Everything about Arbusto Energy totally explained
Arbusto Energy (sometimes referred to as
Arbusto Oil) was a
petroleum and
energy company formed in
Midland,
Texas, in
1977, by
President of the United States George W. Bush and a group of investors which included
Dorothy Bush,
Lewis Lehrman,
William Henry Draper III,
Bill Gammell, and
James R. Bath.
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 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 most shares in Harken to a Los Angeles broker named Ralph D. Smith. One week later Harken announced an overall loss of $23.2 million triggering an investigation by the
U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission into the sale.
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