Calling It Like I See It
I'm a pretty straightforward guy. That's the way I run my businesses. That's the way I live my life. And if you've ever heard me speak then you know that's the way I talk. But when you call it like you see it, some people always seem to hear something else.
Back in the 1970s and 1980s, I made a name for myself as a shareholder rights advocate. I'd find poorly run companies and then tell their management that if they didn't shape up, I'd be more than happy to come on board and run them myself. The end result was that some of the biggest companies in America started to pay attention to the way they did business. Wall Street took notice and the value of their shares grew, which meant that millions of American shareholders, including my own company's, benefited.
It was a good deal for everyone, but don't think for a minute that I was ever referred to as a shareholder rights advocate. I got labeled a corporate raider, a takeover specialist.
Three decades later, the same lessons apply. For almost a year I've been trying to get our country to develop a national energy plan and end our addiction to foreign oil. My critics don't see it as such. One lady said that the real reason I launched the Pickens Plan was that I was trying to atone for past sins. (That's my favorite.) Other notions exist, like I'm really out to increase the value of all the oil and gas fields I own. (Make that the oil and gas fields I don't own.)
The truth is a whole lot simpler.
I've been in the energy business my entire professional career, and since 1950 I've watched our country go from buying some foreign oil to buying a lot of foreign oil to buying too much foreign oil.
Do you think the U.S. can afford to spend half a trillion dollars on imported oil? I sure don't, particularly with our economy in the shape it is today. Yet that's how much we spent in 2008. And if we keep buying more and more foreign oil, we'll spend an estimated $2 trillion a year by 2020.
Does this make sense to you? It sure doesn't make sense to me, especially when we have so much domestic energy right here that we're not tapping into.
Just last week, both the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal did stories on a new government study that shows that our nation's estimated natural gas reserves have shot up by 35 percent just in the last year and 58 percent in the past four years.
"The huge increase in estimated gas supplies comes just as concerns about energy security and climate change are prompting the most profound shift in energy policy since the oil shocks of the 1970s," wrote the Times in "Estimate Places Natural Gas Reserves 35% Higher.
"The report ... concludes that the U.S. has 2,074 trillion cubic feet of natural gas still in the ground, or nearly a century's worth of production at current rates," wrote the Journal in "U.S. Natural-Gas Supplies Surge."
These facts and figures speak for themselves. I'm pushing the Pickens Plan because the answers to some of the most important questions facing our country today can be found right here in America. We can ensure our energy security, strengthen our national security, and help get our economy get back on its feet by relying on domestic energy sources.
It's that simple.
Follow T. Boone Pickens on Twitter: www.twitter.com/boonepickens
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First let's install all the Rooftop solar we can at 3 cents per KWH, it's the cheapest energy you can buy.
There's enough roof area to supply all our needs.
Grid connected solar actually reduces grid load and expensive peak gas generating cost of 80 cents per KWH (CA).
a 3 million dollar machine can produce 1 gw peak per year.
It's already in mass production.
That will cause all other fuels use to drop dramatically since grid connect solar can supply about 50% of our round the clock energy needs without expensive storage.
That will free up the natural gas for the uses Picken's envisions, without driving natural gas prices through the roof.
See my profile for proof.
That will allow
Mr. P, all the best with your plan. What many don't realize is that what you are advocating is simple common sense, and that your foe is intellectual lethargy and entrenched interests. That American capitalisism is so stupid that it resists great ideas, yet is relatively successful, only points to the abysmal qualities of its competitors. Several countries had already accepted the concept of shifting to the use of natural gas in transportation, but America's problem is that it already has a good infrastructure for providing transporation fuel. Perhaps you should focus on getting a specific geographic location or high profile business to adopt the concept and then use it as a launching pad. Alaska has a lot of gas and a lot of money and might be a consideration.
In the short term, a shift from coal to gas is well worth making. But it doesn't change the big picture that much. There's only about as much gas in the ground as oil, in energy terms. It emits less carbon per unit energy than oil, which emits less than coal. But it still puts carbon into the air.
Rather then using natural gas to power cars, I have a better idea.
Of course, my idea will require reversing urban sprawl and making our cities denser...,
They’re called trains and street cars
Europe and Japan had to develop with much less energy then we did
And as a result they get to and from work in different ways then we do.
Of course Japan also has less land area too.
There was a time when the U.S. had much less energy then we do now....
We relied heavily on trains and street cars to move people around.
It worked out nicely until Henry Ford made cars affordable.
Unfortunately, better assembly lines can’t make gas more affordable and time will continue to flow toward ever increasing depletion.
