Power Player

T. Boone Pickens looks tired. Standing in a packed lecture hall at Rice University in Houston, he's hawking his Pickens Plan for energy independence, saying we need to use more wind power and natural gas. The 80-year-old, with flesh-colored hearing aids set deep inside his ears, looks confused and momentarily loses track of what he's saying.

He pauses, takes off his gold Rolex, slumps down on a stool and announces in his trademark drawl, "I'm runnin' out of money." Which, for Pickens, means he still has untold millions, possibly billions, in the bank.

He's been zigzagging the United States for eight months, spending more than $60 million of his oil fortune on TV ads and lectures promoting greener American energy, in which he is heavily invested. His companies have plans to build the world's largest wind farm in west Texas and have a significant stake in natural gas.

When he launched the Pickens Plan on July 8, 2008, gas prices had hit $4 a gallon and Americans wanted a wallet-friendly energy policy that included long-term planning and alternative fuels. Leftist green-power organizations finally had a public-relations darling in Pickens, a Republican who had funded the Swift Boat attack ads against John Kerry in 2004, and with the money and clout to be taken seriously on Capitol Hill and in the business world.

Global warming isn't his main concern. For Pickens, it's about importing less oil from "our enemies," becoming energy-independent and thereby shoring up national security. The Pickens Plan calls for building wind farms that will generate up to 22 percent of the nation's energy, creating a more efficient and expansive electrical grid, and using domestic natural gas instead of imported oil as a transportation fuel. In 10 years, Pickens says, the combination can reduce oil imports by a third.

At the moment, though, his $10 billion wind farm in the Texas Panhandle is on hold until at least 2011 because Pickens can't get financing together in the tightened credit market. Plus, his vision for natural gas still has at least as many opponents as allies.

Financially, 2008 was not kind to Pickens. People on Wall Street criticized his Dallas-based energy hedge fund, BP Capital Management, for maintaining a bullish view on the price of oil throughout the year. Bloomberg reported in February that the fund lost around 97 percent of its value during the last three months of 2008 and sold off its positions in all but nine of its 26 energy companies. The fund was worth just $40 million, down from nearly $1.3 billion at the end of September. Even by Pickens' standards, that's a lot of green.

Critics say the Pickens Plan is nothing more than a public-relations campaign driven by Pickens' ego. They warn that the oilman should not be mistaken for a tree-hugger. They say if he can get his wind farms and natural-gas interests up and running, his fortune would explode like a black-gold gusher. Pickens dismisses this by saying he has enough money and he just wants to leave a positive, lasting energy legacy for America.

A longtime free-market man, Pickens is counting on the federal government, tax incentives and subsidies to help make his dream come true.

He has crept into the nation's conscience, claiming that more than 1.5 million people have drafted themselves into Pickens' New Energy Army, an online militia of supporters who gather on Pickens' social-networking Web site, modeled after MySpace and Facebook. Pickens uses these masses to lobby politicians; he has received vital government help for his wind farms and appears to be gaining ground with his idea of using natural gas to fuel trucks and fleet vehicles. The fate of Pickens' massive lobbying effort rests with the likes of Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, whom Pickens has been referring to as his new, dear friends.

During his lectures, Pickens invariably rails against former U.S. presidents for not having an energy plan. Then he smoothly transitions to a story, told in the folksy style that Pickens easily employs, recounting the advice his father gave him in the late 1940s when Pickens was a sophomore struggling at Oklahoma A&M, now Oklahoma State University:

"He said, 'Son, a fool with a plan can beat a genius with no plan.'"

Pickens has a plan.

"I think we've got the fish hooked," Pickens says. "Now we've got to get it in the boat."

For more than 30 years, Pickens has found sanctuary and solace at Mesa Vista, his sprawling 68,000-acre ranch in the Texas Panhandle. He has transformed the rolling hills, canyons and creek beds along the Canadian River into what has been called arguably the best quail-hunting spot on the planet. He'll be damned if he'll let the soaring, industrial turbines of the world's largest wind farm cast their shadows on his country oasis.

That Pickens will not put windmills on his own land sits fine with Ronnie Gill, a rancher from nearby Miami. That just means more turbines for Gill.

"Everybody wants one and hopes they'll get one," Gill says.

Last year, Gill leased all 7,000 of his acres to Pickens for the proposed wind farm, which will span five counties. At $4 an acre, Gill is already making $28,000 a year for nothing more than signing a piece of paper. The hardened rancher smiles at the thought of what he'll bank when the turbines start cranking.