10 Facts About Oscar Wyatt

Oscar Wyatt was the founder of Coastal Corporation and a decorated bomber pilot in World War II.

In 1924 Oscar Wyatt was born into poverty in Beaumont, Texas, left by an alcoholic father and raised by a single mother in Navasota, Texas.

Oscar Wyatt entered the refining industry in the early 1960s, and he began to attend Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries meetings in Vienna, Austria.

The US refineries were optimized for high sulfur crude oil, so Oscar Wyatt began to buy Iraqi oil in 1972.

Oscar Wyatt retired as the Coastal Corporation's chairman in 1997 yet continued to serve as Executive Committee chairman until Coastal's sale to the El Paso Natural Gas Company in January 2001.

Oscar Wyatt produced gas, and collected it from other smaller producers to sell at a better rate to larger pipeline companies.

In 2007 Oscar Wyatt pleaded guilty in a US federal court for illegally sending payments to Iraq under the Oil-for-Food Program.

In October 2007 Oscar Wyatt pleaded guilty to conspiring to, under the Oil-for-Food Program, make illegal payments to Saddam Hussein's Iraq.

Oscar Wyatt received a one-year prison sentence, and was sentenced to serve in the minimum security camp at the Federal Correctional Complex, Beaumont, in Beaumont, Texas.

Oscar Wyatt invested in frozen foods distribution and, in July 2001, created a new company - the NuCoastal Corporation, renamed Coastal Energy - to explore energy opportunities available across the globe, including Malaysia, and sold Coastal Energy for $500 million in 2013.