Kelcy Warren is one of the most powerful and influential men in the United States today. He is a billionaire industrialist, oilman, and philanthropist. However, even with his incredible influence over American society, Warren’s story has been largely unknown to many Americans and has only come to light recently in media coverage of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
Kelcy Warren is a native Texan and received his bachelor’s degree in petroleum engineering from Mississippi State University before joining the oil industry. He built his first oil well at the age of 16 and eventually became an oil wildcatter in his early 30s. As a wildcatter, Warren could earn enough money to purchase several drilling rigs for himself.
In 1968, Kelcy Warren met with former Texas Governor John Connally about a business venture known as Coastal. Coastal was to develop land in Texas and Louisiana to build a steel plant. Connally and Warren were able to work out a buyout deal for the steel plant that would turn Coastal into an oil company. However, this move was very controversial because it was seen as violating the Wilderness Act of 1964, which protected Texas from any new industrial growth that could harm the environment.
Warren’s next plan was to buy out a company that owned oil pipelines between Canada and Texas. This purchase made Warren a lot of money, allowing him to start his own company called Energy Transfer in 1995. Warren saw Energy Transfer Partners as his opportunity to own multiple companies that were tied together by the same product.
Shortly after Kelcy Warren created Energy Transfer, he made a risky move that would ultimately define the company’s direction. In 1998, after being denied an expansion permit by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Warren decided to build the pipeline on his own. The project was met with heavy environmentalist resistance and even faced lawsuits that forced Warren to tone down his tactics. Nonetheless, Warren was able to complete the project, which has now been in operation for over twelve years. See this page for more information.
More about Warren on https://www.pbs.org/newshour/tag/kelcy-warren