Gus Lubin | Jul. 22, 2010, 3:09 PM

T. Boone Pickens

Image: T. Boone

T. Boone Pickens' newest version of the Pickens Plan to reduce oil imports depends almost entirely on natural gas. Wind power, which played a key role in the original Pickens Plan, isn't even mentioned.

Which is clearly a bearish sign for US wind.

Forrest Wilder at Texas Observer has more on the Pickens turnaround:

Recall that the original Pickens Plan had two main, interlocking components: First, thousands of new wind turbines would be installed in the Great Plains along with the infrastructure needed to move the electricity to cities. Second, the wind turbines would free up natural gas – currently burned to make electricity – for use in vehicles instead of instead of foreign oil.

It could have to do with a recent Pickens investment:

... Pickens was (and is) muscling his new BFFs in the Democratic-controlled Congress to subsidize Clean Energy Fuels Corp., a Pickens business that builds natural gas fueling stations.

Pickens may be lots of things but he's always been a shrewd businessman and a ruthless opportunist. It's interesting to note that on the same day he dropped wind from the Pickens Plan and beefed up his support for natural gas, word came down from on high that a Pickens-backed provision had made its way into the Senate energy bill.