T. Boone Pickens Investing In ‘Blue Gold’
This morning, I read a piece by BusinessWeek associate editor Susan Berfield, who wrote that legendary oilman T. Boone Pickens, Jr., has been investing in water, or “blue gold,” as it’s known to some. Berfield wrote yesterday afternoon:
If water is the new oil, T. Boone Pickens is a modern-day John D. Rockefeller. Pickens owns more water than any other individual in the U.S. and is looking to control even more. He hopes to sell the water he already has, some 65 billion gallons a year, to Dallas, transporting it over 250 miles, 11 counties, and about 650 tracts of private property…
“There are people who will buy the water when they need it. And the people who have the water want to sell it. That’s the blood, guts, and feathers of the thing,” he says.
Why would the “Oracle of Oil” take a special interest in water when there’s other resources he could turn a profit from? Berfield explained:
In the coming decades, as growing numbers of people live in urban areas and climate change makes some regions much more prone to drought, water—or what many are calling “blue gold”—will become an increasingly scarce resource. By 2030 nearly half of the world’s population will inhabit areas with severe water stress, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation & Development. Pickens understands that. And while Texas is unusually lax in its laws about pumping groundwater, the rush to control water resources is gathering speed around the planet…
Into this environment comes Pickens… So far he has spent $100 million and eight years on his project and still has not found any city in Texas willing to buy his water. But like many others, Pickens believes there’s a fortune to be made in slaking the thirst of a rapidly growing population. If he pumps as much as he can, he could sell about $165 million worth of water to Dallas each year.
Source:
“There Will Be Water”
Susan Berfield
BusinessWeek, June 13, 2008
