CEO and Chair of BP Capital Management

Thomas Boone Pickens Jr. is an American investor, oil billionaire, hedge fund manager, and the head of the BP Capital Management company. He is known for developing “The Pickens Plan,” which aims to push through a plan to move the US from oil to other sources of energy like natural gas and solar and wind power. He is also among the wealthiest people in America, according to Forbes magazine.

Pickens was born in Holdenville, Oklahoma on May 22nd 1928 to a father who leased land rights. He and his family moved to Amarillo, Texas and attended college at Oklahoma A&M (currently called Oklahoma State University). He graduated with a degree in Geology and was eventually employed at Philips Petroleum, where he worked until 1954. After this, he went into exploratory well digging. Two years after starting the venture, Pickens formed Mesa Petroleum, which constantly expanded over the years and acquired various companies.

By 1989, he moved the company to Dallas where later he found BP Capital Management, which is named after Boone Pickens (and not British Petroleum). The business has two hedge funds, Capital Equity and Capital Commodity; these deal with natural gas and oil.

In 1997, Pickens established another company called Pickens Fuel Corp, a business that promotes the usage of natural gas for automobiles. It was later renamed as Clean Energy in 2001.

Apart from his business career, T. Boone Pickens has contributed millions of dollars to universities and charities such as the University of Texas, Oklahoma State University, and Hurricane Katrina relief efforts.