Snake Oil? Texas Oil Man, Part II

Posted by Anna Fahey

07/17/2008 01:15 PM

T. Boone Pickens under scrutiny. Still right on about the end of oil.

Last week I wrote about how T. Boone Pickens was winning me over with all his talk about how we're addicted to oil, how it's bleeding our economy, how it's hurting American families, and how drilling is not the answer. I actually said "I love this guy" -- and meant it -- when I heard him say, "The United States is the Saudi Arabia of Wind Power." Skip roses and chocolate, these words are the way to my heart. But it was the words that I liked. Not necessarily the man and not even his Plan.

As Joseph Romm points out on Grist, T. Boone Pickens' energy plan is "half brilliant, half dumb."

Half of it is great -- the big push on wind power. Heck, even the Bush administration says wind power could be 20 percent of U.S. electricity. But the notion that we would use the wind power to free up natural gas in order to fuel a transition to natural gas vehicles makes no sense. Why would we go to the trouble of switching our vehicle fleet from running on one expensive fossil fuel to another expensive fossil fuel? Any freed up natural gas should be used to displace coal ...

Romm's right, of course. And lots of other people cautioned me not to trust T. Boone and to dig a little deeper into his not-so-shiny past (let's just say "Swift Boat") before I get carried away. Fair enough. Anyone who touts one fossil fuel as a "bridge" to a clean energy future and says that natural gas -- or coal for that matter -- will "buy us time to develop even greater new technologies," is forgetting that we already have greater new technologies. T. Boone knows this. He's the one talking up the promise of Great Plains wind farms.

So, yes; it's a song and dance. Or snake oil, in this case. But it's also a real life illustration of a shifting economy -- one where life-long oil men are buying up renewables for profit.

And, in any case, it's music to my ears to hear a Texas oil man with a national platform and media campaign say that the era of cheap oil is over and that to be prosperous and independent again we need to break the addiction. Whatever his motivations and however flawed and environmentally backwards his master plan, T. Boone's saying what we need to hear -- with a notoriously ruthless and conservative businessman's Oklahoma drawl:

America is in a hole and it's getting deeper every day. We import 70% of our oil at a cost of $700 billion a year - four times the annual cost of the Iraq war.

I've been an oil man all my life, but this is one emergency we can't drill our way out of. But if we create a new renewable energy network, we can break our addiction to foreign oil.

And, frankly, maybe we need to hear it from guys like T. Boone. The effect, for many, is quite different when Al Gore says it.

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Comments

Posted by James 07/17/2008 10:09 PM

The perfect plan (in my opinion) would have been for T Boone Pickens to advocate for Wind Energy (he is building 4,000 MW) and for an advocacy in plug-in electric vehicles or pure electric vehicles.

With his massive investments in the electric grid, he profits from that form of transportation also.

I see no reason to buy a natural gas powered vehicle. That is just another resource that we are running out of.

The future of the electric grid has to be low or zero carbon. Wind, solar, nuclear, hydro dams, geothermal, etc. There is really no other solution.

Posted by BryanR 07/19/2008 03:03 PM

Plug in or pure electric cars would be great if all electricity was produced from renewables - wind, solar, etc. However, that is not going to happen for decades due to the billions of dollars of investment needed to build transmission lines.

It is much more energy efficient to use natural gas directly into vehicles than it is for a power plant 100+ miles a way to burn natural gas to send back through transmission lines the electricity that is used to charge batteries in cars.

There's tons of energy loss on the path
1) loss from converting natural gas to electricity via generator
2) loss from electric plant to home via transmission lines
3) loss from home electric outlet to charging batteries
4) loss from batteries to electric motor

Posted by ray benish 08/16/2008 03:29 PM

There are several key areas that separate Mr. Pickens from other proposals. 1 - he is investing his money in his plan to construct wind mills 2. he is not advocating CNG for light duty vehhicles but has repeatedly stated that the individual consumer should each make the decision as to choice of fuel. Rather he is advocating using CNG for heavy duty trucks to move freight. CNG is a proven HD technology. Additionally, if we were politically serious about both energy independence and GHG emissions we would be aggressively moving freight from trucking to rail. The trucking industry is politically powerful and we can count on it killing the Pickens plan if it appears to be implementable. Lastly, both congress and the executive branch are brain dead on energy issues so it is up to an 80 year old to propose a plan that has actual merit although not without its flaws. Congress has for 30 years avoided all possible solutions to the problem. Editorial note : Congressman Inslee and a few others have been promoting an Apollo type alternative energy program long before the $4.00 gallon gasoline but to no avail.