The Other Carey

If Democrat Hugh Carey was an obscure politician before his election as New York's Governor last year, his oilman brother Edward was almost invisible. Yet had it not been for Edward, Hugh Carey might not be in office at all. As the secretive, quietly ambitious chief and sole owner of the sprawling Carey Energy Corp., Edward Michael Carey bankrolled his brother's campaign to the tune of $1 million.

For Ed Carey, the largesse .was effortless. He will not disclose his net worth, but Wall Street sources put it at between $200 million and $250 million. That easily ranks the white-haired, 58-year-old Carey (two years older than Hugh) among the 100 or so richest men in the U.S. His company's annual sales are estimated at around $1.25 billion, making it the 23rd largest oil company in the U.S. It certainly is one of the world's largest companies owned by one person. While there are some unexercised stock options held by a few key executives, Carey personally owns all of the far-flung Carey Energy Corp.

Under Scrutiny. Consisting of New England Petroleum Corp. and some 40 affiliates, Carey's company supplies oil to New York State utilities and others along the Eastern seaboard. It also explores in the North Sea, pumps crude in Abu Dhabi, refines in the Bahamas, ships round the world by tanker, truck and pipeline, and owns storage terminals with a capacity of 25 million bbl. Most of the Carey Corp.'s business is with industrial customers. But a subsidiary, Burns Bros., supplies heating oil to New York metropolitan-area homes. In Canada, the group's Caloil affiliate sells gasoline under the Calex sign at 250 service stations.

Carey's political activity was minimal until his brother decided to run for

Governor. Ed contributed nominally to Richard Nixon's 1972 campaign--"not that I thought he was any great man," he says, "but the other fellow [George McGovern] sure looked wild-eyed." Throughout Hugh Carey's campaign, there were accusations by opponents that Ed was buying his brother's way to the statehouse, thus focusing public attention on the oil executive for the first time. Currently, Carey is under scrutiny for other reasons. The Federal Energy Administration is looking into allegations that Carey and other oil companies made excessive profits during the crisis winter of 1973-74 by buying oil cheap and selling it at inflated prices. For his part, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York cleared Carey after an investigation. But there is also an allegation that Edward used the influence of his brother, then a member of the House Ways and Means Committee, to gain approval for an oil deal. Hugh, who himself has asked the Attorney General to look into the case, last week demanded that all records of communications between his old congressional office and the former Federal' nergy Office, where he is alleged to have brought pressure to bear on behalf of his brother, be made public.

Favorite Ploy. Though he is a newcomer to the limelight, Ed Carey is thoroughly seasoned when it comes to the oil business--one of the last of the pre-pocket-calculator oilmen who keeps track of all the constantly shifting variables in his head. The Irish Catholic son of a Shell Oil executive (who had run his own fuel distributorship until it foundered after the 1929 crash), Carey was a hard worker who nonetheless had a penchant for pranks. A favorite Carey ploy, as told by Brother Hugh to two Newsday reporters: telling two businessmen different versions of the same story, then sitting back and enjoying the confrontation as each accuses the other of deception. After attending St. John's University, Carey started a small company to sell fuel oil to homeowners but soon saw the big money in industrial markets.

Then, after World War II, Carey founded New England Petroleum to supply large commercial users (Brother Hugh was an executive until his entry into politics in 1960) and steadily expanded it. Among other things, Ed Carey foresaw in the 1960s that pollution concerns would force utilities to burn more low-sulfur oil and built a giant refinery in the Bahamas to process it for them.

Married 34 years and the father of three grown children, Ed was forced to slow down two years ago after open-heart surgery. That caused him to start looking hard for a successor; if he has found one, no one knows who it is. Yet he has retained the incisive, logical mind that is respected throughout the industry --and a strong independence. In a stand that Governor Hugh's party strongly opposes, he favors decontrol of domestic oil prices. But he opposes import quotas and tariffs. "I just don't understand why we argue with the Arabs to lower the price of oil and then go out and put a tax on it," he says, voicing a sentiment that his brother doubtless would approve.

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