T. Boone Pickens Loses $1.25 Billion

It's fun to write about billionaire T. Boone Pickens, because he's always up to something.

Either he's giving Oklahoma State U. $400 million for its athletics and academics, or he's popping up on TV touting his wind power scheme, or he's buying up water rights in Texas.

Here's what the folksy Pickens is up to now: Losing $1.25 billion in the span of three months.

According to documents filed with the SEC earlier this week, Pickens's investment fund, BP Capital Management, lost 97 percent or $1.25 billion, in only the last three months of 2008.

Pickens holds 26 energy companies in his fund and dumped their stocks as their value fell, the documents show.

Pickens is banking, literally, on a resurgence in the price of oil, which now sits at about $39 per barrel, after hitting a high of $147 per barrel in summer 2008. Pickens has predicted it will rise back to $75 per barrel.

If it doesn't the money may keep flowing through Pickens's fingers like, well, water and air.

-- Frank Ahrens
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