Fueling Knowledge: LSU's ties to oil and gas stretch back to the 1930s
An aerial photograph of LSU's campus circa 1938. (LSU Hill Memorial Library photo)
This is part one of a two-part investigative series about the long-held relationship between the fossil fuel industry and LSU and was reported in partnership with WWNO, WRKF and Floodlight. You can listen to the accompanying Sea Change podcast here.
To LSU administrators 55 years ago, the front yard of fraternity houses seemed like the 'least objectionable' location on campus to drill seven oil wells.
That's according to the Oct. 2, 1970, minutes of the LSU Board of Supervisors' Oil and Gas Committee, which is now defunct. Seven months later, The Advocate reported a 'wildcat well' was drilled at the junction of Dalrymple and West Lakeshore drives.
For decades stretching back to at least the 1930s, the committee's task was to decide where on university-owned land drilling would be done, what companies would get the leases and how to use the money the drilling brought to the university.
The Illuminator has reviewed hundreds of pages of historical documents and interviewed historians and geographers to examine LSU's relationship with the fossil fuel industry. What started as a simple business transaction in the early 20th century — money for the mineral rights to university land — has grown over nearly a century into a full blown-partnership, with leading oil and gas companies donating tens of millions of dollars for research and other university priorities in the 21st century and getting influence over that research in return.
The partnership of today, and where it will go in the future, will be explored in part two of this series.
Throughout the decades it was active, the Oil and Gas Committee's membership included major players in the fossil fuel industry in Louisiana, including Patrick F. Taylor, a philanthropist responsible for the creation of the Taylor Opportunity Program for Students, or TOPS. A building bearing his name houses LSU's engineering school. Former Gov. John McKeithen, an attorney who managed an oil and gas company, also served on the committee after his two terms in office.
Drilling took place on LSU's main campus, which is built on what's referred to on maps and in geological documents as the 'University Oil Field.' During the 20th century, dozens of wells drew oil from beneath the ground where students lived and studied and on land the LSU AgCenter maintained.
Throughout hundreds of pages of meeting minutes, there was very little hesitation about drilling on this land.
In one 1954 meeting, a proposal to drill under the Mississippi River raised objections from the dean of the Ag School and from the head of LSU's dairy department, but the committee unanimously moved forward with the drilling anyway.
During a 1984 meeting, Helen Crawford, who later served as board chair, asked if the lease being debated 'would unduly deter people from wanting to do business with LSU.' In response, Ruth Miller, the first woman to serve on the Louisiana Mineral Board and the first woman to be chair of the LSU Board of Supervisors, pointed out that the discussion involved highly sensitive agricultural lands that LSU had a duty to 'preserve and protect.'
But each time these concerns surfaced, documents show the discussion quickly moved on and no one objected to the numerous drilling proposals.
Each year, reports show the university brought in hundreds of thousands of dollars from these drilling deals — a small but strong beginning to LSU's ongoing relationship with the fossil fuel industry.
Throughout its history, LSU has looked to oil and gas to help fill its coffers.
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As the university grew, it sought funding beyond meager state appropriations. The money LSU brought in from its mineral leases was not enough, so in the 1950s its board created a private fundraising arm to solicit money from the oil and gas industry: the LSU Foundation.
The LSU Foundation of today is something of a black hole. As a private nonprofit organization distinct from the university, it doesn't have to disclose its donors and is not required to provide any records related to its work to the public. Only an annual tax document provides some information on its spending.
But in 1955, the LSU Board of Supervisors began holding public meetings to create the foundation, which was officially launched in 1960. Those meeting minutes — as well as its incorporating documents and minutes of early LSU Foundation board meetings — paint a picture of an organization created with oil and gas in mind.
These records, and other documents reviewed for this report, are housed at LSU's Hill Memorial Library, which preserves documents related to the university's history.
One document from a 1958 meeting has two columns filled with names and blank spaces, each representing a potential member of the board who would guide the LSU Foundation. Among the names were major oil and gas leaders such as Murphy J. Foster, a son of and father to Louisiana governors with whom he shared a name. Under each blank was typed the name of a company from which they sought to recruit a board member: – Shell, Cities Service (now Citgo), Conoco, Delta Tank, Gulf States Utilities and more — a sort of corporate funder wish list.
Instead of hiring a foundation staff, the board mulled over borrowing an executive from the oil and gas industry to run the organization and using employees from their companies to do its administrative work.
The industry-heavy board of the infant foundation looked to the oil and gas industry at every turn, according to archived records.
For its first fundraising project, LSU Board chairman and former Democratic state Rep. Theo Cangelosi of Baton Rouge, who helped mold the foundation, suggested seeking donations for a theater from the petro-engineering industry. Plans for the building would include a mural celebrating oil and gas.
While this particular dedication to industry didn't come to fruition, LSU's campus is littered with buildings, study rooms and other facilities named for petrochemical companies and industry leaders.
The foundation's first 'Founding Company Member' — a title bestowed upon donors giving at least $10,000 — was Standard Oil, one of the first companies to discover oil in Louisiana. Today, it is known as ExxonMobil, a company LSU recognizes today as 'among the most generous corporate donors' to LSU.
This industry money has been sought throughout LSU's history to fill the gap between state funding provided to the university and the resources needed to achieve university leadership's dreams.
'Legislative appropriations can be relied upon to furnish the bread and meat of a university's program, but the sauce, which represents the difference between the great and the mediocre institutions, will come from benefactors,' reads a 1955 report to the Board of Supervisors from the a committee looking into the value of creating a foundation.
In the early 20th century, the goal was to make LSU 'the Harvard of the South' — an aspiration of former Gov. Huey Long.
In 2025, the goal LSU President William Tate has set is to join the American Association of Universities, a prestigious group of the nation's top-tier research institutions. To achieve this lofty goal, LSU has to increase its research spending by tens of millions of dollars.
Most of that spending will come from government grants, which university officials are urging professors to pursue more. But some will come from industry partners, such as those in the energy sector.
'It's time for a partnership in significant fashion to link the work at LSU in our energy areas, including alternative energy and creating ways to keep that industry vibrant here in this state and for our country,' Tate told reporters in 2022.
'Energy is our leading industry in this state. We must protect it,' Tate added.
While critics disagree with LSU's role as a protector of industry, it is a key role the university has played for several decades.
Amid the energy crisis of the 1980s, which had a significant impact on the state's oil-dependent budget, lawmakers created the Center for Energy Studies at LSU. Though the center is independent of the legislature, its work was intended to inform policy decisions. Part of its early mission was to study ways to keep pulling as much oil and gas from the ground as possible.
After this decades-long partnership, many students and faculty think it's time for a change. Students are calling for LSU to divest the foundation's endowment from the fossil fuel industry and researchers are sounding the alarm that universities intertwined with the oil and gas industry risk their credibility.
Despite this warning, LSU is bringing in more oil and gas money than ever before.
Part two of this investigation will explore what that money is costing the university.
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