Paran-oil-a.
Bush supporter and peak oil believer, T. Boone Pickens plans to construct the world’s largest windfarm in the Texas Panhandle, officials from his Mesa Group company said at a meeting Tuesday.
The project, which could cost up to $6 billion, would put as many as 2,000 turbines on nearly 200,000 acres in four counties. A spokesman for the legendary Dallas oilman said the project would be able to generate between 2,000 and 4,000 megawatts.
Construction could begin in about three years and would take several more to finish, officials estimated. Mesa is offering area landowners an upfront payment of $4,500 per turbine and a percentage of the value after the electricity is produced, beginning at 4 percent and rising to 5 percent after eight years (Jim Fuquay, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, June 13).
But not all planned wind farms in Texas have come through. Earlier this week, Australian investment bank Babcock & Brown Ltd. announced it would give up its 30-year lease on nearly 40,000 acres in the Gulf of Mexico off Padre Island because the wind farm project it planned there was not economically feasible (AP/Corpus Christi Caller-Times, June 14).
