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T. Boone Pickens thinks water is the new oil.

businessweek.com

1–9 of 9 posts

Re: T. Boone Pickens thinks water is the new oil.

#5

He is absolutely right. The US should leverage the Great Lakes, Panama, Gatun.

The trouble with "leveraging" the Great Lakes is that all but Lake Michigan are shared with Canada. Lake Ontario, for example, is pretty much split down the middle. 9+ million Canadians rely on that lake as cities like Toronto, Hamilton, Kingston and Mississauga are all on the lake. Would Canadians sit still while the US started draining off a resource so critical as their water?

Re: T. Boone Pickens thinks water is the new oil.

#7

He is absolutely right. The US should leverage the Great Lakes, Panama, Gatun.

Heh... it might be more cost effective to invest that money in developing an easy way of desalinating sea water.

Limitless supply and less transportation costs. You could also make a ton of money by building them in the shores of desert countries and selling them the water (Sahara, Arab peninsula, etc...)

Re: T. Boone Pickens thinks water is the new oil.

#9
I keep hearing this argument about water scarcity, but is it true that water is scarce? or clean water is scarce.

Unlike oil, populations are concentrated around water. With improvements in technology to clean and desalinate water, would this market for water still exist?

Oil is limited in quantity, isn't cycled by the environment quickly and must be shipped from the area where it is retrieved to where it is to be used.

To me, this means that clean water technology has huge value, but that water that is already clean is less valuable.