Texas Oil Magnate's Plan Is Mostly Hot Air

If Amarillo oil tycoon T. Boone Pickens—real name, we swear—has his way, the Texas Panhandle may soon be home to the nation's most gargantuan wind farm.

Pickens made his impressive declaration at a private meeting yesterday, proposing to construct a massive generator that could potentially span four different counties. Once the $3-6 billion project is completed some time in the next decade, the wind farm will be able generate up to 4 gigawatts—enough to power at least 3 flux capacitors.

Image from busproject.org

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By Allen Y Chen in News on June 13, 2007 3:27 PM 0 Comments

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short-bus

What the news story doesn't tell you is that this is primarily a water deal. Pickens is using the wind generation as the "positive spin" part of the deal in which he is selling the ogallala aquifer water rights to hundreds of thousands of acres of land (the land beneath the wind mills) to Oklahoma City and Dallas, sucking the aquifer dry within a short period of time.

ESeufert

T. Boone Pickens isn't actually from Amarillo --- he runs a successful hedge fund out of Dallas. He's one of the most infamous corporate raiders in the world, having spearheaded a number of (solicited and hostile) takeovers --- the most famous of which was Gulf Oil --- in the 1980s.

ESeufert

T. Boone Pickens isn't actually from Amarillo --- he runs a successful hedge fund out of Dallas. He's one of the most infamous corporate raiders in the world, having spearheaded a number of (solicited and hostile) takeovers --- the most famous of which was Gulf Oil --- in the 1980s.