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Boone Pickens: The 77-year-old iconic Dallas bidnessman on oil and water, making tons of money late in life, and sticking up for the little guy.

Article Excerpt
You bought 65,000 surface acres of water rights in Roberts County in 2003, adding to the 25,000 acres you already own, and you recently tried to make a deal with ranchers there to buy 94,000 for what would have been the region's highest average price ever: $455 per acre. Frankly, a lot of people in the Panhandle are wondering what you're up to. After all, you're Boone Pickens--you must be working an angle. I cut two ways up there. There's no question that they see me as philanthropic. I've given a lot to the area, and I haven't made any money off water rights--zero. On that attempted purchase, I would have been up to a $100 million investment, and I haven't made a dime. At the same time, I think there's a little resentment because I moved from Amarillo to Dallas. I mean, I've heard the remarks: See how it is to have the big fish make it to the big pond. The point is, I don't have any resentment. T lived there over forty years. I went to high school there. But there were too many distractions.

Too much focus on you and your business. I employed a lot of people there, paid taxes, was generous to charities. And now the first thing they say is "He sold gas to the distribution company."

I think back on the deal we made to merge with Pioneer [a large independent oil-and-gas company], in 1985. [Corporate raider] Irwin Jacobs was going to take it over--he was already the largest shareholder--and they had a weekend before he was going to drop it on them. He said he was going to close it down in Amarillo and move it to Minneapolis, into a warehouse where he had a lot of space. And it was gonna cost Amarillo two hundred or three hundred jobs. So they came to me. We talked about it over the weekend and looked at everything as quickly as we could, but it wasn't completely analyzed. We paid too much. It was a mistake on our part. Worst deal we ever made.

But, as you say, you did it for the benefit of Amarillo. Not exactly. I don't ever want to say that. I make deals to make money. In that case, it cost us to have to look at it quickly. We just made a bad call.

And the thing is, we weren't jumping up and down to make it. The deal was actually called off, and everybody was leaving Amarillo the next...

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