Texas oil billionaire T. Boone Pickens has put a halt to his plans for a monumental wind farm in Texas, stating that he will construct several smaller wind farms instead.

In May, Pickens’ company, Mesa Power, announced its order of 667 turbines from General Electric Co. Due to the struggling economy, Pickens said his investment company, BP Capital Management had lost too much money. Shortly after, Mesa announced the cancellation of 120 land leases in the eastern panhandle of Texas.

Mesa’s initial plan was to construct enough turbines in stages to build a wind farm rated at 4,000 megawatts covering 400,000 acres in five different Texas counties. As a result of financing problems and transmission limitation, this plan has been delayed.

“I didn’t cancel it. Financing is tough right now and so it’s going to be delayed a year or two.” Pickens said.

Pickens had planned to accumulate enough wind turbines to equal 4,000 megawatts at one location near Pampa, Texas. This would power 1.2 million homes by 2014, costing over $8 billion.

“I had hoped that Pampa would be the starting point, but transmission issues and the problem with capital markets make that unfeasable at this point” Pickens said. “I am fully committed to wind energy and to developing wind projects in the U.S. and perhaps Canada.”

For the time being, Mesa has about $2 billion worth of wind turbines on order from General Electric. This order is scheduled to arrive in 2011.

“I don’t have that big a garage to put them in, so I’ve got to start getting ready to use them,” Pickens said.

Mesa’s new plan, released by Pickens, is to build several smaller wind farms. Pickens said that he is scouting locations in Texas, Oklahoma, Wisconsin and Kansas. Each small wind farm would consist of about 150 turbines apiece.

In regard to Kansas being considered for location of Mesa Wind Farms, Rep. Sydney Carlin, D-Manhattan, said, “I think we need to take advantage of this and encourage the production of new wind farms in Kansas.”

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