This will allow the producers to ship to the high-paying Asian region instead of the U.S. Midwest, where excess crude at the Oklahoma storage hub has decreased prices.
The family business Charles inherited consisted of an engineering firm, part-interest in a Minnesota refinery, a crude-oil-gathering pipeline in Oklahoma and some cattle ranches.
Dozens of small oil and gas producers across Oklahoma and the Midwest are suing Goldman Sachs, BP and ConocoPhillips, claiming the defendants conspired to defraud them out of proceeds for crude oil they delivered just before the collapse of Oklahoma-based pipeline giant Semgroup in the summer of 2008.