So-Called ‘Libertarian’ Koch Brothers Make a Mint on Government Contracts Selling Crude Oil
Peter D'Abrosca
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Charles and David Koch, two of America’s most well-known political benefactors, have a long history of profiting from government contracts.
The self-proclaimed libertarian business moguls, who spend tens of millions of dollars in pursuit of bolstering their limited government bona fides telling the public they avidly support free market capitalism, quietly rake in tens of millions of dollars across several sectors of their industrial empire.
“Koch Supply & Trading, LP, one of the world’s largest crude oil trading companies, will become the newest supplier of crude oil to the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) under President Bush’s plan, announced last November, to fill the nation’s emergency oil stockpile to its full capacity by 2005,” according to a Department of Energy report.
The SPR is a government-run oil reserve that “provides the nation with an energy resource that can be used as directed by the President to protect Americans against future supply disruptions.”
Charles and David Koch own Koch Industries, the second largest company in America. They are well known for opposing tariffs, government subsidies and government contracts, instead proselytizing about “free trade.” Right now, they are bashing President Donald J. Trump because of his stance on trade and imposing tariffs on foreign goods.
Americans for Prosperity, Freedom Partners Chamber of Commerce and the LIBRE Initiative, non-profits that are all financially-backed by the Kochs’s “champion the far-reaching benefits of trade and oppose tariffs and other barriers.”
Except when government dealings benefit them, of course.
“The contract to Koch is part of the Administration’s ‘royalty-in-kind’ exchange program in which crude oil from federal leases in the Gulf of Mexico is exchanged for oil to be stored in the SPR for emergency protection against future supply disruptions,” says the DOE report.
“The program is carried out cooperatively with the U.S. Department of Interior’s Minerals Management Service (MMS). MMS recently awarded contracts for a similar amount of royalty oil to be delivered from designated Gulf of Mexico production platforms to “market centers.” Koch will receive the crude oil at the market centers and deliver “in-kind” crude to the SPR.”
In fact, the Koch’s have received at least $100 million in government contracts, all while railing against the ills of big government.
Charles and David Koch represent the elite donor class that has, along with globalist politicians, enriched itself at the expense of the average American.
The Koch’s do not oppose Trump’s agenda because they believe in limited government. They oppose it because it means the end of their revolving-door relationship with politicians and lobbyists who have long-served only their interests, not the interests of the people.
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