Posted on 01/22/2018 10:35:21 AM PST by sodpoodle
Late last year, T. Boone Pickens was back at it, drilling for oil. On his 65,000-acre ranch in the Texas Panhandle, an expanse full of wildflowers and rolling hills, Mr. Pickens, 89, had erected a $6 million rig and started pumping fracking fluid into the earth. Decades past his heyday as a self-made oil mogul and old-school corporate raider, his fortune and his public profile diminished, Mr. Pickens was still hoping to strike it rich, just as he had done some 60 years ago as a young wildcatter in Amarillo. The well has begun producing, but Mr. Pickens — who less than two years ago insisted, “I’m not going to retire” — isn’t sticking around to see the results. Not long after drilling commenced, he put the Mesa Vista Ranch up for sale. The asking price: a cool $250 million. Then on Jan. 12, Mr. Pickens did the unthinkable: He effectively announced his retirement, shuttering BP Capital, his hedge fund. Though Mr. Pickens, a famous fitness buff who once challenged President Barack Obama to an exercise competition, is still involved in his business affairs, his retirement ends a larger-than-life, only-in-America career. “Everything is big in Texas, and T. Boone is the personification of that,” said Amy Myers Jaffe, a senior fellow for energy and the environment at the Council on Foreign Relations. “He bets big. He has big ideas. And he puts big numbers behind it.” With an outsize personality and aggressive business tactics that landed him on the cover of Time magazine, Mr. Pickens became one of the few businessmen in the 1980s recognizable to wide segments of America. His influence is still widely felt. Mr. Pickens was an early advocate for shareholder rights and insisting that executives be compensated with stock.
(Excerpt) Read more at msn.com ...
Price of oil fell and the wind farm was not built, but that’s not why he’s calling it quits. He’s had several stroke and in bad health.
He was trying to get massive federal subsidies for “wee-und” turbines but Congress said “nyet”.
Agree. He’s a chameleon and certainly no conservative. Just another self-serving power player who pretends to be whatever he needs to be in order to advance himself... oh, and give some away here and there along the way just to make it seem like he should be liked.
What you posted is simply not true.
Has Mr. Pickens been a bush-bot?
I remember when Bear Bryant retired, he was dead within a few months.
I suspect the same will be true of Pickens.
“I remember when Bear Bryant retired, he was dead within a few months.”
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And there are many,many people who retired years ago and are still alive.
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He really flogged that windfarm idea, trying to get us rubes to put our money into it. The admiration I’d had for him in the 80s and 90s all melted away, watching him try to huckster that wind farm.
I think he really did believe in it.
It was probably his lib contacts that persuaded him..............
I don’t see anything wrong with using wind power as and added source of energy. However, when they think they can replace it for oil is where I think it is wrong. We could have a lot of different energy sources. I am stumped that Florida doesn’t use more solar and have builders use it on all roofs in Florida. Not only does it save money for the customer, but it helps to decrease oil usage.
Wait, what? John Kerry was in the military? He should have let the voters know.
Excellent idea! I am not against wind and solar. I am against stupid wind and solar just for the sake of wind and solar.
Interesting. So why did he then back Obama?
Senility?
“Cin Ah git me a huntin’ license here?”
In the waining days of the election in 08, Boone rand national TV Ads supporting Obama’s green technology ideas and claimed they would save America.
He even told Lou Dobbs in an interview that that he believed Obama has what it takes to resolve the energy crisis that needed to be fixed.
The guy was an idiot, later he would call Obama the worst president in history, but that was long after he helped get him elected.
He might have supported some of the energy decisions because it might have helped him financially.
I think OSU paid a price of getting T. Bone's support in his falling stock.
By doing so he helped Obama, because his ads were used as proof that even the oil industry supported him.
You never ever put yourself in a position to be used by your enemy, if they were.
His greed helped elect Obama. He cared more about his own pocketbook than he did about mine, or even yours.
Those were Nationally televised promos he ran for Obama’s agenda, even if he wanted to deny it after the fact, they were a huge endorsement for Obama over McCain.
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