T. Boone Pickens

Thomas Boone Pickens Jr. (May 22, 1928 – September 11, 2019) was an American business magnate, financier, and philanthropist who became one of the most colorful and influential figures in the American oil and gas industry. Pickens founded Mesa Petroleum, which grew into one of the largest independent oil companies in the United States, and later established BP Capital Management, a hedge fund that invested in energy markets.

Pickens is best remembered as one of the most prominent corporate raiders of the 1980s, when he launched a series of high-profile hostile takeover attempts against major oil companies including Gulf Oil, Phillips Petroleum, and Unocal. Though his bids were rarely successful, Pickens' tactics drove up stock prices and generated enormous profits for shareholders—including himself. His battles against entrenched corporate management helped catalyze the shareholder rights movement, and he founded the United Shareholders Association in 1986 to advocate for investor interests.

Later in life, Pickens became an advocate for American energy independence. In 2008, he launched the Pickens Plan, a $100 million campaign proposing to reduce U.S. dependence on foreign oil through expanded wind power generation and conversion of the trucking fleet to natural gas. Though the plan was not implemented, it brought national attention to energy policy during a period of record oil prices.

A legendary Texas personality known for his plain-spoken style and outsized ambitions, Pickens experienced dramatic swings of fortune throughout his career. He lost and rebuilt his fortune multiple times, at one point seeing his hedge fund lose 97% of its value in 2008 before rebuilding again. By the time of his death in 2019 at age 91, Pickens had given away more than $1 billion to philanthropic causes, including approximately $652 million to his alma mater, Oklahoma State University, making him one of the most generous collegiate donors in American history.

Early life and education

Family background

Thomas Boone Pickens Jr. was born on May 22, 1928, in Holdenville, Oklahoma, a small town in the eastern part of the state that had experienced an oil boom in the early 20th century. He was the son of Thomas Boone Sibley Pickens and Grace Marcaline (née Molonson) Pickens.

His father worked as an oil and mineral landman, a profession that involves negotiating the purchase or lease of mineral rights from landowners on behalf of oil companies. The elder Pickens' work in the oil industry would prove formative for his son's career, exposing young Boone to the business of oil and gas from an early age.

The Pickens family was not wealthy, but Boone developed entrepreneurial instincts early. As a boy, he had a newspaper delivery route and demonstrated his aggressive business tendencies by expanding his operation—taking over other boys' routes to grow his territory and earnings.

Move to Texas

In the late 1930s, after the oil boom in Oklahoma had ended, the Pickens family moved to Amarillo, Texas, in the Texas Panhandle. Boone attended Amarillo High School, where he continued to develop the work ethic and competitive drive that would characterize his later career.

Texas would become Pickens' adopted home. Though born an Oklahoman, he would spend most of his adult life in Texas and become associated with the larger-than-life persona of Texas oilmen.

Education

After high school, Pickens enrolled at Texas A&M University on a basketball scholarship. However, he broke his elbow during his time there, lost his scholarship, and was cut from the basketball team. He transferred to Oklahoma A&M College (now Oklahoma State University) in Stillwater, Oklahoma.

At Oklahoma A&M, Pickens majored in geology, studying the science of rock formations and petroleum deposits that would become the foundation of his oil career. He graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in geology in 1951.

The scholarship loss at Texas A&M would prove costly for the school—Oklahoma State University later received more than $652 million in donations from Pickens, making Texas A&M's decision to cut him "the costliest cut in NCAA history."

Early oil career

Phillips Petroleum

After graduating from Oklahoma A&M in 1951, Pickens began his career in the oil industry by taking a job with Phillips Petroleum, one of the major oil companies headquartered in Bartlesville, Oklahoma. He worked for Phillips from 1951 to 1954, gaining experience in the practical aspects of the oil business.

However, Pickens quickly grew frustrated working for a large corporation. The entrepreneurial drive that had manifested in his childhood paper route made him restless within the bureaucratic structure of a major company. He wanted to strike out on his own.

