Legendary Texas oilman Pickens sees America’s future in Iowa’s wind

T. Boone Pickens

LE MARS — Iconic Texas oilman T. Boone Pickens has thrown his billion-dollar fortune behind a renewable energy plan diminishing the very black gold that made him rich.

Pickens, the 80-year-old chairman of BP Capital Management and a man CNBC calls the “oracle of oil,” pitched his so-called Pickens Plan in Le Mars Thursday to a crowd of nearly 700 people.

The plan, which Pickens detailed using a blackboard and a healthy dose of front-porch-swing humor, seeks to break the United States’ $700 billion annual dependence on foreign oil through investment in domestic resources, primarily wind and natural gas.

He said the dependence on foreign oil is the major economic and security problem facing the United States.

“I don’t think there’s anyone there who cares one hoot about us — other than our money’s good,” Pickens said.

Pickens, who is spending $58 million on a national advertising campaign and has been pulling crowds like the one in Le Mars at town-hall style meetings around the nation, envisions private industry funding the installation of thousands of turbines in the wind belt, an area he describes as running from Texas to Canada.

He thinks wind energy can provide 20 percent of the nation’s electricity supply. He said Iowa would be a “big” player in the emerging wind-energy corridor.

As more wind power electric plants, Pickens sees the natural gas that had been used there going into transportation fuels to replace gasoline and diesel.

The Pickens Plan Web site already has had 4 million hits. Politically, Pickens’ plan is to build a grass-roots and business support base behind the energy plan so he can leverage a buy-in from Congress.

“The leadership is not in place unless you build a fire under their ass — and I’m not kidding,” Pickens told the Le Mars crowd.

Pickens said he had no interest in running for office himself, making a Ross Perot-style independent bid for the White House.

“If I was 60 years old I could beat both of these guys,” said Pickens — whose upcoming book is titled “The First Billion Is the Hardest.”

Pickens, who funded the Swift Boat ads that devastated U.S. Sen. John Kerry in the 2004 presidential election, insisted under repeated questioning from Iowa Independent following the Le Mars event that he has no intention of backing either U.S. Sen. John McCain or U.S. Sen. Barack Obama in the 2008 presidential race.

“I’ve said this is a totally non-partisan issue,” Pickens said. “it doesn’t have anything to do with politics. This is about America is what it is. Nothing like that would happen.”

Pickens said he hopes both candidates support his plan and he is ironing arrangements to meet with them soon.

When asked if he was 100 percent absolute on not making an endorsement Pickens said: “That’s not the deal. I want to put the pressure on both of these guys. I want them to come up with an energy plan and I think mine is the best. So, yes, I’d like for them to say ‘Boone has the best plan.’”

Pickens said he had no intention of forcing a competition between McCain and Obama for the support of his growing organization in order to get more of his plan in one of the party’s platforms.

“I don’t think so,” Pickens said. “That’s going to confuse you and everybody else.”

And, although he backed Republican presidential candidate Bob Dole and Rudy Giuliani, in addition to the campaign against Kerry, Pickens thinks conservatives who are pushing for more domestic oil drilling this year are off base.