Who is T. Boone Pickens?
On a local radio station this morning, I heard them mention a guy by the name of T. Boone Pickens. They mentioned that he has a plan to move our country away from oil and start using more renewable resources like natural gas and wind energy. I decided to do a little more research and found out more about him and what his plan is.
T. Boone Pickens is an American entrepreneur that was born in Holdenville, Oklahoma. He attend the Oklahoma State University and graduated with a degree in geology. After working for a petroleum company for several years, he founded Mesa Petroleum. He grew his company by acquiring smaller oil companies and became one of the largest independent oil companies. Since then, he has founded BP Capital Management, a company that originally ran two hedge funds largely vested in oil and natural gas companies. Currently, his company runs the BP Capital Energy fund that owns large portions in Suncor Energy (Sunoco), ExxonMobil and Occidental Petroleum.
According to his website http://www.pickensplan.com, he wants to reduce our dependency on foreign oil by replacing it will cleaner sources, like natural gas. He also wants to start investing in wind farms throughout the mid-west. Areas ranging from North Dakota down to Texas have some of the highest wind speeds throughout the country.
His plan seems really nice, but what is his motivation for it? It seems that he only has interest natural gas and wind energy to make more money. For the moment though, nobody really knows for sure what his true intentions by proposing this plan. He has even paid for a tv commercial to advertise his plan where he has said “I’ve been an oilman my whole life, but this is one emergency we can’t drill our way out of”.
He said in his commercial that he will be release more details in the coming weeks. I will keep an eye out for any new details about his plan.
This Week in News: July 10th
Wind Energy
As reported by the Telegraph, the UK government proposed a plan to expanding their wind energy program to include 7000 new wind turbines. The government is committing itself to producing 15% of all of it’s energy from renewable resources like wind energy by the year 2020. They believe that they may be able to achieve producing 1/3 of the UK’s energy use through wind energy by 2020. This plan is a huge step in the right direction for the UK.
Delmarva Power is adding more wind energy to its portfolio by signing a long-term contract with Bluewater Wind. In a press release by Delmarva Power, the state of Delaware is requiring them to produce 20% of their energy from renewable sources by the year 2019. This contract is significant in that Bluewater Wind will be getting the majority of its wind energy from off-shore wind farms. This is one of the first of its kind throughout the country. The contract will be a 25-year deal and wind energy will be provided to their customers as soon as 2012.
Photo by laurenatclemson.
Solar Energy
General Motors will be building the largest rooftop solar station at their largest factory in Europe, located in Zaragoza of Northern Spain. The AFP is reporting that it will be a 50 million euro project that will be the largest of its kind throughout the world. Zaragoza is a good location for the solar station because of its hot summers that get into the 100’s. GM’s building will rely soly on the rooftop system and even have extra energy to push back into the grid.
