U. of Texas Announces a $500-Million Pledge
October 1, 2008 | Read Time: 1 minute
The University of Texas stands to receive a $500-million pledge from an international oil company in Fort Worth — if the company wins a legal battle over its interests in a Russian natural-gas field, reports The Austin American-Statesman.
Moncrief Oil is suing a Russian oil company that currently controls the gas field in question because, it says, the Russian company is not honoring its contracts with a subsidiary. The American oil company says it owns 40 percent of the field, valued at $16-billion, and that several years ago the Russian company sold a stake in the field to a German company without Moncrief’s knowledge, the paper reports.
The university’s announcement of the pledge caught the attention of Rob Reich, co-director of the Stanford Center of Philanthropy and Civil Society at Stanford University. “Making a public announcement about a pledge that is conditional on the outcome of a trial is unusual,” he tells the Statesman.
