Pickens Halts Building On The World's Largest Wind Farm

The fall in oil prices may have helped consumers lower their gas bills, but it has stifled some of the exciting alternative energy projects launched over the past couple of years. This morning the NY Times reported that oilman T. Boone Pickens is suspending plans to build the world’s largest wind farm.

The report said in the near term, Pickens instead plans to build three or four smaller wind farms, at a cost of approximately $2 billion. He told the Times he was unsure whether he would ever revive the giant wind project in the Texas Panhandle that has been on the drawing board for years.

Pickens said he stopped the project because of the drop in the price of natural gas, which competes with wind as a power source and the financial turmoil has hurt the renewable energy sector.

Pickens’ situation is a bit surprising because he has spent most of the last 12 months speaking to any media outlet who'd listen, advocating an energy plan that included 20% of the nation's energy to be produced by wind. Currently, wind accounts for just 1% of U.S. electricity. The Pickens Plan said the wind energy would allow the natural gas that is now used to generate power to be used in cars, reducing the nation’s dependence on foreign oil.

For Pickens' large Texas wind farm project that he is now halting had already ordered 687 large wind turbines from General Electric (NYSE: GE), to be delivered starting in 2011. But transmission lines being built by the state were unlikely to reach his location he has leased until 2013, so he needed to put the turbines elsewhere. Mr. Pickens had once planned to build his own transmission lines, but difficulty in finding financing amid the credit crisis forced him to shelve that plan.

Pickens concluded his interview with the Times by saying, "We’re going to be active in the business. It’s not that we’ve gotten out of the business or anything like that.”

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