Wildcatter

In 1954, Pickens left Phillips Petroleum to become an independent wildcatter—an entrepreneur who drills for oil in areas not known to be oil fields, taking on high risk in pursuit of potentially high rewards. Wildcatters played a crucial role in the development of the American oil industry, discovering new fields that larger companies had overlooked or deemed too risky.

With $2,500 in borrowed money, Pickens and two partners—Eugene McCartt and John O'Brien (his then-wife's uncle)—formed Petroleum Exploration, Inc. in 1954. This small company represented Pickens' first venture as an independent oilman.

Founding Mesa Petroleum

In 1956, following his period as a wildcatter, Pickens founded the company that would eventually become Mesa Petroleum. The company grew steadily through the 1960s and 1970s, acquiring oil and gas properties and developing reserves across Texas and other producing regions.

Pickens took the company public in 1964 under the name Mesa Petroleum. Going public provided capital for further acquisitions and established Pickens as a legitimate player in the independent oil sector.

By 1981, Mesa Petroleum had grown into one of the largest independent oil companies in the world. Pickens had transformed a small wildcatting operation into a major force in the industry. However, his ambitions were about to expand far beyond managing an independent oil company.

Corporate raider era

Philosophy and approach

The 1980s made T. Boone Pickens a household name, but not primarily as an oilman—rather, as one of the most aggressive corporate raiders of the era. Pickens launched a series of hostile takeover attempts against some of the largest oil companies in America, fundamentally changing the relationship between corporate management and shareholders.

Pickens' approach was rooted in a simple observation: many large oil companies were trading at stock prices that significantly undervalued their oil and gas reserves. He believed this disconnect existed because corporate managers, who owned relatively little stock in their own companies, prioritized their own job security and perquisites over maximizing value for shareholders.

His strategy was to acquire large stakes in these undervalued companies, then pressure management to take actions that would unlock value for shareholders—whether through mergers, sales, special dividends, or other restructuring. If management refused, Pickens would launch a hostile takeover bid, seeking to replace the board and management entirely.

Though Pickens was often called a "corporate raider" and accused of "greenmail" (the practice of threatening a takeover to force a company to buy back the raider's shares at a premium), he preferred to describe himself as a "shareholder activist." He argued that he was fighting on behalf of shareholders against entrenched, self-serving management.

Gulf Oil (1984)

The most famous and consequential of Pickens' corporate raids was his 1984 campaign against Gulf Oil, then the fifth-largest oil company in the United States.

Pickens and Mesa Petroleum began accumulating Gulf Oil shares in 1983, eventually amassing a significant stake in the company. When Pickens announced his intention to pursue a hostile takeover, Gulf's management characterized him as having "a history of hit-and-run tactics" and mounted fierce resistance.

The battle between Pickens and Gulf became one of the most publicized business stories of the year, landing Pickens on the cover of Time magazine. Gulf's management offered Pickens greenmail—an offer to buy back his shares at a premium if he would go away. Notably, Pickens refused, insisting on a resolution that would provide the same share price for all shareholders.

Ultimately, Gulf maneuvered to sell itself to Chevron rather than fall to Pickens' bid. The merger of Gulf and Chevron was the largest oil company merger of the 1980s. Though Pickens did not acquire Gulf, Mesa Petroleum netted more than $500 million in profit from the sale of its Gulf shares—a vindication of Pickens' strategy even in "failure."

Phillips Petroleum

In late 1984 and early 1985, Pickens launched a takeover attempt against Phillips Petroleum—ironically, the same company where he had begun his career three decades earlier.

Mesa Petroleum acquired a significant stake in Phillips, and Pickens pressed for changes that would increase shareholder value. Phillips management resisted fiercely, and the company eventually agreed to a recapitalization that provided some value to shareholders while keeping management in place.

The Phillips campaign further established Pickens' reputation as a champion of shareholder rights, though it also intensified criticism from those who viewed his tactics as destabilizing.

Unocal

Pickens' 1985 attempt to take over Unocal (Union Oil Company of California) proved to be his most contentious battle. Unocal's management employed aggressive defensive tactics, including the adoption of a "poison pill" provision designed to make hostile takeovers prohibitively expensive.

