Oklahoma pulling up the red carpet offered to the wind industry

OKLAHOMA CITY — As Oklahoma sought to diversify its oil-and-gas powered economy in the early 2000s, policymakers rolled out the red carpet for the burgeoning wind industry, offering generous state tax incentives and access to windy, inexpensive tracts of land.

The industry exploded from virtually nothing in 2002 to 7,495 megawatts of capacity last year, ranking it No. 2 nationally in installed wind capacity behind neighboring Texas to the south. More than 3,700 giant turbines now dot vast swathes of central and western Oklahoma’s rural landscape.

But as the state’s finances plunged into recession amid a downturn in the oil patch in recent years, lawmakers ended all the state incentives and now are considering a new production tax on wind and even capping previously guaranteed incentives. Anti-wind groups aired commercials featuring former Republican Gov. Frank Keating admitting the incentives were a mistake, and former Dallas Cowboys and University of Oklahoma football coach Barry Switzer decrying them as a “bad deal.”

Now a battle is shaping up at Oklahoma’s Capitol that includes fierce opposition to wind from some oil-and-gas leaders and critics, including one Republican lawmaker who accused someone connected to the industry of tracking his car and angrily shut down a wind industry news conference at the Statehouse last week.

“We’ve been struggling with our state budget for four or five years now. It’s been tough,” said state Rep. Mark McBride, who claims that a tracking device he found on his truck in December is connected to his opposition to the wind industry. “Where’s wind been? They’ve been fighting us every step of the way on trying to help out the state.”