About two months ago "Hotroddaddy" submitted a great new thread entitled "The Scoop on Gas". It sparked some lively discussion.

I posted an article ("Ice, Baby, Ice") by a guy named Ed Wallace who works out of Fort Worth. That article dealt with the part played by speculators in the huge upward spiral of oil (and subsequently gasoline) prices.

Ed sure ain't a guy who is afraid to speak out when he thinks everybody else is on the wrong track.

We're all getting bombarded by TV spots presented by a very wealthy wildcatter named T. Boone Pickens in which he (Pickens) proposes to build a chain of big windmill farms reaching from the Southwest clear up to Canada, thereby solving all of our power problems.

What do you think about Ed's take on this one?

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T-Bone for Him, Slim Pickin’s for Us



Special to the Star-Telegram
I’ve always found it tough to get too mad at T. Boone Pickens. Sure, just a few years ago he warned the world that we are at or close to Peak Oil — while simultaneously making billions of dollars betting on oil futures. Which led some to make specific comments during Congressional testimony, to the effect that his public doomsaying was a posture designed to drive the market for oil — and therefore his personal profits — higher.

At the same time, T. Boone gives away a sizable part of his earnings to charity. Besides that, he’s 80 years old and still out there speaking firmly, promoting big and fantastic energy ideas like a man half his age. Pickens’ demeanor shows that he doesn’t just love playing the game decades past the age when most retire; more than anything, he loves being the one making the rules by which everyone else has to play.

As of his last public pronouncements, the oil problem that concerned him most seemed to be the $800 billion we are currently sending out of the country to buy crude; fears for the end of the oil age apparently are now a lower priority. Yet now T. Boone wants America on wind-generated electricity — to solve "our oil problems."

A.K.A. "Tornado Alley"

Pickens’ plan is slightly complicated, but I’ll try my best to decipher it for you. What he envisions is building $1 trillion worth of wind generators across the American Midwest, from the Texas Panhandle to the Canadian border, known as America’s "Wind Alley." Pickens believes that these wind farms can provide enough electricity to reduce the amount of natural gas we need to run the more conventional power generation stations. In turn, we can use the natural gas that that move frees up for electricity to power automobiles — and that in turn would reduce our demand for foreign oil.

OK, that sounds great in theory, especially when Pickens notes that in 1970 we imported 24 percent of our oil and today that figure is nearly 70 percent. But Pickens also claims that investing $1 trillion in wind generators is far smarter than spending another $10 trillion on imported oil over the next decade.

Any radical plan to alter the equation for our energy needs involves pitfalls. Most of them are serious with this windy plan.

For one thing, refueling stations for natural gas vehicles are nearly as scarce as those for E85 ethanol. So you can’t consider just the $1 trillion it would cost to span the Midwest with wind generators — you also have to add in the infrastructure costs to make natural gas refilling stations convenient to the average consumer.

Bear in mind too the cost of all the new electric transmission lines that we’d have to build to get the wind power to major metropolitan areas from hundreds of miles away.

And then there’s the fact that Honda once offered its Civic GX natural-gas-powered automobile here in Texas: Demand was so poor that today you can only purchase them in certain regions of the country.

Need a Big Ol’ Fan?

None of these disadvantages is a deal breaker, should it be proven that our best energy option is moving in this direction. Sure, maybe more than a few individuals will be put off because Honda has put a $25,000 list price on its Civic GX, particularly when the base model Civic sedan costs just over $15,000. Counterbalancing that, of course, is that the cost of natural gas for automobiles is still substantially less than the cost of gasoline.

The government’s figures show that someone driving 15,000 miles per year in a Civic is spending $1,875 for gasoline, compared to only $798 if the Civic uses natural gas. Still, even at that rate it would take 10 years of ownership to break even — probably longer, given how high the price of natural gas has soared this year.

But the deal-breaking disadvantage of wind-powered electricity is well known. Its most serious problem is the fact that the wind doesn’t always blow — and even when it does, it takes a 13-mile-an-hour wind to power a large-scale wind power generation farm.

Moreover, the peak months for electricity demand are during the summer, and that’s exactly when the wind will not cooperate. Ask anyone who works outdoors in Texas what they’d give to have any breeze at all on a 100-degree day; if they half-laugh, it’s because they know that just doesn’t happen here often, if ever.

The Answer is Not Blowing in the Wind.

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