journal ^ | July 8, 2009

[navysealdad]

Oil billionaire Thomas Boone Pickens Jr. has dropped plans to build a giant wind farm in the Texas Panhandle.

Pickens, who made much of his fortune buying up oil and gas companies in the 1980s, put off the wind power project because of the difficulty of getting credit for it in the sour economy.

[A. Morgan]

HA! HA!

[Celerity]

i still have no idea why it’s so difficult to get buy in on a windmill. They are beautiful, effective and proven. They aren’t the total answer, but they help.

[Eric in the Ozarks]

How did T. Boone overlook the obvious need for transmission lines ? There’s more to this story, I’m thinking...

[eddie willers]

They are beautiful, effective and proven. They aren’t the total answer, but they help.

Bwahahahaha!

[headstamp 2]

Uncle Sugar didn’t come through for him. Tie up 200,000 acres of land with these hideous things for a lousy 1000 Megawatts of power.

What a waste of land and money.

[null and void]

Ya know? I bet an array of wind farms (the Cusinarts of the air) would prevent a cruise missile attack.

Why doesn't he get funding from the DoD, I bet with 0bama in charge, they're just swimming in so much money they wouldn't miss a few trillion...

[kittymyrib]

The Waco, Texas, area was warned to cut back on electrical usage during this current horrendous heat wave (104 yesterday) or the residents will face brown-outs. It would be great to have new energy sources coming on line in Texas, but as cheap as natural gas is right now, expensive wind generators don’t make sense.

[twister881]

Maybe we could harness the bloviation emanating from Capitol Hill and the White House...would that be wind power, thermal power, or both? In any case, muy mucho hot air.

[MinuteGal]

Slim Pickens should part with some of his fortune to buy Michael Jackson's brain.

Leni

[Eric in the Ozarks]

Wildlife destroyers. Can you imagine a 4000 MW 'swing' when the wind stops blowing ?
Every study I've read indicated 85 MW fossil backup requirement for every 100 MW of wind.

[taildragger]

For better or worse, this was a ruse for his natural gas car(s)/infrastructure.

Without getting into the particulars and all my research, IMHO it is the way to go. Pickens may be the wrong snake oil salesmen to do it.

His Auto venture in LA has Al Gore on the board.

With a ton of auto plants and expertise out there not to start from scratch, I am cynical of that he will succeed. If he had any brains, hooking up with Penske to do it via the Saturn Southern Plants might work.

[SonOfDarkSkies]

How did T. Boone overlook the obvious need for transmission lines ? There’s more to this story, I’m thinking...

Yep!

He's angling for some of that "green" stimulus.

[bossmechanic]

Surely you jest!
Current windmills are high-maintenance, inefficient, loud
and birds get their necks lopped off.
Even the Kennedy’s(always so Green) axed windmills in their backyard.
They are alot like ethenol.
Very nice feel-good concept NOT well researched and with a bunch of unintended consequences.

[Sig Sauer P220]

Oklahoma State athletics is going to suffer from this.

[ConservativeMan55]

bttt

[Alcibiades]

I have heard that there were three main reasons he backed out on the wind farm part.

1. Several of the subsidies for wind farms expired and were not renewed by congress.

2. Lack of investment Capital available on Wall Street. He wasn’t going to risk that much of his own personal fortune.

3. Congress wouldn’t subsidize his infrastructure for transmission lines and force local landowners to accept them.

[Jan_Sobieski]

While wind engery may seem like a cost effective and elegant reusable energy source, it is actually more expensive and less efficient than Coal and Nuclear power. The dirty little secret of wind energy is that it is all government subsidized. The only reason wind turbines are going up is because the government is paying people to do so.

Seems to me like T. Boone Pickins invested in too much of this hardward counting on the Government to foot the complete bill. After crunching the numbers and realizing that it was not profitable, he now he has "buyers remorse".

[taxtruth]

Walmart axed them in front of their stores.Our government is a propaganda machine 24/7.Koolaid for all the drinkers.

[taildragger]

Make sense...

check yo private mail