New York, July 8, 2009 — Oil and gas billionaire T. Boone Pickens said he is scuttling plans for a $12 billion Texas wind farm, adding that he hopes to help other wind projects.

His "Pickens Plan," announced in 2008, included a 4,000 MW wind farm in the Texas Panhandle that was expected to be complete in 2014. Pickens cited a lack of transmission capacity as the reason for the project's cancelation. Pickens had already bought nearly 700 GE wind turbines for the project at a cost of about $2 billion. He said he may still use some of them in the Panhandle, but is also considering installing them in the Midwest or possibly Canada.

Pickens also called for an update of the nation's bulk power transmission and distribution grid to allow for the integration of renewable energy resources. A keystone of the Pickens Plan was for 20 percent of the nation's energy to come from wind power.