On Bloomberg they asked this trader GRZ from Nymex about Boone Pickens call. GRZ said he didn't listen to him because his public calls are wrong.
Excellent Commentary All...... ........................................................................................... Gnome wrote..... Just how long do you think Pickens would last as a kiss-ass lackey? ................................................................................... I have followed Pickens for many years.....especially during the Mesa days before and after the oil bust.... He is a real hard nose scrapper.....and he is the type that is extremely stubborn whether he is right or he is wrong.... It was real tough when oil got real cheap in the early 80's....and he fought his way out of it....even by chasing the majors' stocks....shaking things up so to speak....if oil prices were not high enough, he would create opportunity some other way....which he did....forming buy outs for major oil names much larger than himself.... ...................................................................................... The country of Denmark currently gets 19% of its energy from wind.....and there are many countries that are climbing aboard....so the concept is turning into reality for many..... Pickens loves wind and water right now.....and he will be fiesty and tiggery as ever ....every day of his life.....That is Boone..... Boone is not a Country Club Bushy type of guy.... But, what Boone has is special. He has a real can do attitude and has proven himself over and over again as a surviver. The US government would be lucky if he decides to make some things happen with regards to energy needs....but make no mistake....he will get paid for it....and why not ? While the lawyers and politicians and naysayers will be blabbing away their bullshit do nothing don't get anywhere nohow attitudes....Boone will have employed labor setting up windmills on the Texas sun baked windy plains, making electricity....while the do nothing blabberers and naysayers will be buying electricity from his windmills, sitting in their airconditioned rooms, and filling up with his natural gas for their cars......who are educated far beyond their intelligence.... Watch what happens....... Boone is a true American......Texas style.....true and true...... Boone knows how to make things happen.....
I think the following is a better idea than TBP: Build 100s of nukes. They generate electric without producing CO2. During the day, send the electric to the grid when demand is at its highest. During the night, use the electric to produce H2 as vehicle fuel . (this is when there is excess electric available to use to break water into H2 and O2). Basically, this is parallel to Boone's ideas, except we don't import expensive natural gas and rely on the unreliable wind. It solves the problems of imported fossil fuels, solves the unreliablity of wind, reduces greenhouse gas emissions, and drastically reduces the reliance on foreign governments. Either using nat. gas or H2 for autos takes a big expense to retrofit the distribution networks. DS
Want to pull up some research behind that? Did you know that Denmark's wind projects forced its imports & costs of electricity to record levels? 19% huh? I would love to see the source. Their goal was 20-25% and on paper, they reached it. But in reality, the real production was not even in the same ballpark as the projected. Wind power is very limited in its application as a viable energy source.
Excellent Commentary, DS & Hydroblunt ........................................................................... The question is time....and doing all of the above.... The Boone strategy is aware of this....this is just a stepping stone to a fuller blown nuclear...battery...other technologies to happen....etc.... This just implements what you have now....and doing it in the shortest time frame possible....while not being perfect....just being doable....and being helpful..... What do you have now....and what can be done in 120 months to help the situation.... A 15 to 20 to 30 year solution is not going to work in 120 months....but need to proceed just as well.....and are part of the total gameplan...... Denmark.... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power_in_Denmark
Pickens' Audacious Wind-for-Gas Plan Flawed By Kenneth Stier Features Writer | 08 Jul 2008 | 03:09 PM ET Boone Pickensâ plan to massively expand wind production to free up more natural gas for vehicles is an audacious suggestion but it faces a key challenge rooted in natural gasâ virtue as a clean and versatile fuel for utilities to generate electricity. Some analysts suggested that the plan, which was formally announced Tuesday by the oilman-turned-wind entrepreneur, was flawed by dubious assumptions about natural gas remaining cheap, and that while well meaning, the plan was also ultimately self-serving. âI donât think this is a viable plan,â said Clay Perry, of the Electric Power Research Institute, whose members generate 90 percent of the countryâs electricity. Underestimating Natural Gas One key virtue of natural gas power plants is the critical ability to supply âpeaking capacityâ âelectricity needed to quickly meet surges in demand, such as air-conditioning use in the summer time, he explained. Wind -- along with coal and nuclear power -- has no such capability. It is also an