T. Boone Pickens

T. Boone Pickens is the "founder and chairman, BP Capital Management, is principally responsible for the formulation of the energy futures investment strategy of the BP Capital Commodity Fund and the BP Capital Equity Fund." A biogrpahical note also states that he "is also aggressively pursuing a wide range of other business interests, from water marketing and ranch development initiatives to Clean Energy, a company he founded and is the largest shareholder. Through Mesa Water, Pickens is the largest private holder of permitted groundwater rights in the United States. Clean Energy is advancing the use of natural gas as a cleaner-burning and more cost-effective transportation fuel alternative to gasoline and diesel."

Background
A biographical note states that "Boone graduated as a geologist from Oklahoma State University in 1951 and started work with Phillips Petroleum Co. in Bartlesville, Oklahoma. After three and a half years, he struck out on his own as an independent geologist. Pickens was founder of Mesa Petroleum in its various forms beginning in 1956. Mr. Pickens’ career at Mesa spanned four decades. Under his leadership, Mesa grew to become one of the largest and most well known independent exploration and production companies in the United States; Mesa produced more than 3 trillion cubic feet of gas and 150 million barrels of oil from 1964 to 1996."

The Pickens Plan
In September 2008 a PR industry trade publication, O'Dwyers PR Daily reported that T. Boone Pickens had hired Patton Boggs "to win Washington support for his PickensPlan program designed to wean this country off foreign oil." The publication also reported that "Pickens used Sloane & Co to handle PR surrounding the July launch of PP. Washington-headquartered North Bridge Communications has been drumming up PA enthusiasm for the effort."

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