BOONE PICKENS TO MAKE BIG WIND

This is what one smart oilman is doing about Peak Oil.

Texas oil tycoon plans largest wind farm; 2,000 turbines over 200,000 acres at cost that could reach $6 billion
June 20, 2007 (AP via MSNBC)

WHO
Mesa Power LP, CEO T. Boone Pickens, oil billionaire-corporate takeover kingpin-energy industry entrepreneur; American Wind Energy Association (AWEA), spokeswoman Susan Williams Sloan

WHAT
Pickens’ Mesa Power is planning to build the world’s largest wind farm in four West Texas counties
TOTAL INSTALLED U.S. WIND ENERGY CAPACITY: 11,699 MW as of March 31, 2007

WHEN
- Proposed windfarm would begin construction in 2010, pending approval by the Texas Public Utilities Commission, which begins hearings this week. Landowner deals expected by the end of summer.
- Texas established Renewable Energy Zones in 2005.

WHERE
- The Pickens project would be on 200,000 acres of Roberts, Gray, Hemphill and Wheeler counties of West Texas
- The current largest windfarm is near Abilene, Texas.
- The offshore Babcock & Brown project was planned in the Gulf of Mexico off Padre Island.
Texas leads the US and is about to get twice as big (click to enlarge)

WHY
- The planned 2,000 turbine, 4,000 megawatt-generating wind farm, more than 5 times the size of the current largest wind farm (735 megawatts), would almost double Texas’ wind production. One megawatt reportedly services 250 Texas homes. Some single turbines in this wind farm will generate 2.5 megawatts.
Cost to Mesa: $6 billion
- Such massive undertakings must always be considered tentative in this stage: Babcock & Brown Ltd. last month gave up a 30-year South Texas offshore 40,000 acre lease.

QUOTES
Mesa spokesman Mike Boswell: "We have entered into a limited number of agreements with a limited number of landowners [250, in Pampa] to put in some test towers…"