Arbusto Energy (sometimes
referred to as Arbusto Oil) was a petroleum and energy
company formed in Midland
, Texas
, in 1977,
for former US
President George W.
Bush by a group of investors which
included
Dorothy Bush,
Lewis Lehrman,
William Henry Draper III,
Bill Gammell, and
James R. Bath.
The company's chief financial officer was
K. Michael
Conaway, now a United
States Congressman from Texas.
It was later revealed that Bath made an investment of $50,000 while
representing
Salem bin Laden of the
Saudi Binladin Group. This fact
became controversial after the
September 11, 2001 attacks due to
Salem bin Laden being an older,
half-brother of
Osama bin Laden, who is alleged to have
planned and financed the attacks. Upon Salem bin Laden's death in a
1988 airplane crash, in Texas, his interest in Arbusto (along with
other Binladin Group assets), passed to
Khalid bin Mahfouz.
In 1982, Arbusto became known as
Bush Exploration, a year
after
George H. W. Bush
became Vice President. A friend of the Bush family,
Philip Uzielli, invested $1 million in 1982
in exchange for a 10% stake in the company, at a time when the
whole company was valued at less than $400,000. As it neared
financial collapse again in September 1984, Bush Exploration merged
with
Spectrum 7 Energy Corp., a company
owned by
William DeWitt and
Mercer Reynolds. Bush became
Chairman and CEO of Spectrum 7.
In 1985 Spectrum 7 reported a net loss of $1.5 million and was
bought in 1986 for $2.2 million by
Harken
Energy, with Bush joining the Harken board of directors and
finance audit committee.
In 1987 the Saudi investor
Abdullah
Taha Bakhsh bought most of
Union Bank of Switzerland's shares
in Harken becoming its third largest investor owning 17% of the
company. He was represented on the board by
Talat M. Othman. Another investor was
Ghaith R. Pharaon, a partner of Bakhsh's, who would
later be involved in the
Bank of Credit and
Commerce International scandal, and is currently the target of
an international dragnet.
In January
1990 with the company in the same state as its previous
incarnations, it was awarded a contract to drill for crude oil off
the coast of Bahrain
, a move that
shocked industry insiders as Harken had no previous experience
outside of the US or of drilling offshore.
In June 1990 Bush sold more than half of his shares in Harken to a
Los Angeles broker named Ralph D. Smith. One week after the sale
Harken announced an overall loss of $23.2 million triggering an
investigation by the
U.S. Securities and Exchange
Commission into the sale.
Further reading
- Beaty, Jonathan & Gwynne, S.C. (1993). The Outlaw Bank:
A Wild Ride into the Secret Heart of BCCI. Random House Inc.
ISBN 0-679-41384-7.
- Hatfield, J. H. (2002). Fortunate Son: George W.
Bush and the Making of an American President (3rd ed.).
Soft Skull Press. ISBN 1-887128-84-0.
References
- "Arbusto"
is a Spanish and Portuguese
word translating variously to "bush" or "shrub".
External links
Wikis
Quiz
Map
Search