Kelcy Warren is one of the most successful CEOs in America. Warren is the founder of Energy Transfer Partners and the architect behind its majority share buy-in of Dakota Access LLC. This pipeline transports crude oil across four American states.

Warren was born in 1956 in Sherman, Texas. He worked as a teenager at a local convenience store, where he began to develop his business skills. He used his $1,000 savings from working at the store to purchase a guitar and amplifier with which he performed as an amateur musician. Warren decided to attend Texas Tech University to study geology despite his musical talent. He continued playing music in bars and restaurants in the evenings and weekends while also taking up bartending jobs for extra money.

After graduating with a geology degree, he became a landman for Amoco Production Company. The industry was booming due to the discovery of natural gas fields throughout Texas and Oklahoma. Warren continued to hone his business skills, and in 1990, Warren founded a small oil and gas company named Pioneer Energy.

In 1993, Warren purchased the company that would make him famous: Energy Transfer Equity. At the time of its acquisition by Warren, the company had annual profits of $10 million and annual revenues of $175 million. In 1997, Kelcy Warren launched another subsidiary, Energy Transfer Partners LP. Throughout the 1990s, and the companies worked on pipeline construction projects throughout Texas. And by 2012, both companies had expanded into natural gas pipelines, with over 4 billion cubic feet of gas transported daily. Both companies are worth more than $2 billion due to the high profits from transporting oil and natural gas throughout North America.

In 2011, Kelcy Warren purchased Sunoco in a deal worth $3.3 billion. Sunoco was the result of a merger between Sun Oil Company and the Texas Oil Company in 1930 and is known today as an oil company established in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. In 2013, Warren acquired another oil company, Southern Union, for over $5 billion. Southern Union was a natural gas distribution network created due to mergers between multiple utility companies. See this page for more information.

Learn more about Warren on https://www.utsystem.edu/board-of-regents/current-regents/kelcy-l-warren