T. Boone Pickens, oil man, hedge-fund manager and natural gas entrepreneur, made headlines earlier this year when he announced an initial investment of $2-billion in a new Texas wind farm. Wrapped in the brilliance of Old Glory, he stepped up to the soap box and declared how he would wean America off evil foreign oil. Overnight, the 80-year-old Texas legend became the most unlikely poster boy for the green energy movement.

Given Pickens’ Texas Holdem swagger, wind energy – and by association all alternative energy – took on a measure of safety that deluded many investors into thinking they could simultaneously buy their way into the Wall Street Hall of Fame and the Pearly Gates of St. Peter.

Now, it turns out, Pickens’ massive project is sucking cash instead of blowing in the wind. And in one of the most under-reported stories of the year, Pickens finally admitted that the wind farm has been put on hold indefinitely.

Just as investors followed Pickens to the alter of green, they should now also pull green from their portfolio.

The same market dynamics that forced Pickens away from wind continue to crush the green industry as a whole: difficult financing and low oil prices. Some rosy optimists still cling to the belief that President-elect Obama will wave his magic green wand and make all those problems go away. But with record unemployment, the struggle to save Detroit and expensive wars in the Middle East, we contend that Mr. Obama’s green initiatives will prove to be nothing more than campaign rhetoric for at least the first 12 months of his administration.

Certainly big money men such as Pickens, electric-car magnate Elon Musk and Silicon Valley’s new breed of green venture capitalists have influence in Washington. But we’re still not convinced that Obama, for all his good intentions, can make a convincing argument to throw billions behind green in these tough, recessionary times.

As it now stands, Pickens’ Mesa Power has already placed orders for the first phase of the Pampa Wind Project, 667 wind turbines from General Electric capable of generating 1,000 megawatts of electricity, enough to power more than 300,000 average U.S. households.

The first phase of the project, estimated at $2 billion, was originally scheduled to come online in early 2011.

He still expects to take delivery of the project’s 2,700 turbines in 2010, but their installation might be delayed until wind is more competitive economically, he was quoted as saying. Still, 2010 isn’t that far away, and the likelihood of oil rebounding to this summer’s high of near $150 by then is quite slim.

Futures of light sweet crude were trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange at about $57 a barrel, a 21-month low. Unless, Obama can create thousands of new jobs in 2009 so consumers can drive to the mall, oil prices will continue to remain depressed.

While green investments will certainly make a rebound in our lifetime, it won’t take place in the next 12 months.

The farms are well tended, and the agricultural productivity is awe inspiring. There are wind farms up, and going up, on many a hillside. Power lines crisscross the landscape. There are dams and impoundments on many of the rivers. And the trains of the Canadian Pacific Railway are rolling in both directions, hauling grain, ag products, coal, phosphate and so much else.

North Dakota Oil Rush

In Saskatchewan and North Dakota, the big story is the Bakken Shale formation. I’ve seen over a dozen working rigs and dozens of brand-new oil wells. The pump jacks are still in the break-in period. Heck, the paint on some of them is still drying.

[Stories like this are also popping up.]

It’s a mixture of old and new. There are old farm buildings, and all of the traditional agricultural effort of the region. Right next to the buildings, you might see a new oil well. And in the distance, there might be a wind farm going up.

The highways are crowded with working trucks. Trucks are hauling pipe and equipment to well sites. The motels are crowded with oil field workers. In some small towns, real estate prices and rents are actually rising. People around here have seen nothing like it in many years.

Or if the trucks are not hauling drilling equipment, they are hauling agricultural products. Or there is farm equipment driving down the roads from one area to another. It’s all just plain busy.

At the customs station at Noonan, N.D., the U.S. agent told me that the traffic in energy-related commerce is just burning up the roads in both directions. There are simply not enough skilled workers. Some companies are poaching staff from others.

At the same time, I can almost feel the slowdown that is afflicting the North American energy sector. Costs for everything have risen too far, too fast. Now the whole sector is starting to feel the pinch.

Couple the rising costs with a serious difficulty in obtaining financing. The banks have cut back on lending, even to the best of energy projects. It’s not for lack of investment merit of the energy projects. It’s because the banks are struggling with their own solvency.

So the mess in the financial sector has infected the rest of the economy. Just when the U.S. and Canada need to be investing in energy projects, the financial system is letting us down.

It reminds me of what I heard from an old rancher a long time ago: “Out here in the prairies, we farmers work hard and raise the cows. Back East on Wall Street, they milk us farmers.”

I’ll be out in the field for the next few days, looking at other points of energy and geological interest. All of this travel helps my perspective in coming up with better advice for you, dear reader.

Until we meet again…

Byron W. King

Source: North Dakota Oil Is “Burning Up The Roads”