Throughout his life, T. Boone Pickens has always followed his own path. A number of his post-Mesa Petroleum initiatives reflect a long-standing vision about America’s reliance on fossil fuels and his love for both the land and individual rights.
Perhaps Pickens’ most dramatic move occurred in July 2008, when he launched a $58 million national advertising campaign to promote the Pickens Plan, an energy policy aimed at reducing the American addiction to foreign oil.
In television and print advertisements, in stories and every imaginable talk-show format, appearances before Congress, and town hall meetings across the country, he bluntly told other Americans: “I’ve been an oilman my whole life, but this is one emergency we can’t drill our way out of.” His scribbling white board presentations, in which he outlined the impact of Peak Oil and the U.S. dependence on imports, became water cooler talk throughout the nation.
“A fool with a plan is better than a genius with no plan, and we look like fools without a plan,” he repeatedly has said.
Named one of the world's 100 most influential people by Time magazine in 2009, Pickens has warned the country could very well be spending $10 trillion on foreign oil within a decade, gaining the ear and imagination of both bi-partisan political support and the public at large. More than 1.6 million people have enlisted in his Pickens Army, and the campaign is encouraging an outpouring of fresh ideas and a new generation of Americans to become involved in the policy process. Pickens travels the nation sharing with audiences his urgent plea to lessen our dependence on fossil fuels, invest in alternative energy and look for other ways to enhance U.S. energy security and stability.
He has brought his solution — a combination of wind farms along the Wind Belt, the vast corridor that extends the length of the Great Plains, from Texas to the Canadian border, and a transfer of a portion of the natural gas from electricity generation to transportation use — to the forefront of American debate and legislative action.
Although tight credit markets and transmission line issues have prompted Pickens to delay 2007-announceed plans for the world’s largest wind farm in the Texas Panhandle, Pickens remains fully committed to wind energy and to developing wind projects in the United States and, perhaps, Canada. He is committed to 667 wind turbines, and plans to find projects for them.
“I had hoped that Pampa would be the starting point, but transmission issues and the problem with the capital markets make that unfeasible at this point,” Pickens said in July 2009. “I expect to continue development of the Pampa project, but not at the pace that I originally expected.”
For "his vision and leadership in moving the wind industry forward, " the American Wind Energy Association named Pickens its 2009 Industry Person of the Year.
In the process, he made new allies across political lines that surprised many pundits. News reports started speaking of former vice president Al Gore’s global warming awareness campaign and Pickens’ energy initiatives in the same sentences.
“To put it plainly, T. Boone Pickens is out to save America," said Carl Pope, executive director of the Sierra Club, after meeting with Pickens in 2008.
The Pickens Plan wasn’t the result of a sudden conversion, however. For years, Pickens had pressed presidents and industry representatives on the need for a coherent U.S. energy policy.
While Pickens was still with Mesa Petroleum, he became involved with natural gas fueling. He had a vision: to tap into natural gas as a vehicular fuel. His motivation was two-fold: one, to ensure a cleaner environment for future generations, and two, to lessen dependency on foreign oil.
While chairman of the National Natural Gas Vehicle Coalition for almost three years, Pickens traveled the country advocating the merits of natural gas. When he left Mesa Petroleum and its management wanted to divest of the natural gas fueling concerns, he purchased them and in 1997 formed Pickens Fuel Corp. He touted natural gas as the best alternative vehicular fuel because it’s a domestic resource that reduces our foreign oil consumption, and enhances America’s energy security; clean (NGV vehicles emit up to 95 percent less pollution than gasoline or diesel vehicles); less expensive than petroleum and hydrogen; and safe (lighter-than-air compressed natural gas is nontoxic and disperses quickly, and has a higher ignition temperature than gasoline and diesel fuel, which reduces the chances of accidental ignition).
Clean Energy owns and operates two LNG production plants, one in Willis, Texas, and one in Boron, California, with combined capacity of 260,000 LNG gallons per day and designed to expand to 340,000 LNG gallons per day as demand increases. It also owns and operates a landfill gas facility in Dallas, Texas, that produces renewable methane gas or biogas for delivery in the nation’s gas pipeline network. (www.cleanenergyfuels.com)
