The oilman who became a corporate folk hero

T. Boone Pickens was a tornado-like force in American business. With his Oklahoma drawl and homespun phraseology, the oil-and-gas tycoon became a rare thing in business—a genuine celebrity—while launching some of the most daring corporate raids of the 1980s. Using his 700-employee Mesa Petroleum company as an investment vehicle, Pickens bought up stock in much larger oil companies, forcing them to buy back their shares at inflated prices to keep control. While critics accused him of “greenmail,” Pickens insisted he was defending the interests of ordinary investors by targeting undervalued companies. The oilman went on to win an unlikely environmentalist following in the 2000s as an early investor in wind energy. “It may smell like manure to you,” the multimillionaire liked to say of his unorthodox dealmaking, “but it smells like money to me.”

Pickens was born in Holdenville, Okla., “a town of 3,000 surrounded by oil wells,” said The Washington Post. His father, a lawyer for Phillips Petroleum, speculated in oil leases but never struck it rich. The young Pickens “developed an early taste for deals,” delivering newspapers by acquiring other paperboys’ routes. He went to work for Phillips in 1951 after graduating from Oklahoma State University, but soon quit, “frustrated by the stodgy corporate culture.” Pickens “struck out on his own” as an oil wildcatter, said The Wall Street Journal. “He was little known outside of energy circles until 1968,” when he started making his first unsolicited takeover bids. That idea came to him in the shower. It was, Pickens said, “cheaper to look for oil on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange than in the ground.”

His fortunes rose, fell, and rose again “in classic wildcatter style,” said The New York Times. Pickens was forced out of Mesa in the 1990s after bad bets on natural gas. But a decade later, he was richer than he’d been during his corporate raiding days, thanks to commodities investments. He poured money into his alma mater and conservative politics, helping fund the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth smear campaign against 2004 Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry.

Yet he later made common cause with Democrats such as Al Gore in pushing for renewable energy to break U.S. dependence on Middle Eastern oil. “I have always believed that it’s important to show a new look periodically,” he said. “Predictability can lead to failure.”