The Pickens Plan

During the last presidential election in America I was watching the daily TV commentaries to see what the outcome would be because, although I don't live in America, I feel that what happens in America has a deep effect on what happens around the rest of the world.

To coin and old phrase " when America sneezes the rest of the world catches a cold"

Just look back at the last 'economic correction' that we are still fighting our way to overcome!

Anyhow that's another story !

What I did catch was a snatch of an interview with a man whose name that I did not hear but what I did hear of the interview made a lot of sense to me , not just to benefit America but just about anywhere around the world especially here in my native Australia.

I have since found out that the man's name is T. Boone Pickens and what he was talking about was what has become 'The Pickens Plan'

Will the Pickens Plan work . Ok, I will say that I am no financial expert and I don't know if it will work or not but I know common sense when I hear it and this plan has a lot of good old common sense!

In the following short article I would like to see if we can regard Mr. T. Boone Pickens as a man just trying to add more dollars to his already huge fortune, or is he what some of his ardent fans call a " Visionary "

I am not here to judge whether T Boone Pickens is a good guy or not just to decide whether his Pickens Plan is worth careful consideration. So let's just study some of his life!

He has done way too much in his life to cover it all here so lets just cover what's of interest to the subject matter which is 'The Pickens Plan'

T. Boone Pickens

Born in 1928 T.Boone Pickens seems to be a self made billionaire, worth an estimated net worth of around $3 billion and is well within the top 500 wealthiest men in America.
He is reported to have started his working life at age 12 delivering newspapers and often refers to this time of his life as good grounding for later day business dealings.
His wealth has come from his dealings mainly in the Oil industry following a period as a "Wildcatter" and started his own company 'Mesa Petroleum'
In 2009 T. Boone Pickens was awarded the prestigious "Bower Award" from the Franklin Institute. The award was to acknowledge T Boone Pickens for business leadership.
Pickens is focusing now on alternative energy sources like Solar and Wind and the Washington Post has said that perhaps Pickens has taken on the strangest role in that:"he has fashioned himself, the billionaire speculator, an energy wise man, an oil-and-gas magnate as champion of wind power, and a lifetime Republican who has become a fellow traveler among environmentally minded Democrats ".

I will leave that up to history to decide the accuracy of the above statements?

The New York Times has reported that T. Boone Pickens: "has decided that drilling for more oil is not the whole answer to the nation's energy problems".
And now he is putting his money where his mouth is and building wind farms in Texas!

Well I have learned enough about T. Boone Pickens to know that he is, very rich, has a can-do disposition, and when he says something it should be carefully considered.

So lets consider what his Pickens Plan is recommending:

The Pickens Plan in brief,

•  Generate 22 % of Americas electricity from Wind power
•  Build a electrical transmission grid
•  Provide incentives for building owners to upgrade their insulation and other energy saving options
•  Replace Americas dependence of imported oil by using Americas natural gas sources.

The full Pickens Plan can be read on the Website:

I do not know how far or how successfull T. Boone Pickens has got with his plan.

I do know that countries like China, India and Brazil etc. are rapidly being industrialised and gobbling up available oil rights.

With this in mind I think it should be seriously considered by all countries, my country Australia included, to come up with some variation of the Pickens Plan.

I welcome participation from all sides to have an open discussion on The Perkins Plan but I do reserve the right to remove comments that constitute abuse of anyone and are not relevant to the topic of the Perkins Plan.