Storied oilman T. Boone Pickens dies at 91

T. Boone Pickens, the Texas wildcatter who became a billionaire oil and gas investor before turning his attention to renewable energy, passed away on Sept. 11 at the age of 91.

Following several strokes and a “Texas-sized fall” requiring hospital treatment in late 2016, Pickens posted a message on social media describing his health, saying “I clearly am in the fourth quarter.” A year later, he put his 65,000-acre Mesa Vista Ranch in the Texas Panhandle on the market and closed his hedge fund, saying that he preferred to devote his time to “personal passions like promoting unbridled entrepreneurship and philanthropic and political endeavors.”

While Pickens won his notoriety from takeover bids in the 1970s and 1980s, the energy futures market was the source of most of his wealth. Bets placed on rising oil and natural gas prices in 2003 were the first of a series of wins, earning him billions through his Dallas-based BP Capital LLC fund.

Pickens’ net worth was estimated to have doubled in 2005, to $1.5 billion, doubling again to $3 billion in 2007. Forbes magazine’s final survey of his wealth in 2013, $950 million, bore both the scars of the 2008 financial crisis and the results of Pickens’ philanthropic activities. He spent hundreds of millions of dollars to advance higher education causes, including a $500-million grant to his alma mater, Oklahoma State University. Pickens also made significant investments in renewable energy sources, particularly wind power, as part of his goal to see the United States abandon its dependence on imported energy.

Fig. 1. T. Boone Pickens honed his reputation as a corporate raider in the 1980s, as the driving force behind the largest corporate merger in history at the time. Image: Oswald Samson.

His Mesa Petroleum Co. helped forge Wall Street’s first impression of Pickens in the 1980s (Fig. 1), as he led one of the largest independent U.S. producers of oil and gas through a series of corporate takeover attempts. Pickens observed that it was “cheaper to look for oil on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange than in the ground.” Oil companies in his crosshairs urged Congress to stop him, with G.C. Richardson, a retired executive of Cities Service Co. calling Pickens “nothing but a pirate.” While his tactics earned him few friends, Pickens earned millions even when he was unable to gain full control of the companies he targeted. “The biggest hurdle in American corporations is the CEO’s ego,” Pickens wrote, arguing that his takeover bids were aimed to see that shareholders got the best returns on their investments.

Spurring one of the biggest corporate mergers in history at the time with Mesa’s bid for Gulf Oil in 1983, Standard Oil Co. (California) would ultimately buy out Gulf for $13.2 billion to form Chevron Corporation.

By the mid-1990s, Mesa found itself the target of a hostile takeover amid falling share prices, angry investors, and seemingly insurmountable debt. A controlling interest was sold to Texas financier Richard Rainwater, and Pickens was forced to step aside as CEO and chairman. In this new phase of his life, Pickens established a reputation as an adept hedge fund trader, taking advantage of crude and natural gas price swings once again.

Fig. 2. His “Pickens Plan 2.0” sought to build America’s energy independence by investing in wind and other renewable energy sources. Image: Texas Tribune.

With the NYSE Pickens Oil Response ETF, a spinoff of his original BP Capital, Pickens’ legacy continues. The equity index fund began trading in 2018 under the symbol “BOON,” including explorers, producers, service and renewable companies (Fig. 2) that track closely to the Brent crude oil price.

“Predictability leads to failure,” Pickens told The New York Times in 2018. “I hope people think of me as a visionary who recognized it was important to show a new look periodically.”