Kelcy Warren’s Engineering Vision Repurposed America’s Pipelines
Long before he ran one of the country’s largest pipeline networks, Kelcy Warren trained as a civil engineer at the University of Texas at Arlington. That background shows up throughout Energy Transfer’s history, particularly in the roughly dozen major repurposing projects the company has completed under his leadership, converting old infrastructure to entirely new uses.
Turning Gas Pipe Into Oil Pipe
The clearest example is the Trunkline pipeline, a system of about 675 miles that Energy Transfer converted from carrying natural gas to carrying oil. The company connected it to the 1,170-mile Dakota Access Pipeline, which now operates as part of what is called the Bakken Pipeline system and can carry up to 750,000 barrels of oil per day. Warren has pointed to North Dakota’s Bakken Shale, the second largest oilfield in the country, as a region that had no reliable way to reach the market before the pipeline existed. “They were trucking it and railing it, which never competes with pipelines,” he says.
Reading the Direction of the Market
Kelcy Warren has said that recognizing how flows needed to change was as important as the physical construction work itself. In 2014, he spoke about redirecting pipelines that once carried imported gas from the Gulf Coast northward, since the country’s own production out of the Permian and the Marcellus meant gas increasingly needed to move south instead. “That’s a pipeliner’s dream,” he says of the shift, framing what many in the industry saw as a logistical headache as an opening for a company willing to rebuild rather than start from scratch.
The Dakota Access project drew public controversy over its route through North Dakota and into Illinois, but it also became one of the clearest demonstrations of how Energy Transfer, under Warren, has approached growth: buy the asset, then reengineer it for whatever the market needs next. Read this article for additional information.
Find more information about Kelcy Warren on https://www.forbes.com/profile/kelcy-warren/
