Oil tycoon T. Boone Pickens, who is recovering from a series of strokes and a fall last year, said Friday that he is closing his Dallas energy-focused hedge fund after what he described as “one hell of a roller coaster ride.”
“It’s no secret the past year has not been good to me, from a health perspective or a financial one,” the 89-year-old Pickens said in a statement published on his LinkedIn page. Slumping oil and natural gas prices knocked him off Forbes magazine’s rich list in 2013.
Pickens founded BP Capital in 1996 after building one of the country’s biggest independent oil companies, Mesa Petroleum.
The fund’s “performance was down in the last several years,” Jay Rosser, Pickens’ chief of staff, said Friday, declining to provide numbers. “The whole energy space has been hard hit. We’re sadly in good company,” he said.
Pickens expressed pleasure at how the fund fared, despite the highs and lows.
“It has been one hell of a roller coaster ride,” he said in the statement. “I’ve seen oil prices bounce around from $10 a barrel up to $147, down to $26 and now appear to be inching up ever so slowly. I’m ecstatic that I’ve hung on long enough to see it all unfold. I’ve thrived and profited on the volatility in the energy space. But for me, personally, trading oil is not as intriguing to me as it once was.”
Pickens said two other investment vehicles, BP Energy Partners and BP Capital Fund Advisors, will remain open.
