“Profit from the Pickens Plan” Alternative Energy Speculator

Aha! You think for a moment that the Gumshoe has returned from vacation early to jump on a hot new stock tip … but you’re wrong, my friend.

I’m still not here, but my ethereal presence is calmly posting a rerun of a stock we snooped out many months ago, with a few new notes to update you.

The catch is, back when the Alternative Energy Speculator first started teasing us about this stock, before Summer came to the Northern Hemisphere, the “Pickens Plan” hadn’t yet been officially launched by our favorite billionaire, so we weren’t yet being teased with the fact that we could “follow an oil billionaire to natural gas profits.”

The Pickens Plan has been heavily advertised this summer — you have in all likelihood seen the commercials it on TV, since that’s the heart of the outreach strategy for T. Boone Pickens (and he’s got the money for plenty of advertising when he sets his mind to it).

This plan essentially involves a strategy to use windmills for electricity generation, which will free up domestic natural gas to be used for transportation, and cure us of our addiction to oil imports — there’s a certain elegance to that, and there is at least some infrastructure for natural gas vehicles in place, and a national distribution system, even if there aren’t many actual fueling stations yet. That elegance hides a large number of stumbling blocks, I’m sure, but it’s at least an intriguing plan. And God knows, he’s not the only one who’s finally realizing that wind power is efficient and cheap — though the cows in Texas apparently like the view of wind turbines much more than do the vacationers on Cape Cod or Florida beaches.

But the big tease in these ads is for the natural gas stuff — and one of the companies that might profit is, in fact, owned by T. Boone Pickens himself. Actually several are, but this particular one teased in the ad is a company that develops natural gas engines for heavy trucks, and that is poised to benefit from a “superfund” to push the switchover to cleaner trucks in California ports, most of which are located in areas that are already cursed with heavy smog and particulate pollution. These ports are extremely motivated to cut diesel use, so that’s where this company has a chance to make a name and a market for itself.

So yes, for those who have been paying attention lo these many months, this one is the same stock I wrote about in March — Westport Innovations. Since then, it has sold shares in a new offering to list on the Nasdaq (just last Friday), and the shares have come down quite a bit from recent highs. You can go here to read up on the full analysis of the original ad and the other readers’ comments about the company, but do note that the ticker is different now — it still trades in Canada at WPT, but the new US ticker, now that it’s off the pink sheets and on the Nasdaq, is WPRT.

The other big natural gas transportation stock that Pickens is a major holder of, by the way, is Clean Energy Fuels (CLNE) — they build the fueling stations for natural gas, and were also partly-owned by Westport until recently (they may still have some shares, not sure — CLNE was formed, largely due to Pickens’ influence, using some Westport assets, which is how they came to own part of it). Selling CLNE shares was one of the few profit drivers for Westport over the last year or so, they’re still a ways away from mass producing the heavy truck engines that are teased here, though their Cummins Westport joint venture is churning away nicely and spinning off profit, other initial partnerships with truck and engine makers have been signed of late, and their heavy truck engine plant is supposed to open next year.

I continue to hold shares of WPRT personally, and I write about them on occasion on the Irregulars site.

Just a few more days of reruns, and then your beloved Stock Gumshoe will be back to wow you with new wit and wisdom — happy investing!

The author will always disclose any direct long or short equity, debt or option position in any stocks written about as of the day of publication, and will not trade in any stocks mentioned for three days (72 hours) after publication. Full disclaimer is at the bottom of the page.

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1. WHAT DO YOU THINK OF ZACK’S? I’M 51 YRS. OLD, DISABLED (LIVER TRANSPLANT) AND JUST NEED TO HAVE MY MONEY GROW. I HAVE AROUND 25,00O TO INVEST BUT I JUST CAN’T SEEM TO ABSORB ALL THIS INFO. I HAVE BEEN A SUBSCRIBER TO YOUR SITE FOR SOMETIME AND ENJOY AND TRUST MOST OF THE ADVICE, BUT I NEED SOME PROFESSIONAL HELP. ANY RECOMMENDATIONS?

   [Reply]

   

   spreadtrader Reply:
   August 21st, 2008 at 9:04 am

   I’d take 15%-20% of that and buy some silver…..just in case.

   [Reply]

   

   MaryAnn Reply:
   May 20th, 2009 at 9:44 am

   With $25,000 to invest, why not subscribe to Morningstar for a month, do some due diligence on some good funds, and invest in no more than 2-3 of them. Then cancel the subscription; total cost to you = less than $20 for superior fundamental information. $25,000 is too small an amount to pay for much professional help. The stocks that Gumshoe is describing are very often high risk stocks being touted as teases by the newsletters and a lot of them are just awful. Stock Gumshoe provides excellent analysis, but you need more fundamental information on investments that are not so speculative.

   [Reply]

   Posted by TOMMY | August 21, 2008, 8:33 am

2. Tommy God Bless you …..you have been through alot. Maybe right now ya better cool your jets until the market stabalizes….then a good mutual fund like CGMFX may be worth your while , It is a NO LOAD Fund with an excellent track record…check it out with morningstar.com
   Good Luck!

   [Reply]

   Posted by PH | August 21, 2008, 8:43 am

3. Any one tried Alternative Energy Speculator put out by Jeff Siegel who seems to have a very good track record comments please
   Thanks S

   [Reply]

   Posted by sequential | August 21, 2008, 10:05 am

4. Ron Baron has a new fund BRIFX, it is designed to double every
   five years [over 14%/annum] provided all dividends and distributions are reinvested.I own several thousand shares at around $10/sh. FWIW

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   farley 5 Reply:
   August 21st, 2008 at 2:19 pm

   I’d LOVE to see that guarantee!

