The University of Oklahoma is under legislative scrutiny after allegedly getting caught in the act of tailoring its research findings to please a donor.
EnergyWire obtained “thousands of pages of emails” detailing the school’s pitch to get $25 million from “billionaire oilman” Harold Hamm, already a major donor to the school.
Hamm had pressured David Boren, the university president and former Democratic U.S. senator, to keep a state seismologist from talking to reporters about the alleged source of earthquakes that have increasingly rattled the state – oil and gas drilling – and route all requests through the school’s PR, according to the emails.
Hamm also complained about congressional Democrats pushing for hearings on drilling as the source of quakes.
As they were developing the money pitch to Hamm, the then-dean of the geology department, Larry Grillot, told Oklahoma Geological Survey subordinates to draft a statement labeling most of the quakes as caused by “natural stresses”:
Nothing in the emails and other records reviewed by EnergyWire make a direct connection between man-made earthquakes and the contribution university officials were seeking, but they occurred around the same time. Grillot and other officials would likely have been aware of both.
After the school learned Hamm wasn’t going to donate, the school changed its position on the quakes – which also “coincided” with Republican Gov. Mary Fallin changing her position on the quakes from “natural” to “very likely” manmade.
Hamm claims “we never talked about” making the $25 million pledge.
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