Related Story:
Water Work: Pickens Proposes Roberts county water district

Power Play

A mighty wind may be boon to Pickens

By David Bowser
Correspondent

The hearing on Boone Pickens' freshwater supply district in Miami, Texas, on Tuesday, Sept. 4, is about more than water.

Sandra Alewine, left, explains her concerns over wind energy to Boone Pickens, who has organized Mesa Energy to build wind farms and transmission lines to provide North Texas with electricity generated in the Panhandle. (Photo by David Bowser)

It's about power and control and could be electrifying.

Such a water district would have the condemnation power of eminent domain, almost a necessity in gaining right of way for water pipelines and for electrical generation transmission lines.

While Pickens is still gathering water rights in Roberts, Gray, Ochiltree, Lipscomb, Hemphill and Wheeler counties in the northeastern Texas Panhandle, the right of way may prove to be even more important for his new venture, Mesa Energy, and the transmission lines to carry electricity from the Panhandle to North Texas.

Pickens created Mesa Energy to build a 4,000-megawatt wind farm in northern Gray County and southern Roberts County. In addition to the wind farm, Mesa plans a 750-megawatt coal-fired plant to supply energy when the wind isn't blowing and a 600-megawatt natural gas-fired plant to handle peak loads.

In addition to the generation facilities, Mesa plans a 320-mile transmission line to the Dallas area to tap the fast-growing urban markets of North Texas.

"There's not going to be many people that are going to be able to take the power out of the Panhandle and move it downstate," Pickens said. “It's going to be a huge project."

The total project, he said, would produce about 5,000 megawatts at a cost of about $10.5 billion.

If regulatory approval comes by 2009, Mesa officials hope to start construction in 2010.

Adam Talianchich is with Austin-based JD Consulting, an environmental consulting firm that's been hired by Mesa Energy to design and implement the project. Although sites will have to be worked out and the revenue will fluctuate with energy prices, Talianchich estimates that, depending upon the size and number of turbines, landowner royalties could be from $50,000 to $80,000 a year.

The project would create a lot of jobs in the area, he said. Once the project was set up and running, Pickens estimated there would be about 1,000 additional permanent jobs in the Pampa area, and that wouldn't count the coal-fired or natural gas-fired power plants or the construction project.

Talianchich said the world's two largest wind farms at the moment are in Texas, near Abilene. One produces 735 megawatts. The other will produce 580 megawatts when an expansion phase is finished later this year.

Mesa's project is roughly 5.5 times larger than the largest wind farm.

In his second meeting with landowners this summer, Pickens warned that just signing a lease with a company willing to build a wind farm isn't worth much.

"They're going to have to get into transmission," Pickens said.

The project is huge and the people involved are going to have to deal with not only the wind farms but also getting the electricity to market.

Pickens, who said he doesn't plan on having any wind turbines on his farm,said he has been told by his neighbors that the wind turbines may be ugly to Pickens but they look like money to his neighbors.

Mesa Energy officials said they plan to be back in Pampa in September to sign landowners up for their new wind-energy project.

"We're getting down here to the point where we have to fish or cut bait," Pickens told a packed crowd in the Heritage Room of M.K. Brown Civic Center Thursday, Aug. 23. “If you want to sell wind and sign up with us, you've got to know now the best deal you are going to get on wind is going to be with us. I promise you that is the case."

Lila Marsh, a Dallas lawyer representing Mesa Energy,said the leases would, for the most part, be standardized, although there may be some site-specific issues that have to be dealt with.

Pickens said they don't intend to play one landowner off against another. No one would be asked to keep the information in his lease confidential from his or her neighbors.

"You're going to have turbines in the Panhandle," Pickens says. “I don't think there's any question about that, but we need to know whether you want to do business with us or not. If we don't have enough people who want to do business with us, we won't do the job."

Editor's Note: See related story about Pickens' move to establish a water supply district.

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Posted: August 30, 2007