T. Boone Pickens is a legendary figure in the business world. Known as the "Oracle of Oil" because of his uncanny ability to predict the direction of fuel prices, he built Mesa Petroleum, one of the largest independent oil companies in the United States. In the 1980s, Pickens became a household name when he executed a series of unsolicited buyout bids for undervalued oil companies. After he left Mesa, Pickens then staged one of the most impressive comebacks in the industry, by turning his investment fund’s remaining $3 million into $8 billion in profit in just a few years, which made him the world’s second-highest-paid hedge fund manager.
Today, Pickens is making some of the world’s most colossal energy bets. If he has his way, most of America’s cars will eventually run on natural gas, and vast swaths of the nation's prairie land will become places where wind can be harnessed for power generation.