Kelcy Warren’s entrepreneurship exemplifies the American dream with his rise to being one of the nation’s greatest oil tycoons. Warren, who was born in 1950 in Texas, grew up with many siblings and a single mother. In 1967, Warren graduated high school and joined the Air Force where he spent three years as an aircraft mechanic before he left for law school at Southern Methodist University.
After graduating from law school, Warren settled in Colorado where his career began as a legal researcher in the oil and gas industry. He became a full-time lawyer and worked with oil companies, including Exxon and Phillips. But Warren’s life would change forever on February 28th, 1983, when he received an invitation to join a group of business men for an oil deal in California. The group, called “Fourteen Amigos”, was a consortium created to buy out a large amount of oil assets from Shell Oil Company. The invitation from Warren’s father-in-law gave him the opportunity to become part of an independent oil company and he went on to purchase 126 million dollars in assets for $1.4 billion.
Warren’s skills as a lawyer allowed him to negotiate with the different companies and make deals that would benefit his own business. He quickly became a talented businessman and his business mind and ability to negotiate won him the ownership of natural resources. After Kelcy Warren took over the assets, he dubbed his company Energy Transfer. The company grew as Warren began taking over more companies in the energy sector and becoming a publicly traded company on the NYSE in 1994.
Warren’s empire continued to grow with ETE and he became one of America’s wealthiest men, boasting an estimated $1.8 billion net worth.
In 1998, Kelcy Warren purchased Sunoco for about $4 billion and began refining, marketing and trading oil. Sunoco would later become one of America’s largest diversified energy companies. In 2011, Warren decided to resign from the board of directors for his entire company after a long time in the oil industry left his retirement account nearly depleted.
Kelcy Warren has been able to donate millions to various charities that support the poor, veterans, animals and children after experiencing hardships during his youth. Visit this page for additional information.
More about Kelcy Warren on https://littlesis.org/person/5729-Kelcy_Warren