This month’s passing of legendary oilman T. Boone Pickens is being felt locally.
“If it wasn’t for his entrepreneurial vision to bring cleaner and domestic natural gas to the transportation market, Clean Energy Fuels Corp. would not exist today,” said Andrew Littlefair, president and CEO of the $430M-valued alternative fuels company (Nasdaq: CLNE).
“I worked closely with Boone for 32 years and he became a father-like figure and true mentor to me.”
Pickens Fuel Corp., founded by the Oklahoma native in 1997, started off in Seal Beach. It was reincorporated as Clean Energy in 2001, went public in 2007, and moved to Newport Beach about six years ago.
It’s now the city’s fourth-largest public company by market value; company officials told our Kevin Costelloe earlier this month they could envision the company’s stock rising fourfold in the not-too-distant future.
The company’s shares saw about a 4% boost this month, after Saudi Arabia’s fuel supply was disrupted by attacks.
Pickens, who was 91 when he died at his Dallas home, stepped down as a director a year ago, but still had a nearly 7% stake in Clean Energy.
In his last interview with the Business Journal about five years ago, he struck an optimistic tone for the future of his OC company and the alternative energy sector in general. “You can see the direction we’re going,” he said. “I hope it’s a trend.”
Another emerging trend: the rise of plant-based meat products, see Jessie Yount’s front-page feature on the plans of up-and-coming Before the Butcher to bring its healthy products into a variety of area supermarkets by year’s end.
Lake Forest’s Del Taco has been an early adapter of plant-based offerings, while other area chains are leaning into the healthy offering sector through a variety of vegetarian dishes.
Following a recent menu restructuring, Irvine’s Taco Bell was feted by Men’s Health magazine this summer as one of the healthiest fast-food restaurants in America.
“We know it sounds ridiculous, but it’s true,” the magazine said, citing efforts by the company’s dietitian and product developer, Missy Schaaphok, who has switched over to cage-free eggs “and has made a 15% reduction in sodium across all menu items.”
The question now for new Taco Bell CEO Mark King is how to leverage that distinction; prior officials weren’t keen to play up their healthy habits. “Us touting ourselves as a health halo—it’s not authentic and it’s not real,” officials said bluntly a few years back.
FivePoint Holdings’ Emile Haddad is not one to shy away from being an early adapter, or thinking a few development cycles ahead in Irvine.
That’s one reason behind his new partnership with business accelerator OCTANe (see Alexa Corbett’s front-page story), as well as why FivePoint just gave $1 million to USC’s Sol Price School of Public Policy.
The gift will help real estate leaders “collaborate with leading educators to create the vision of sustainable communities, balancing environmental justice and social equity,” he said.
