BEIJING, June 21 (Xinhuanet) -- Billionaire oil tycoon T. Boone Pickens is wants to make big bucks in wind energy boom by building the world's largest wind farm in West Texas.

    Pickens plans to install large wind turbines in parts of four Panhandle counties in a project that would produce up to 4,000 megawatts of electricity.

    If Pickens' company, Mesa Power LP, does build the wind farm it would be the largest in the world, American Wind Energy Association spokeswoman Susan Williams Sloan said. It would generate more than five times the 735 megawatts produced at the present largest wind farm near Abilene.

    One megawatt is enough to power 250 homes in Texas, Sloan said.

    Pickens' proposal, which would cost as much as 6 billion U.S. dollars, would fall just short of nearly doubling what Texas had at the end of 2006, when wind power totaled about 2,700 megawatts, she said.

    Construction of Pickens' project would begin in 2010 and involve as many as 200,000 acres in Roberts, Gray, Hemphill and Wheeler counties, said Pickens spokesman Mike Boswell. The farm would have as many as 2,000 wind turbines, and some would be large enough to generate 2.5 megawatts each.

    Another of Pickens' companies, Mesa Water Inc., has plans to pump water from West Texas and sell it to urban areas. Some landowners who attended the Tuesday meeting already had sold Pickens the rights to water from the Ogallala Aquifer beneath their land.

    "We've mated those two together but haven't said you have to have one to have the other," Boswell said.

    (Agencies)