T. Boone Pickens Net Worth, Career, Biography, Facts, Age, Life Story

T. Boone Pickens was an American business magnate and financier who had a net worth of $950 million at the time of his death in 2019. At various times during his life he was certainly worth more than $1 billion, but with sliding oil prices and his out-sized charitable donations, Boone was not a billionaire in 2019. He gave away well over $1 billion while he was alive and was a member of The Giving Pledge.

Though T. Boone Pickens amassed his fortune through the acquisition and resale of oil companies. Towards the end of his life he became an outspoken advocate for the use of alternative energy sources. He was born Thomas Boone Pickens, Jr. on May 22, 1928, in Holdenville, Oklahoma. As a kid he fell in love with business early after expanding his paper delivery route from 28 to 156 deliveries. The late 1930s saw the Pickens family move from Oklahoma to Amarillo, Texas. It was in 1951 that T. Boone graduated with a degree in geology and soon got a job at Philips Petroleum. Three years he left the company to work with exploratory well digging. He founded Mesa Petroleum in 1956. Under Pickens’ watchful eye, Mesa grew quickly and eventually became one of the largest independent oil companies in the world. Meanwhile, he acquired other mostly bigger companies like Hugoton Production Company, Gulf Oil, Philips Petroleum, and Diamond Shamrock, becoming well known for his ruthless attempts at acquiring new companies.

In 1989, he moved to Dallas where he set up BP Captial Management eight years later. In 1997 Pickens established another company called the Pickens Fuel Corp to promote the use of natural gas for automobiles. The company was renamed Clean Energy in 2001, and six years later, Pickens first started warning the public against high oil prices. In June 2007, he started promoting the world’s largest wind farm that would produce up to four gigawatts of electricity. Only one year later, he came up with a bigger proposal, The Pickens Plan, meant to reinvent US energy resources by promoting oil-alternatives such as natural gas, wind power, and solar energy. In the course of his career, Pickens was a generous contributor to various charities and Universities including Oklahoma State University, The University of Texas, as well as relief efforts for Hurricane Katrina, and various other programs supporting the well-being of families, children, teenagers and animals.

In 2018, Boone sold his Gulfstream 550 Private Jet and listed his 68,000 acre ranch in Texas for sale for $250 million.

T. Boone Pickens died on September 11, 2019 at the age of 91. During his lifetime, Boone gave more than $1 billion to a variety of charities, half of which went to his alma mater Oklahoma State University. As of this writing his donations to Oklahoma State top $625 million. He was also a member of The Giving Pledge.

Net Worth:$950 Million
Date of Birth:May 22, 1928 – Sep 11, 2019 (91 years old)
Gender:Male
Profession:Entrepreneur, Businessperson, Investor, Financier
Nationality:United States of America