Long before Energy Transfer became one of the largest pipeline networks in the country, Kelcy Warren was a boy growing up in Gladewater and White Oak, two small towns in rural East Texas where pipeline work ran through families the way farming did elsewhere. That background would eventually define his entire career.
From Lone Star Gas to Endevco
After graduating from the University of Texas at Arlington, Warren took the best job offer available to him, joining Lone Star Gas Co. He later moved to Endevco, a pipeline and refining company that gave him his first real exposure to the deal making side of the business.
When Endevco ran into financial difficulty, Warren was asked to help find a buyer. Instead, he partnered with investors Ray C. Davis and Ben Cook to purchase the company outright, rebrand it and resell it at a higher price. That transaction generated the capital that let the three men found Energy Transfer in 1996 with about 200 miles of East Texas natural gas pipelines.
A Family Trade Turned Company
For Kelcy Warren, the industry was never just a career path. His father worked as a pipeline field hand for his entire working life, a fact that later carried special meaning when Energy Transfer acquired Sunoco, the company his father considered his own. Warren has said he still speaks to his father in prayer about the milestones Energy Transfer has reached.
What began with a handful of East Texas gas lines has since grown into a network spanning much of the country, but Warren’s small town beginnings remain part of how he describes the company today. His business partner Ray Davis, who went on to own the Texas Rangers, once said Warren “sees possibilities where others don’t,” a trait Warren traces back to the same rural upbringing that first put him near a pipeline. Read this article for more information.
Find more information about Kelcy Warren on https://www.bloomberg.com/billionaires/profiles/kelcy-l-warren/