T. Boone Pickens on Oil Prices, Trading, Wind Power

On Bloomberg (via Paul), comes this  very good video interview with T. Boone Pickens on Oil, Natural Gas, Trading — and Wind Power.

 

Boone at 2008 Milken Conference
(click for video)



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Good stuff.

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Source:
Boone Pickens Says He Is Ready to Bet on Wind Power
Bloomberg, April 29 2008
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=a8Roxzn8p.bI

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  1. brion commented on May 12

    God, wish i could remember where i saw it, but i recently read an online investment newsletter where the fellow was touting alternative energy as the next “Bubble” for an American economy that could only survive on bubbles.
    He made a pretty compelling case…..political support in DC, popular appeal (ethanol debacle notwithstanding), lots of juicy deals for wall street to sink its’ fangs into etc….

    Could it be true?

    (disclaimer-I’d like to see it happen-I’m green like that)

  2. christofay commented on May 12

    New energy generation sources, nuclear, wind, solar, will be an investment in fixed productive capacity, god, we haven’t had a surge in that in the U. S. since forever it feels like. As it is fixed and the ability to to use math to discount the future earnings potential is there, I think there will be little room to hype the investment.

    I thought a saner security plan after 9/11 would be to start a 5 year plan to build 5 new nuclear plants a year and use 10% of that new capacity to power investment in wind and solar. The second 5 year plan we would step up the pace. I know that this will sound naive, but I imagine we could be paying for 5 new nuke plants for the price of 2 months in Iraq.

    T Boone I liked except for his role in the swiftboating of Kerry in 2004; he was one of the mega-rich backers of that propaganda effort. In this case I can admire and study his career of highs and lows, presently up, but on the whole due to his finger in 2004 he is one of the ones that has worked to destroy the United States. Sorry, that’s granite. And not asshat.

  3. blin commented on May 12

    brion,

    You are referring to the Harper’s article linked below.

    In terms of the ‘big picture’, alternative energies should be the next area of major investment for the upcoming decade.

    http://harpers.org/archive/2008/02/0081908

  4. t commented on May 12

    A call on your oil? For payment for invading your country?
    LMFAO!
    Can I get a call on your wallet for payment for knocking your lights out? Oh hang on – that’s criminal…

  5. cinefoz commented on May 12

    I listened for a while, but the pace was too slow to keep my interest.

    Basically, what I heard him say was that price inelasticity of demand for oil is infinitely inelastic, or very close. Thus sellers can charge anything they want and nobody will undercut the price. Conscious parallelism is working to keep prices rising at avaricious rates.

    There is no compelling interest that has enough influence to provide a reason for speculative demand to slow down. In addition, there are pseudo-intellectuals who are useful idiots for the suppliers. These halfwits couldn’t think their way out of a paper bag. “Peak Oil Theory” is the cry of the helpless volunteer victim.

    Extrapolating, the only conclusion is that the majority of consumers are starting a downward slope towards subsistence levels of living, since oil and natural gas suppliers and their speculator financing arm have no reason to stop bidding up prices.

    Those who claim oil prices will fall later this year must offer proof of the economic relationships that will make this happen.

  6. ottnott commented on May 12

    cinefoz wrote:
    Basically, what I heard him say was that price inelasticity of demand for oil is infinitely inelastic, or very close. Thus sellers can charge anything they want and nobody will undercut the price. Conscious parallelism is working to keep prices rising at avaricious rates

    Oil has overshot, by a large amount, the level at which alternatives are economically viable.

    Those alternatives are not on the shelf, however, and, more importantly, there is not single near-future alternative that can scale up to fully replace oil. There will have to be multiple alternatives in use, and that complicates the process of gaining sufficient investment and market acceptance.

    In addition, global warming concerns are a problem for one potential large-scale alternative — liquid fuels from coal.

  7. Christian Hvid commented on May 12

    This video causes Safari to become unbearingly slow. And the video starts (on the front page) without me clicking it – is this by intention?

