T Boone Pickens Dies

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T. Boone Pickens dies at 91

By Bill Hethcock and Rebecca Ayers  –  Dallas Business Journal

21 minutes ago

Legendary oil tycoon, investor and philanthropist T. Boone Pickens has died at the age of 91.

The Dallas Morning News reported that Pickens died of natural causes at his home on Wednesday.

Pickens, whose estimated net worth is now about $500 million, has made billions of dollars and lost billions along the way. He’s given more than $1 billion away in his lifetime to a wide range of philanthropic initiatives.

Pickens was born in Holdenville, Okla., but much of his business life centered in and around Dallas.

Known as the “Oracle of Oil” because of his ability to predict the direction of fuel prices, he founded Mesa Petroleum in 1956 with a $2,500 investment and built it into one of the largest independent oil companies in the United States.

Pickens in the 1980s was the dealmaker behind leveraged buyouts of undervalued oil companies including Phillips Petroleum Co., Gulf Oil Corp. and Unocal Corp. Pickens and his investors made substantial money from the sale of stock of his targets, often selling his shares back to the company at a premium, a practice called “greenmail."

After leaving Mesa Petroleum in 1996, Pickens launched Dallas-based BP Capital, an energy-focused investment firm.

In July 2008, he launched his “Pickens Plan” calling for less reliance on oil from the Middle East and a greater U.S. emphasis on natural gas and renewable energy. The self-funded, $100 million lobbying effort sought to wean the United States from the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, or OPEC.

Pickens suffered a series of strokes in late 2016 and a serious fall in the summer of 2017.

In late 2017 he put his 65,000 acre Mesa Vista Ranch in the Texas Panhandle up for sale, with an asking price of $250 million.

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