George Kaiser on the Gulf (Part 3)
How he makes his billions
This is a revised, expanded version of a radio series that aired on Focus: Black Oklahoma from July-September this year. Part 1 is here; Part 2 is here.
Flood on the Tracks
George Kaiser is known, in Tulsa and nationwide, for his philanthropy. But there’s little written on his businesses—on how he acquires the funds to build the Gathering Place, or to buy Bob Dylan’s back pages. This series spotlights his investment in the Gulf Coast’s liquefied natural gas (LNG) boom.
That involvement dates to February, when Kaiser’s Excelerate Energy—he controls some 76% of the firm’s total voting power—agreed to purchase LNG from Venture Global’s forthcoming southeast Louisiana facility. Every year, for 20 years, Excelerate will ship 700,000 tons of LNG to points worldwide from the Plaquemines Parish export terminal.
The site, just six miles from Ironton—the historically-Black town still recovering from Hurricane Ida—is “a major source of toxic air pollutants,” a $21 billion project on flood-prone land.
This is not some side venture for Kaiser, operating on a track parallel to his giving. They’re interlinked.
No Response
In Tulsa, the George Kaiser Family Foundation (GKFF) supports the arts, early childhood education, and reproductive health. Asked about its core mission, Executive Direct Ken Levit remarked, “We’re most focused on intervening as early as possible in the cycle of poverty, to help the next generation have an equal shot at the American Dream.”
But Levit undersold the scope of the Foundation’s aims. It also works to boost Kaiser’s profits, as Excelerate’s filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission reveal. GKFF, those documents show, first owned two of the vessels Excelerate uses to ship LNG around the world. Excelerate leased them from the Foundation for decades, then bought them outright last year.
Untangling the relationship between Kaiser’s philanthropic and business interests is difficult, not least because they refuse to share information. Excelerate, when I was developing this story for radio in the spring and summer, never responded to my interview requests. When I turned to GKFF, a program officer directed me back to Excelerate—which, again, failed to respond.
I also described Kaiser’s transaction—selling LNG vessels from his Foundation to his company—to two experts in nonprofit economics. Neither could explain why Kaiser’s charity would have owned natural gas assets; neither had even a reference point, could think of a precedent, for the deal.
“Permission to poison our communities”
Kaiser’s labyrinth of charities and private firms seems impenetrable by design. Its complexity curbs efforts to learn the full extent of his interests, allowing him to control his public image. He can promote himself as someone who stumbled into wealth, whose main aim is to build “a vibrant and inclusive Tulsa.”
“I call it social license to operate,” Jessi Parfait, the anthropologist and United Houma Nation member, replied when I asked about this kind of image-laundering. She named Shell, the British oil firm that sponsors the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, as a similar case. The firm boosts itself—on billboards along Interstate 10—as The Rhythm of Louisiana, deflecting attention from its toxic Norco refinery.
“They’re just trying to get permission to poison our communities, destroy our land,” Jessi argued, “for the least amount that they can possibly get back.”
Zero
Kaiser’s social license, in Tulsa, is secure. But he had to earn it, and the story was different decades ago: community investment, as he amassed his wealth, was a low priority.
Consider his record of tax avoidance. The Center for Public Integrity’s Charles Lewis and Bill Allison documented it in The Cheating of America:
in 1989, Kaiser’s return listed “taxable income of $11,699—equal to an hourly wage of $5.62,” and he “paid $2,688 in federal income taxes”;
in both 1990 and 1991, he paid no income tax;
in 1997, the IRS sent Kaiser and his wife “a Notice of Deficiency…for $48.6 million for back taxes, interests, and penalties.”
During this stretch—in 1992—Kaiser arrived on the Forbes 400 list. He remains there today.
“The only commodity you can legally steal”
But allegations of underpayment persist.
Several have been leveled against Kaiser since his Forbes debut, from Oklahomans across the state:
in 1993, Grady County landowners “alleged that Kaiser-Francis Oil”—the family firm Kaiser took over in the 1960s—“paid them less than they’re owed for the gas the company drains from their property,” but were denied class certification;
in 2004, mineral rights owners—mainly in the Panhandle—won $74 million in damages, after a jury determined Kaiser-Francis had “underpaid royalties and charged illegal fees”;
in 2010, Washita County landowners charged Kaiser-Francis with “failing to pay [them] their percentage,” and the firm settled for $35 million;
in 2019, a Blaine County plaintiff accused Kaiser-Francis of “knowing and willful underpayment” of gas royalties, receiving a $10 million settlement from the company.
Natural gas, as Kaiser himself allegedly once remarked, “is the only commodity you can legally steal.”
“Without whitewashing”
Leander Perez seemed to share this view, even if he never voiced his philosophy. The segregationist political boss who ran Plaquemines Parish for 50 years, Perez—who died in 1969—built “an oil fortune worth more than $80 million,” acquired through secrecy and fraud.
But resistance punctuated his reign, and Reverend Tyronne Edwards documents it in The Forgotten People. It’s likely the only monograph on the Parish’s civil rights struggles, and its author divides his time between the Parish Council, and the museum where I visited him last spring.
Down a narrow gravel drive in Phoenix, across the Mississippi from Plaquemines LNG, is the house where Edwards’ mother lived. After her death, he transformed the space, curating the Forgotten People Museum—dedicated both to her memory, and to Plaquemines Parish’s Black history.
The region’s enslaved peoples, and their African origins; the era, under Perez, when organizers taught late-night voter education courses in secret at local churches; the efforts of Black fishermen to preserve their way of life as commercial interests encroached—these were just some of the topics Edwards covered, as he led me through his museum in early May.
“I did this without no grant—not one fundraiser. Everything here came out of my pocket,” Edwards emphasized as he took me from room to room.
He’s against charity on principle. “When you get from funders, they want you to change your narrative,” he began, outlining a mode of work directly against Kaiser’s philanthropy. “And I didn’t want to. I want to talk about white supremacy. I want to talk about voter suppression. Without whitewashing.”