When Kelcy Warren stepped back from Energy Transfer’s top operating role in 2021, the company didn’t turn to a single successor. Instead, it split the chief executive position between two longtime executives, Tom Long and Mackie McCrea. Understanding who they are helps explain why Energy Transfer chose that structure over a more conventional single-CEO handoff.
Different Backgrounds, Shared Tenure
Long joined Energy Transfer in 2016 as chief financial officer, a role that put him at the center of the company’s balance sheet and capital planning. McCrea’s history with the company runs much deeper. He had been at Energy Transfer since 1997, a year after Kelcy Warren co-founded it, and spent his career there running commercial and operations functions, the side of the business focused on actually moving gas, crude and refined products through the network day after day.
Pairing a finance-oriented executive with an operations-oriented one gave Energy Transfer coverage across two distinct areas that Kelcy Warren had personally overseen across nearly two and a half decades as chief executive. The arrangement became official on January 1, 2021, following an October 2020 announcement, with Warren moving into the Executive Chairman and Chairman of the Board roles, a change that kept him close to the business without putting him in charge of running it day to day.
A Model That Has Lasted
Five years later, Long and McCrea remain co-chief executives, and the company has grown considerably under their joint leadership, expanding to nearly 140,000 miles of pipeline across 44 states. The two have also overseen billion-dollar acquisitions, including the 2023 purchase of Crestwood Equity Partners and the 2024 acquisition of WTG Midstream, both completed while Kelcy Warren remained involved as chairman. The longevity of the arrangement suggests Energy Transfer’s board made a deliberate choice in 2021, one built around complementary expertise rather than simply finding the closest available replacement for a founder who had run the company alone for decades.