El Paso Lawsuit and Merger
In 2003, Coastal sued the El Paso Corporation for allegedly misrepresenting it's intentions for Coastal assets. After the merger of Coastal and El Paso Corporation, the former began divesting itself of Coastal assets beginning in 2001. El Paso needed the cash to repay mounting debt it had acquired from following much the same business model as Enron, where El Paso had heavily leveraged itself to fuel sales into new markets for electricity.
As Coastal's petroleum marketing and production assets were being sold off piece by piece to competitors Valero, Sunoco, and Conoco Phillips, Oscar Wyatt was being investigated for illegally doing business with Iraq's Saddamn Hussein in violation of United Sanctions that strictly regulated Iraqi sales of crude oil. In 2007, Oscar Wyatt pled guilty in a U.S. federal court for illegally sending payments to Iraq under the Oil for Food program.
Read more about this topic: Coastal Corporation