More than a year after introducing a grand scenario for reshaping America's energy infrastructure and breaking the proverbial addiction to oil, Texas oil billionaire T. Boone Pickens is still trying to get the rest of us to see what he sees. And he thinks he is making progress.

First, he said more than 1.6 million people had signed up on his Web site to join the New Energy Army. Second, he is being invited as a speaker, at $125,000 per appearance, to talk about his singular focus, the Pickens Plan. He said he has done 26 town meetings, and received standing ovations at 23 of them.

"I think I'm getting the attention of the people," he said from Dallas in a phone interview last week.

On July 8, 2008, Mr. Pickens unveiled the Pickens Plan, described in a news release as "a sweeping, innovating plan to address the national energy dependence crisis."

But in fact it was less of a plan than an outline:

1. Build thousands of wind turbines between Texas and Canada to exploit the Midwestern corridor that many in the wind industry call "the Saudi Arabia of wind."

2. Build new transmission lines to get the power generated by those turbines to power plants for population centers in the Midwest, South and West.

3. Redirect natural gas that is now being used for power plants to use in transportation, replacing imported gasoline and diesel fuel.

When the plan was announced, much of the response focused on the sheer irony of a man who made his fortune in oil advocating for a massive deployment of wind energy. Now, when asked about the apparent disconnect, he says, "It's not about me; it's all about America."

The plan was noteworthy not only because of its audacious scale, but also because Mr. Pickens said it could happen in 10 years.

He still does. But now, the third stage may wind up being the first.

When he announced the plan, Mr. Pickens made a point of saying that the first two steps were to be accomplished by private enterprise, without public money. Indeed, he intended to jump-start the process by developing the world's largest wind farm. The Pampa Wind Project, located in the Texas panhandle, would deploy hundreds of turbines to generate 4,000 megawatts of electricity, enough to power a million homes.

But then the credit crunch hit, and the financing that Mr. Pickens' hedge fund, BP Capital Management, would have needed to build both turbines and transmission lines never materialized.

A year after announcing his plan, Mr. Pickens announced that he was putting Pampa on hold.

Meanwhile, the push for natural gas has gained momentum in Congress.

In April, U.S. Rep. Dan Boren, D-Okla., introduced H.R. 1835, the New Alternative Transportation to Give Americans Solutions (NAT GAS) Act.

If passed, the bill would create or extend a series of tax credits to encourage the use of natural gas in vehicles, as well as requiring that half of all new vehicles purchased or placed in service by the federal government by Dec. 31, 2014, be natural gas-capable.

With 90 co-sponsors, the bill has garnered support from both sides of the aisle. On July 8, exactly one year after Mr. Pickens unveiled his plan, Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., introduced the Senate version of the bill, co-sponsored by majority leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah.

Mr. Pickens answered skepticism about converting automobiles to natural gas by refining his message. If America's 6.5 million 18-wheelers ran on natural gas engines instead of diesel engines, he said, "That would cut your imports by 2.5 million barrels a day." That's half of what the United States imports from OPEC.

Mr. Pickens said he came up with the Pickens Plan in response to the lack of clear talk about energy during last year's presidential campaign.

"I felt like I was the only one with a plan," he said. "I saw that it was kind of my mission to do it."

He may have felt that the candidates lacked a viable energy plan, but the 81-year-old Mr. Pickens seems to have learned a few things from them about reaching today's audience. His Web site, www.pickensplan.com, asks visitors to sign up for the New Energy Army, to e-mail their senators and representatives (using a form that supplies pre-written text) and to recruit others.

It also features videos of Mr. Pickens and "keep in touch" links for Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, LinkedIn, YouTube and Digg.

Justin Kownacki, director of social media for Creative Concepts LLC, a new media consultancy, said that while the site might turn some people off, it also might "allow Pickens to amass a database that rivals Obama's -- and a potentially bipartisan one at that."

"This doesn't have anything to do with politics," said Mr. Pickens, who supported George W. Bush in both of his presidential campaigns. "It's all of us together on this deal."

At least one local natural gas industry executive is in Mr. Pickens' corner. At a conference yesterday, Murry S. Gerber, chairman and CEO of Downtown-based EQT, cited the Pickens Plan as an example of the type of policy changes that he believes would increase the nation's "energy security," as well as its wealth.

Speaking at the Developing Unconventional Gas conference, held at the David L. Lawrence Convention Center, Mr. Gerber noted that only 100,000 of the world's 10 million natural gas vehicles are in the United States. He said that if the nation's fleet were converted to natural gas, the country could save $250 billion a year.

Mr. Gerber said the Pickens Plan could become reality if policymakers "stop promoting things that just don't work," such as ethanol.

"Don't let the playing field be tilted against natural gas."

"Money Q&A" and "Company Town" are featured exclusively at PG+, a members-only web site of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Our introduction to PG+ gives you all the details.