   [Reply]

   

   Cocoon Reply:
   August 21st, 2008 at 2:38 pm

   No guarantees, of course. I said “designed” to produce these results. Do your own research and planning. Baron has approx. 75kk in the fund w/mkt cap of approx 150kk. I’m not selling it, just an idea.

   [Reply]

   Posted by Cocoon | August 21, 2008, 10:27 am

5. Tommy,

   With 25,000 to invest you should probably not be buying many individual stocks. I second the motion on CGMFX, Ken Heebner is a great money manager. I would put some with him for an aggressive play and the rest in HSGFX. John Hussman is a great manager as well. He continues to make new highs all this year and he is always looking out for you on the downside.

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   Posted by Pete Ewing | August 21, 2008, 10:51 am

6. Pickens ideas sound great. Letter to ed. Wall St Journal – lady says she has been driving nat gas vehicle for 5 years. Fills up in her garage. I Like this idea. Why isnt tnis getting more publicity?

   [Reply]

   

   destry Reply:
   August 22nd, 2008 at 10:45 pm

   Folks around here have been using propane to
   power their pick-up trucks for 30 years and more.
   The problem is that the propane tank is too big for anything but the bed of a pickup…And higher altitude places like Colorado, the propane gas
   won’t compress for combustion…You have to switch
   back over to gasoline, or diesel…

   [Reply]

   

   MaryAnn Reply:
   May 20th, 2009 at 9:47 am

   Write to your congressmen about favoring Natural gas powered trucks and busses. Pickens has it right about Nat gas being the transition fuel to the alternatives like wind and solar. NG can be used on trucks and buses; they are too big to be hybrids. Plenty of nat gas is available in the US and Canada; lets stop sending our money for oil to countries that hate us.

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   Posted by marilyn milam | August 21, 2008, 3:30 pm

7. Kudos to Gumshoe Great honest,educated,non-bias reviews! Will be joining ! Now Boone Pickens is nobody’s fool. He’s got money & opportunity for Boone in this. With current technology it takes up to 8 hours to safley fill a natural gas vehicle , unless of course the tank is extremely small and therefore the range. At the end of the day “made on board hydrogen gas vehicles take the cake. There are already + 50,ooo on the road. The kits run about $ 1400.00 & guarantee a 50% minimum increase in your present gas mileage. An upgrade to follow shortly will bring that to 300%. You may have already begun to see the ads with the 121 MPG Honda pictured. Simple tech that’s been withheld but now released. Question is where will all the road tax money come from once they lose the gas taxes????

   [Reply]

   

   StockGumshoe Reply:
   August 24th, 2008 at 7:35 pm

   Thanks FF — I haven’t driven a CNG car, but they do have a number of filling stations that operate much like gas stations and I’ve seen cars lined up at them, so I can’t imagine it takes that much longer to fill up a typical car from those (though it probably is noticeably slower than a gasoline fill-up).

   The home filling stations that use your residential NG line to fill the car do, I think, take many hours (10-20) to fill a CNG tank and are usually used overnight, I assume that’s what you’re referring to. There are quite a few CNG cars on the road and they’ve got their own little blog subculture if you take the time to search around a bit — not to mention that the Honda Civic that runs on CNG is the only car of that ilk that you can buy new in the US right now (though there are lots of other converted cars around, and many cars can be converted with a kit). If it could fit three kids’ carseats and a couple dogs … and if I lived in Southern California where most of the filling stations are concentrated … I might be a bit tempted. Oh, and if I had a garage where I could install a fuel line. The “onboard generators” sound pretty cool, but I confess I know absolutely nothing about them

   Not sure about the heavy trucks that use LNG instead of CNG, but I can’t imagine they take hours to fill at commercial high-pressure pumps, either.

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   dans-in-co Reply:
   August 25th, 2008 at 6:01 pm

   Hi FF and Gumshoe,
   I’m in the experimental stage with on onboard hydrogen generator and also an investor in HYHY.OB a manufacturer of generators for large semi trucks.
   I wish I could buy a generator at a reasonable price and bypass the pain-in-the-butt DIY process.
   You can see many DIY projects on YouTube. FF, who builds/sells the generator you mentioned?
   dan

   [Reply]

   

   beaced Reply:
   September 9th, 2008 at 8:30 am

   Anybbody know anything about Top Gun TRADER portfolios?thanks

   [Reply]

   Posted by Frequent Flyer | August 24, 2008, 6:02 pm

8. [...] Stock Gumshoe Investigates Profit from the Pickens Plan Posted by root 21 hours ago (http://www.stockgumshoe.com) Profit from the pickens plan alternative energy speculator by stockgumshoe august 20 2008 email this article print this article post a comment Discuss  |  Bury |  News | stock gumshoe investigates profit from the pickens plan [...]

   Posted by Stock Gumshoe Investigates Profit from the Pickens Plan | Shed Kits | May 26, 2009, 9:15 pm

9. Stock Gumshoe and others:

   Anyone know the name of “the desalination company” whose desalination process/technique is so much cheaper than others?
   Nick Hodge wrote about it in April, then again later (from Alternative Energy Speculator). The company allegedly announced it’s desalination process May 7, so it’s relatively “old news”.

   Thank you.

   [Reply]

   Posted by Bruce Joseph | August 21, 2009, 3:51 am

10. ERII is usually mentioned as a desalination play, but I’m not aware of a May 7 announcement.

    [Reply]

    Posted by stockcrazy10 | August 21, 2009, 8:24 am