So, rather then investing so much money on windmills to generate electricity to make up
So, rather then investing so much money on windmills to generate electricity to make up
For switching to natural gas to move cars, why not invest that money on reversing urban sprawl?
Hey Mr. Pickens, First of all, thanks for spreaking out about imported oil.
About those stores of natural gas. My family has worked in the Gulf of Mexico since they began drilling off the coast. My brothers work overseas now. We worked the barges that built the rigs and laid pipelines. Most people don't realize that the Gulf is mostly natural gas fields. A common story told out there was that there were more gas wells sitting idle than there were producing. Many times more. Could have been a sort of urban "offshore" legend, but if you don't build a pipeline to a completed well, where does the stuff go?
Not every hole that gets drilled has enough gas or oil to pay for a pipeline, or any at all, for that matter.
Then why complete it? That means getting it ready for a future pipeline. If it's a dry hole, you stop, get all your equipment , and move on.
According to EIA's last report
http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/oil_gas/natural_gas/data_publications/crude_oil_natural_gas_reserves/current/pdf/ch4.pdf
the US has 238 trillion cubic feet... no more than one ninth of the number given here. So where is the magic nine fold increase coming from and what are we doing if the EIA has it right and the NYT and WST have it wrong?
:-)
The EIA report reflects proved reserves and doesn't speculate about unproved reserves, so that's the discrepancy. It's just like crude - proved and unproved vary dramatically, although with crude those numbers are getting closer every year.
True, there's no guarantee, but the probability that the unproved reserves are there is very high.
Actually, in case of crude proved reserves turn out to be mostly correct and often a little bit on the high side. Moreover, only about 50% of proved reserves can be actually produced with current methods.
There is no "probability" with reserves. Either you know what you have or you don't. And in this case speculating about what might be there is a fools errand.
:-)
i agee......
put all our chips on unproved reserves
start running cars on natural gas now
we'll worry about how much there really is later
The 238tcf is last year's proven reserves. The 2074tcf is this year's estimated reserves. The difference is mostly proven vs estimated.
http://leeds-faculty.colorado.edu/lawrence/syst6820/Homework/Solutions%207%20-%20Biomass%20Energy.doc
“There are about 600,000,000 acres of forested land in the lower 48 states
Annual harvest of woody plants – 5-10 tons/acre = 11,199.5-22,399 pound/acre
Average heating value of 8,000 BTU/lb (dry) or
89,596,000 BTU/acre. As you can see in calculation was taken 11,199.5 pound/acre (minimum, not maximum).
Consumption of energy total in 2010 year (projection)-107,870,000,000,000,000BTU/89,596,000BTU/acre = 1.200,000,000 acres.”
Forests of USA have annually enough energy to cover half of needs (2010 year) for our country. If we will pay attention to forest production the same as for corn, we can increase productivity from acre of land.
All emissions could be sequestrated back to the land by water and will be together with ash the best nutrition to grow the same trees.
We will harvest wood for electricity production in area at least 100 times less than in case of harvesting grass, corn, etc for liquid fuel. It will be the closest to customer source of energy and therefore cheaper than coal. Coal right now the cheapest source of electrical energy.
It takes one ton of coal to generate an average of 2500 kWh of electricity.
It takes less than 1.6 ton of wood to generate the same energy.
Burning wood for electricity production will give opportunity to use all energy inside wood, with minimal price for cutting trees and bringing them to oven.
Pollution from wood burning is nasty stuff. The EPA and the American Lung Association have both stated that particulate matter from wood burning poses serious health risks.
http://www.lungusa.org/site/c.dvLUK9O0E/b.23354/k.100/Woodburning.htm
For your proposal to be under consideration, we'd have to come a long way in trapping all that particulate matter and safely disposing of it (no, not contaminating our water supply and soil with it).
It shouldn't be as hard to scrub the smokestacks of wood burning power plants as it is of coal fired ones.
you expect to run our industrial civilization on wood?
I agree that a wood based energy system is feasible. But instead of burning it, we can convert it to liquid fuels to use in vehicles and supplant crude oil. This system also substantially reduces greenhouse gases as it is a renewable cycle at work.
T. Boone,
I think there is a relatively well educated group of lefties who endorse your plans to date. I also believe that our Potus Barry is on board. There is a problem for us, however, and that is the hangover of the Ken Lay brand of energy meeting with secretive offcials, Unocal, Karzai, Afgani pipelines to export gas from the Turkmenistan, and then the bottom line, military invasions.
I think you boys should come clean, and if you were not in on that, then you're sort of like the senator who knows (who's cheating on his wife etc). We're all shareholders in this adventure, eh?
Right on! I'm thinking of changing my HuffPo handle to T.Bob in support. Sounds kinda cool, don't ya think?
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