Texas oilman T. Boone Pickens who in 2007 unveiled plans to build a 4,000-megawatt wind farm that would power 1.3 million homes by his estimates has now temporarily shelved the project due to tight credit markets and low natural gas prices.
Pickens who started an expensive ad campaign that eventually cost him $60 million thought that oil prices which soared from $61 a barrel in early 2007 to $145 in July 2008 would continue it's upward trend or at least remain above $100 which made his plan seem viable. But there were problems with his plan as he was relying on a source of energy that is unpredictable and he thought that Texas would be eager to gbuild transmission lines to use the energy his turbines generated.
Yet as someone who made his fortune in the oil business Pickens should have known better than to put his faith in ever rising energy prices. Did he forget when oil crashed to $10 a barrel in 1998? Also for some inexplicable reason Pickens didn't see the glut in natural gas as depressing prices throwing another wrench into his plan.
Maybe Pickens isn't such a genius after all. And he didn't have much luck stealing the Kansas basketball coach for Oklahoma State either.
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