intermittent energy source, although this shortcoming could be mitigated by future advances in battery storage technology. âThatâs going to be an issue if you are going to try to supplant natural gas with wind, which is a variable fuel, and which is not yet been the kind of thing you can count on as a base load generation option,â added James Owen, a spokesman for the Edison Electric Institute, another leading utility organization. In fact, rather than reducing its use of natural gas, as Pickens suggests, utilities are set to use even more in the future, in good part because it is significantly cleaner than other fuels (especially coal), for both conventional pollutants and greenhouse gases. Thatâs a key reason natural gas use has spiked significantly in recent years, even though it is more expensive than coal. In 1993 it contributed 13 percent of the countryâs electricity; today it accounts for about 20 percent. âIn the next five to ten years, more and more gas is going to be used for electricity,â says Owen. Pickens' plan also raises more basic questions, say critics. They include his assumption that natural gas would remain cheap and the contention that it could be indefinitely be sourced, primarily from domestic sources and hence save the US hundreds of billions of dollars in imports. âThis plan strikes me as a huge leap of faith that rests on some dubious assumptions,â especially on price, says John DeCicco, a senior fellow with Environmental Defense, a leading nongovernmental group that works with corporations on environmental initiatives. âWhy has oil gotten so expensive â the answer is because it has been trying to service a huge and growing demand for transportation fuel," adds DeCicco. âOnce your start trying to replace oil with something, that something is not going to be so cheap any more,â he said DeCicco noted that the US is importing a growing amount of natural gas, as evidenced by the proposals for â and controversies about â permitting new liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminals here. The Case For Wind Pickens plan, however, does have its clear supporters, Under his plan natural gas could become a major source of vehicular fuel (currently at about half the cost of gasoline) if there is an enormous expansion of wind power, freeing up more natural gas. Pickens agrees with a recent Dept. of Energy study concluding that wind power could supply at least 20 percent of the nation's electricity needs by 2030, far more than the current one percent. Wind farms would be built in a wide corridor in the middle of the country, from Texas to the Dakotas, where the âwind resourcesâ could make the US the âSaudi Arabia of wind power,â Pickens says. âI think Pickens plan is brilliant, it is something we can do and we should do,â argues Rich Kolodziej, president of NGVAmerica, a national organization that promotes the use of hydrogen and natural gas vehicles. There are currently only 120,000 vehicles capable of running on compressed natural gas in the US but this could be rapidly increased if manufacturers had the right incentives to resume production of such vehicles which stopped in the 1990s after federal government policy changed, he said. Kolodziej said the country would have to start by replacing commercial fleets first, especially long-haul trucks, in part because of the very limited distribution network for natural gas - just 1,200 out of the total universe of 190,000 gas stations. He said opposition from oil companies is inevitable. While acknowledging that government policy is critical in shaping a new energy future, DeCicco said Pickensâ plan was fundamentally flawed because it favored a particular technological solution, an approach with a long history of failure going back to the governmentâs promotion of synthetic fuels. âYou canât pick today whatâs going to work in the marketplace tomorrow, the best you can do for policy is to set a general goal in terms of carbon reductions â put a price on carbon - and then let the market sort out what it [the technological solution] is going to be, not Pickens, not President Bush, not Senator so- and so,â he said. âSo, we ultimately believe in the invisible hand, ironically, even though we are environmentalists, rather than throwing a lot of money at some investor or somebodyâs favorite solution â thatâs the larger message here.â http://www.cnbc.com/id/25588631
Excellent Commentary...........Walter4 Oddly enough the people mentioned in the article did not offer any viable solutions ...... As I mentioned before these are just the types that will blabbing away while Pickens will be having labor working in the Northern dusty plains of Texas putting up windmills, and overseeing nat gas projects while these people offer nothing of value, but will be driving cars propelled by nat gas, and sitting in airconditioned rooms made possible by wind..... This is always the way it is......things will never change..... I remember how stupid Craig McCaw used to be for positioning wireless cellular telephones.... The same stuff.....and fully expected....
How do you know that is outside of the limits of the McCain Family budget, his wife is very wealthy. Also, for what its worth I pay almost all my bills with Amex and then pay them at the end of the month...just just because you are putting stuff on a card does not mean you are carrying a balance month to month.