Coastal Corporation

Coastal produced and marketed petroleum, natural gas, electricity, and coal. It also sold gasoline at Coastal-branded gas stations. By 1999, Coastal Refining and Marketing operated 962 gas stations in 33 states and was supplied by four refineries, including a 150,000 bbl per day refinery in Corpus Christi, Texas, a 180,000 bbl per day refinery in Eagle Point, New Jersey, a 250,000 barrel per day refinery on Aruba, and a 25,000 bbl per day refinery geared for asphalt production in Chickasaw, Alabama. Coastal Corporation also owned and operated a fleet of oil tankers, tugs, and barges. Sales in 1991 totaled $9.549 billion. Coastal Corporation supplied marine diesel in the Caribbean, natural gas in Colorado, and heating oil in the Northeast. Coastal was a natural gas producer and distributor along with competitors Enron, Williams Companies, and El Paso Energy with which Coastal later merged. Coastal produced, gathered, processed, transported, stored and marketed natural gas throughout the United States and by the 1990s, Coastal's 20,000-mile pipeline network transported five billion cubic feet of natural gas daily. These pipelines include the Iroquois and Great Lakes pipeline, completed in 1991, and the Empire State Pipeline, completed in 1992. ==Founder Oscar Wyatt==

Founder Oscar Wyatt was born into poverty in Beaumont, Texas. He was abandoned by an alcoholic father and was raised by a single mother in Navasota, Texas. Wyatt served in World War II and was decorated and wounded twice as a bomber pilot. Earning a degree in mechanical engineering from Texas A & M University, he gained experience in the oil business selling drill bits from the trunk of his Ford Coupe. He later worked for Kerr-McGee and Reed Roller Bits before becoming a partner in Wymore Oil Company. While El Paso Energy was selling Coastal's petroleum marketing and production assets off piece-by-piece to competitors Valero Energy, Sunoco, and ConocoPhillips, Oscar Wyatt was being investigated for illegally doing business with Iraq's Saddam Hussein in violation of United Sanctions that strictly regulated Iraqi sales of crude oil. In 2007, Oscar Wyatt pleaded guilty in a U.S. federal court to illegally sending payments to Iraq under the Oil-for-Food Programme. At his sentencing hearing, Wyatt's attorney Gerald Shargel (who also defended Mafia boss John Gotti) pointed to a commission report, led by former Federal Reserve Board chairman Paul Volcker, that concluded that about half of the 4,500 companies in the Oil-for-Food Program paid a total of $1.8 billion in kickbacks and illicit surcharges to Saddam’s regime. Wyatt's defense also floated the issue of "vindictive prosecution"—that is, the Bush administration singling out its old nemesis in both the oil patch and politics, Oscar Wyatt, for punishment but leaving other possible violators of the sanctions alone. Prosecutors, in turn, amassed a daunting paper trail and rewarded a few former Iraqi petrocrats with help in obtaining U.S. green cards—as long as they agreed to testify against sanction breakers like Wyatt. ==Coastal corporate history==

Early years Coastal was founded in 1955. The original company name was Coastal States Gas Producing Company. 1970s: Rapid expansion In the early 1970s events in the Middle East overshadowed the rise of Coastal. The Arab-dominated Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), by presenting a united front, began to win price increases. In 1971, OPEC cut production and raised prices by 70 percent, and by 1974 prices had quadrupled, leading to the 1970s energy crisis. LoVaca, Coastal's pipeline subsidiary, had signed fixed-price contracts to supply cities in south Texas with natural gas. With energy prices soaring and supplies dwindling, LoVaca could not meet its contractual obligations. At one point it cut off gas supplies to the cities of San Antonio and Austin during the winter. Wyatt then obtained regulatory permission to increase prices beyond the limits specified in the contracts. LoVaca was the target of lawsuits by outraged customers. Its difficulties caused problems for Coastal for years. Coastal finally settled $1.6 billion in lawsuits by agreeing to spin-off LoVaca. The spin-off, Valero Energy Corporation, formed on December 31, 1979, from LoVaca and other Coastal assets, had annual revenues of about $1 billion. The customers suing Coastal received 55 percent of Valero's stock, with the remaining split among Coastal shareholders, not including Wyatt. At the plaintiffs' insistence, he was excluded from the agreement. Despite the impact of the energy crisis, Coastal maintained its profitability and continued to expand throughout the 1970s. The expansion was not confined to Texas. In 1973, Coastal acquired Colorado Interstate Gas Company, formerly the Derby Oil Company of Wichita, Kansas, along with its three refineries in a $182 million hostile bid. With the acquisition, Coastal became a national company. In 1973, Wyatt renamed the company Coastal States Gas Corporation. Coastal's Eagle Point, New Jersey Refinery was sold to Sunoco while refineries in Texas and Aruba were acquired by Valero Energy. The majority of the Coastal retail gas stations were sold to Phillips 66 which later became Conoco Phillips. Lawsuit and proxy fight against El Paso ==See also==