Oil as T. Boone sees it

In an editorial interview today in the Chicago Tribune with T. Boone Pickens he points out again how small the US oil companies are in relationship to the international oil market.

To blame Exxon Mobil for the price of gasoline being $4 a gallon is silly. The total amount of oil available every day in the world is 85 million barrels. That's it—that's blood, guts and feathers. That's the whole thing. And Exxon has 2.5 percent of that. That's all they have. Exxon is a peanut as far as owning oil in the global sense of things. Seventy percent of all the oil owned in the world today is owned by state-owned oil companies. The [U.S.] oil companies do not own the oil.

Of course his motives may be less than altruistic in nature since as pointed out in an article (also in the Tribune)

(he) could benefit from a sizable public investment in a nationwide transmission network he proposes for wind power. His Mesa Power has invested $2 billion in a wind farm in the Texas panhandle northeast of Amarillo.

Who says oil companies are not looking at alternate sources of energy? The son of a landman Pickens has been in the oil business since he formed Mesa Petroleum in 1956. It was once known as the largest independent oil company in the world so that should more than qualify him as an oil man. So if he is involved with wind power it just might have something to do with money!

I'm Just Saying - T. Boone sees the future 'Blowing in the Wind'