The Unocal case ultimately reached the Delaware Supreme Court, which ruled in favor of Unocal's defensive measures. The ruling established important legal precedents for corporate defenses against hostile takeovers and represented a significant setback for raiders like Pickens.

Though Pickens did not succeed in acquiring Unocal, the campaign generated substantial profits for Mesa shareholders from the appreciation of their Unocal stock.

Cities Service

Pickens also launched a takeover bid for Cities Service Company, another major oil company. As with his other campaigns, the attempt did not result in an acquisition but generated profits from stock appreciation.

Legacy of the raider era

None of Pickens' major acquisition attempts succeeded in the traditional sense—he never actually took over Gulf, Phillips, Unocal, or Cities Service. However, his campaigns generated enormous profits for shareholders (including himself), and the threat of his raids forced many companies to take actions that improved shareholder returns.

More importantly, Pickens' campaigns helped spark a fundamental shift in the relationship between corporate management and shareholders. Today's activist investors—firms like Elliott Management, Carl Icahn's enterprises, and Pershing Square Capital Management—trace their intellectual lineage to Pickens' pioneering work in the 1980s.

Time magazine put Pickens on its cover in March 1985, cementing his status as the public face of the corporate raider phenomenon. During this period, with a salary of $20 million, he became one of the highest-paid executives in the United States.

United Shareholders Association

In 1986, seeking to institutionalize the shareholder rights movement, Pickens founded the United Shareholders Association (USA). The organization tackled various corporate governance issues deemed important to shareholders, including executive compensation, board accountability, and the use of defensive tactics against takeovers.

The United Shareholders Association generated substantial grassroots support, counting 65,000 members at its peak. During its eight-year existence, it generated extensive shareholder-rights advocacy correspondence and helped establish the principle that corporate managers have a fiduciary duty to maximize shareholder value.

Loss of Mesa and reinvention

Financial troubles

By the mid-1990s, Mesa Petroleum faced serious financial difficulties. The company had accumulated substantial debt during the takeover era, and falling oil and gas prices in the late 1980s and early 1990s made it difficult to service that debt.

In 1996, Mesa was sold to financier Richard Rainwater. Rainwater's wife, Darla Moore, had Pickens removed from the company he had founded four decades earlier. In 1997, Mesa merged with Parker & Parsley Petroleum to form Pioneer Natural Resources.

For Pickens, losing control of Mesa was a devastating blow. At nearly 70 years old, after a career of enormous success, he found himself essentially starting over.

BP Capital Management

Rather than retire, Pickens launched a new venture. In 1997, he founded BP Capital Management (the initials stood for "Boone Pickens," not the oil company BP). The firm was a hedge fund that invested in oil and gas futures rather than in the actual production of oil.

Initially, the fund struggled. But Pickens' decades of experience in the energy industry gave him insights that proved valuable. In 2000, he spotted early signs that natural gas prices were poised to rise. Prices shot from less than $2 per thousand cubic feet to more than $13 by 2003, making Pickens a billionaire in his mid-seventies.

The remarkable late-career comeback demonstrated Pickens' resilience and his deep understanding of energy markets. He had rebuilt his fortune from essentially nothing to over $1 billion.

The Pickens Plan

Launch of the plan

On July 8, 2008, at age 80, T. Boone Pickens launched what he called the "Pickens Plan," an ambitious proposal for achieving American energy independence. The plan was unveiled through a $100 million advertising and advocacy campaign, making it one of the largest personal expenditures on policy advocacy in American history.

The Pickens Plan had two main components:

Wind power: Pickens proposed building massive wind farms across the Great Plains—what he called "the Saudi Arabia of wind power"—to generate electricity. This wind-generated electricity would replace the natural gas then being used for power generation.

Natural gas vehicles: The natural gas freed up by wind power would be redirected to fuel trucks and other heavy vehicles, replacing imported oil with domestically produced natural gas.

Pickens claimed that his plan could reduce American dependence on OPEC oil by at least 30% within ten years.

