Pickens delays world's biggest wind farm project

Texas oilman's wind farm project hit by financial crisis and drop in price of natural gas
John Sterlicchi
guardian.co.uk,
Thursday October 30 2008 18.06 GMT

The multibillion dollar project to build the world's biggest wind farm in Texas has been delayed because of the fall-out from the credit crunch and the drop in the price of natural gas, it emerged today.
T Boone Pickens, a renowned Texan oilman who is raising the capital for the wind farm, told a US television station today that the twofold problem was slowing down his ambitious plan. Pickens, who made a fortune from the oil industry but has been converted to renewable energy as a means of ending US dependence on foreign oil, announced the original plan for the wind farm last year and construction was supposed to start in 2010.
"I think it is all going to be put off because we have got the credit crunch, one, but, two, natural gas prices [are down], so you are going to price wind off natural gas power and right now natural gas is so cheap there will be no new wind deals until natural gas price gets back up," he said. Natural gas prices are hovering around $6.80 per million British thermal unit (BTUs) down almost 50% since July.
Over the same time period, Pickens's hedge fund BP Capital has lost $2bn — or 60% of its value — since peaking in June. And according to a Wall Street Journal report, investors are bailing out.
In May this year, when oil and natural gas prices were still rising, Pickens said he had ordered $2bn worth of wind turbines from GE. At the time he estimated the total project would cost between $10-$12bn and would be finished by 2014.
The wind farm would be built on 400,000 acres across the Texas panhandle. It was eventually have 4,000MW of capacity, which is enough to supply electricity to 1.3m homes.
In July, the billionaire launched what he called The Pickens Plan, a $58m PR campaign aimed at convincing Americans to replace petrol with natural gas and wind.
In today's interview on CNBC he said all lorries should be run on natural gas. If America switched 2 million "18 wheelers" to natural gas it would reduce the country's dependence on foreign oil by 30%, he said. He saw no reason to halt this switchover even though his wind power plans are delayed. "It's an easy step and it can happen very, very fast."