  8. brion commented on May 12

    yup. that’s the piece Blin. Thanks.

  9. Darkness commented on May 12

    Oil has overshot, by a large amount, the level at which alternatives are economically viable.

    Cite please? 22,000 man hours in a barrel of oil for a cheap, cheap $126. Give me an alternative that’s even half that bargain price.

    I made it about halfway through the video, mostly because I was in the mood for folksy this morning. But if he’s right, look at this chart of supply vs demand for oil. The gap between the red line and the light blue line increasing between 2007 and 2008 caused a doubling in the price of oil. A doubling. And there is no sign of that gap getting any smaller. In order for the red demand line to become anything like the shape of the supply line (giving it not only flat, but downward slope), we’d need a worldwide recession that would make the great depression look like a rainy day picnic.

  10. fatbear commented on May 12

    Barry – a techie note – I read your rss feed in NetNewsWire, and come over to the site through its browser (and sometimes in Safari) – running 10.4.11 on one machine, 10.5.x on the other

    Last night the WMP test came up fine on the 10.5.x machine, but today on the 10.4.11 machine there was no window in the post (neither rss feed nor NNW browser), but, a big but, without doing me doing anything, from the rss feed Quicktime opened up a window on its own and began to play the video

    Just thought you would want to know

    Keep up the great work

  11. Brett Stohlton commented on May 12

    Barry,

    Perhaps this is a new innovation and I missed the announcement. Seems that the video clips auto-start. At least that is the case with this particular story (T Boone Pickens on Oil Prices). I generally like to pick what videos to watch so I can modulate the volume on the TV, iTunes, and any other sound producing application. And there are plenty of times when I just like reading without any background sounds. However, with the video auto-starting, the accompanying audio can be disruptive.

    Love the site.

    Brett

  12. fatbear commented on May 12

    in previous comment
    without doing me doing anything
    should be

    without me doing anything

    Sorry,
    fatbear

  13. ottnott commented on May 12

    Cite please? 22,000 man hours in a barrel of oil for a cheap, cheap $126. Give me an alternative that’s even half that bargain price.

    Not sure if you are saying that I need to cite an alternative at $63/bbl or $256/bbl, but the liquid fuel from coal I mentioned qualifies on both counts.

    If you want to go up to $256/bbl, then you can even enter the universe of some otherwise unwieldy concepts such as metal-air batteries or manufactured liquid fuels that would be electricity intensive (and would therefore require nuclear and/or renewable electricity generation).

    And, of course, there are alternatives both below and above $126 where there are varying degrees of compromise on the capabilities of liquid petroleum-based fuels. Currently, a lot of such fuel is burned in applications that don’t require all of the advantages of the petroleum fuels – especially the high energy density (both by volume and weight) and the rapid refueling time (a few minutes every 350-500 miles).

  14. Robert commented on May 13

    Lots of good info in here and I agree with Boone we need to attack this from lots of angles. He says early in the video, however, that the demand for oil outstrips the supply by 2 million barrels a day. Later he says that another 1.4 million a day from ANWAR would have no impact on price. HUH???? Since when does supply have no effect on price? If this would have been done in the 90’s this problem wouldn’t be so bad now. Domestic exploration should be pursued as well as the alternatives.

  15. patrick commented on May 13

    cinefoz,

    When are your fact-free attacks on peak oil theory going to start making sense? You’ve been harping on this for some time now in various threads, but you offer no citations, no data, and only ridiculous literary characterizations to make your point. You’re essentially saying the fundamentals of oil make unending, risk-free speculation possible. This exact result is predicted by peak oil, as supply constraints become shortfalls and rapidly rising costs – hence the bullish speculation.

    Stop peddling your B-movie grade presentation of speculators as villainous propagandists and peak oil proponents as naive tools, because its pedantic crap. Put up something to back up the claims you’re making, or stop making them. Your credibility is close to zero here. I suggest that you actually read some of the preposterous statements you make, reconsider what you’re saying, and either offer substantiation or a recantation.

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