Why Texas, Texas A&M and OU love the oil business

[dan_s]

Gifts bequeathed to some schools decades ago have generated millions in recent years as fracking unlocks oil and gas reserves hidden beneath lands donated by generous alumni. For example, take Henry Mosier, who enrolled in the University of Oklahoma more than a century ago. Mosier died in 1966, bequeathing everything to his wife. She died a decade later, leaving bank accounts, investments, farmland, and mineral rights altogether valued at $1.4 million. Her will left 60 percent of the estate to the University of Oklahoma Foundation. As hydraulic fracturing unlocked oil and gas reserves, the donation spun more money for OU. Last year the Mosier mineral rights generated $763,000 in cash flow. In 2014, with a lease bonus, they produced $2.35 million. The University of Texas holds the third-largest college endowment, just behind Harvard and Yale. Much of its $24 billion is derived from holdings in the Permian Basin ceded to the university by the state of Texas in 1881. Texas A&M, with $10.5 billion, ranks eighth-wealthiest for the same reason.