Support and attention

The Pickens Plan generated significant attention during the 2008 presidential campaign, a period when oil prices reached record highs above $140 per barrel. The proposal received support from diverse quarters:

• Carl Pope, executive director of the Sierra Club, endorsed the plan, stating that "T. Boone Pickens is out to save America."
• Presidential candidate Barack Obama expressed support for many elements of the plan.
• By October 2008, one million people had signed up to support the plan through its website.
• Two U.S. Senators, 37 Congressmen, and nine governors pledged support for reducing foreign oil dependence.

Pickens' firm, Mesa Power, planned to invest $10 billion in what would be the world's largest wind farm, located near Pampa, Texas. The project would have had 4,000 megawatts of capacity.

Failure of the plan

The Pickens Plan fell victim to changing circumstances and economic upheaval:

Financial crisis: The 2008 financial crisis disrupted the capital markets and made financing for large infrastructure projects extremely difficult.

Falling energy prices: Natural gas prices collapsed in late 2008 and 2009, undermining the economic rationale for converting vehicles from gasoline to natural gas. The shale gas revolution made natural gas abundant and cheap, which was good for consumers but bad for the business case of the Pickens Plan.

Criticism: Critics noted that Pickens would benefit financially if the plan were implemented—his hedge fund was heavily invested in wind and natural gas. This created the perception that the plan was at least partly self-serving.

Within a year, the wind-power scheme was essentially dead. Pickens eventually shifted his advocacy to focus solely on converting the trucking fleet to natural gas, abandoning the wind component.

Financial losses

The year 2008 was financially devastating for Pickens. His hedge fund, BP Capital Management, was criticized for maintaining a bullish view on oil prices as they collapsed from their mid-year highs. The fund lost approximately 97% of its value during the last three months of 2008.

At his peak in 2008, Pickens' net worth was estimated at $4.1 billion. By the following year, it had fallen to approximately $1 billion, though he would partially rebuild in subsequent years.

Personal life

Marriages and family

T. Boone Pickens was married five times:

Lynn O'Brien (1949–1971): Pickens' first marriage produced four children: Deborah, Michael, Thomas III, and Pam. The marriage ended in divorce after 22 years.

Beatrice "Bea" Carr Stuart (1972–1998): In April 1972, Pickens married his second wife. He adopted one of her daughters, Elizabeth "Liz" Cordia. They had no children together. The marriage lasted 26 years before ending in divorce.

Nelda Cain (2000–2004): In November 2000, Pickens married his third wife. They divorced in November 2004 and had no children together.

Madeleine Paulson (2005–2012): In 2005, Pickens married Madeleine Paulson, who was the third wife and widow of Allen Paulson, the founder of Gulfstream Aerospace. They lived in Preston Hollow, Dallas, and on Pickens' ranch in the Texas Panhandle. The couple divorced amicably in 2012 and had no children together. Madeleine gifted Boone his boyhood home, which she had packed up and moved to his ranch.

Toni Brinker (2014–2017): His fifth and final wife was Toni Brinker, another widow. They were married from 2014 to 2017.

At the time of his death, Pickens was single.

Mesa Vista Ranch

In 1971, Pickens purchased just under 3,000 acres of land in Roberts County, Texas, in the remote Texas Panhandle. Over time, he expanded his holdings to approximately 68,000 acres (65,000 by some accounts), creating the Mesa Vista Ranch.

The ranch became one of the largest private ranches in Texas and featured:

• A palatial private estate
• A private airfield capable of accommodating luxury jets
• Hunting and wildlife areas
• His boyhood home, which had been moved to the property from Oklahoma

The Mesa Vista Ranch was not just a retreat but a working operation and a symbol of Pickens' success and his Texas identity.

In 2018, following the deaths of several close friends and his final divorce, Pickens listed the 68,000-acre ranch for sale at $250 million. He also sold his Gulfstream 550 private jet. The ranch finally sold in February 2023, more than three years after his death, for $170 million.

Health issues

In his later years, Pickens suffered a series of health problems. He experienced multiple strokes and sustained further head injuries in a fall in 2017. These health challenges eventually necessitated his stepping back from active management of his business interests.

