Legendary Texas oilman T. Boone Pickens is in Denver today pitching his plan to cut the country’s dependence on foreign oil by at least a third within a decade.
The plan calls for a ramp up in the production of wind farms in the United States, with hopes of reducing the amount of natural gas used for generating electricity. The natural gas would then be used for transportation fuel, cutting down on the nation’s dependence on gasoline.
With the United States spending $700 billion annually on foreign oil, Pickens said his plan could cut that amount by $300 billion.
Pickens, with an estimated net worth of $3 billion, has committed $58 million to promote the plan through the end of this year.
“The thing that has not happened in this country is we have not been pressed to do anything,” Pickens said today in an interview with The Post. “The reason we haven’t is there’s always been cheap oil. What happens is when the price of oil gets high enough, then alternatives start to be looked at seriously, and then the price of oil would go (down) and the interest would go down. I knew eventually we were going to come to a point where the alternatives would have to be seriously pursued. The time has come.”
Pickens’ goal is to build enough wind farms in the next decade to generate 200,000 megawatts of power. He says there currently is 987,000 megawatts of power generation in the United States.
One megawatt of windpower generation capacity powers about 300 homes.
“From Texas to Canada, there’s an unlimited amount of wind,” said Pickens, 80.
Pickens is building a 4,000 megawatt wind farm in Texas, a project that is estimated to cost up to $12 billion.
His plan faces several obstacles, including the lack of transmission lines for new wind power and availability of natural-gas vehicles and the stations to fuel them in the country. Pickens said he’ll have more details on the plan in about week.
His website, , has attracted 170,000 unique visitors since the plan was announced this week, Pickens said.
Andy Vuong: 303-954-1209 or avuong@denverpost.com
