Natural gas may be boon for T. Boone

"Work eight hours and sleep eight hours, and make sure that they are not the same eight hours."

— T. Boone Pickens

A number of people had a problem with my characterization of T. Boone Pickens as a carpetbagger we ought to keep an eye on after he barnstormed through Utah last week to drum up support for his "Pickens Plan."

As he told the 2,000 people who attended his rally at the Salt Palace, T. Boone wants America to shake off the shackles of dependence on foreign oil by developing and utilizing our own natural resources for energy, specifically wind and natural gas.

Since Pickens, who at $2.3 billion ranks 117th on the Forbes money list of richest Americans, owns the company that is North America's largest supplier of compressed natural gas (CNG) and is in the process of developing what will be the continent's largest wind farm, I editorialized that his stake in the energy revolution could be much more personal than patriotic — more capitalistic than philanthropic.

One reader, Jack Eames, wrote: "It seems to me that is the very core of what is wrong with our democratic system; everyone is afraid that someone else is going to make some money that we ourselves are not going to make."

Another reader, Clayson Lyman, e-mailed this: "Your innuendo (that someone needs to keep an eye on ol' T. Boone) is completely uncalled for and is a slap in the face to any entrepreneur who has the guts to step up and speak up and take a stand. It's men like ol' T. Boone who have made America great. I take great exception to your making it sound like he is a slick car salesman."

But I do think he is like a slick car salesman — and I mean it as both a compliment and a warning.

When a man writes his memoir and titles it "The First Billion is the Hardest," hold on to your wallets.

---

T. Boone's visit should serve as a wake-up call to all Utahns that the natural-gas boom is quickly shaping up as the next gold rush — and we're at the epicenter.

David Tabet of the Utah Geological Survey confirms that Utah has extensive reserves of natural gas.

"Based on various assessments of Utah's producing basins made from 1995 through 2003, the U.S. Geological Survey has estimated that the mean undiscovered (natural) gas resource in Utah is 17,433 Bcf of gas," he responded when I asked him how much gas lies under Utah's crust.

Bcf, by the way, stands for billion cubic feet.

So we have 17,433 billion cubic feet of natural gas, and that's probably a conservative estimate.