Philanthropy

Overview

T. Boone Pickens was one of the most generous philanthropists in American history. By the time of his death, he had given away more than $1 billion to various charitable causes, despite having lost and rebuilt his fortune multiple times throughout his career.

His philanthropy focused on education (particularly Oklahoma State University), medical centers and hospitals, programs for children at risk, Meals on Wheels, and military and veterans' causes.

Oklahoma State University

Pickens' most significant philanthropic relationship was with his alma mater, Oklahoma State University. Over his lifetime, he donated approximately $652 million to the university, making him one of the most generous collegiate donors in American history.

Key gifts included:

Athletics: Pickens contributed hundreds of millions to Oklahoma State's athletic programs. In 2003, he donated $70 million to renovate the football stadium, which was renamed Boone Pickens Stadium in his honor. His support helped transform Oklahoma State's athletic facilities and competitiveness.

Academics: On May 21, 2008, Pickens donated $100 million to academics at Oklahoma State, a gift that was to be matched by the state of Oklahoma.

2014 gift: Pickens donated $500 million to the university, with $165 million designated for the athletic department.

The cumulative effect of Pickens' generosity transformed Oklahoma State University, particularly its athletic programs and facilities.

Other philanthropy

Beyond Oklahoma State, Pickens supported numerous other causes:

• Medical centers and hospitals
• Meals on Wheels programs
• Youth programs and children at risk initiatives
• Military and veterans' organizations
• Conservation and wildlife programs

Death and legacy

Death

T. Boone Pickens died on September 11, 2019, in Dallas, Texas. He was 91 years old. The cause of death was natural causes. He died surrounded by friends and family after having battled back from a series of strokes and head injuries sustained in a 2017 fall.

Tributes

Pickens' death prompted tributes from political, business, and educational leaders:

President George W. Bush: "T. Boone Pickens became a household name across the country because he was bold, imaginative, and daring. He was successful—and more importantly, he generously shared his success with institutions and communities across Texas and Oklahoma."

SMU President R. Gerald Turner: "T. Boone Pickens was the very definition of a Texas legend. He was larger than life, and his impact on the oil and gas industry is only part of his legacy."

Net worth at death

At the time of his death, Pickens' net worth was estimated at approximately $500 million—a fraction of his peak wealth of $4.1 billion in 2008, but still a substantial fortune. The difference largely reflected his extensive philanthropic giving—more than $1 billion donated over his lifetime.

Recognition

During his lifetime, Pickens received numerous honors and recognition:

• Forbes magazine named him one of the "100 Greatest Living Business Minds" in 2017
• Time magazine included him on its 2009 list of the "World's 100 Most Influential People"
• Time magazine cover in March 1985 during the corporate raider era
• Boone Pickens Stadium at Oklahoma State University
• Numerous honorary degrees and awards from educational and industry organizations

Legacy

T. Boone Pickens left a complex legacy:

Oil industry pioneer: He built Mesa Petroleum from a small wildcatting operation into one of the largest independent oil companies in America, demonstrating that aggressive independent operators could compete with the major integrated oil companies.

Shareholder rights advocate: His corporate raids of the 1980s, though controversial at the time, helped establish the principle that corporate managers have a duty to maximize shareholder value. Modern activist investors trace their intellectual lineage to Pickens' pioneering work.

Energy policy voice: Though the Pickens Plan was not implemented, his advocacy brought attention to energy independence issues and helped advance the conversation about alternative energy sources.

Philanthropist: His more than $1 billion in charitable giving, particularly to Oklahoma State University, transformed institutions and touched countless lives.

Texas character: Pickens embodied a certain type of American entrepreneurialism—brash, plain-spoken, willing to take enormous risks, and resilient in the face of setbacks. His ability to lose everything and rebuild, multiple times, made him an inspirational figure to many.

See also

• Mesa Petroleum
• Corporate raid
• Shareholder activism
• Pickens Plan
• Oklahoma State University
• Gulf Oil
• Oil industry
• Greenmail
• Hostile takeover

External links

• Boone Pickens official website
• Oklahoma State University