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With an estimated net worth of $2.3 billion, Ray Hunt ranked No. 78 on the 2003 “Forbes 400 Richest Americans” list. Hunt’s fortune originated in rights his father bought in 1930 to a sea of 5 billion barrels of east Texas crude. Polygamist H.L. Hunt pumped $100 million into trusts that he left to two of his three families. Placid Oil fed his first family’s trusts, while Hunt Oil benefited the family that H.L. started with a Hunt Oil secretary. Ray Hunt later formed Hunt Consolidated as an umbrella for Hunt Oil, his Dallas real estate empire and other other ventures. Hunt Oil and Halliburton Co. (where Hunt sits on the board) are developing the $1.6 billion Camisea gas project in a Peruvian rain forest reserve established to protect indigenous people. Gas will be shipped to a processing plant in the buffer zone of Peru’s only marine sanctuary in pipelines cut through the rain forest. On environmental grounds in mid 2003 the U.S. Export Import Bank rejected a request for $214 million in public funding for Camisea, which Amazon Watch calls “the most damaging project in the Amazon Basin.” Two weeks later, the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) stepped in with $135 million in loans. While the United States controls 30 percent of the IDB’s multilateral vote, Camisea promoters lined up the votes to approve this funding with U.S. IDB Director Jose Fourquet abstaining. Until recently, the company website said that Hunt Oil Vice President Hunter Hunt (Ray Hunt’s son) served as George W. Bush’s “primary Policy Advisor responsible for energy issues.” Ray Hunt is a veteran powerbroker. After raising $4 million for then-Senator Phil Gramm in a single 1995 fundraiser, Hunt boasted that this one-day take was “the largest in the history of American politics.” A monument to Hunt’s local political influence is Dallas’ $210 million, 53-acre Reunion complex, which Hunt spent a year secretly planning with then-City Manager George Schrader without informing the city council. The city received just one bid for the huge project in 1973 and approved a remarkable contract with Hunt. One provision stipulated that the city would refurbish the old Union Terminal train station and then rent two floors of it to Hunt for $100 a year over 100 years. Accusing the city of breaching this contract, Hunt later pressed a $1.4 million claim. The City Council voted in 1993 to pay Hunt a $440,000 settlement. “This is giving welfare to the rich,” complained dissenting council member Domingo Garcia. “Somebody owed us money, and they threatened to take us to court. Now, we’re paying people to be quiet.” After Dallas’ First Republic Bank failed in 1989 at a record taxpayer cost of $3.6 billion, Hunt and other ex-directors and officers of the bank (see Robert Dedman) agreed to pay $17.5 million in 1993 to settle related charges. “Those were very rich, very important, and some very self-important people,” a federal prosecutor said. “They don’t understand that when you have enormous problems you have to do something about it or quit the bank. It is endemic among directors across the country. But there is a peculiar brand of it in Texas.” Then-Governor Bush fast-tracked an oil tax break in 1999 by declaring it a legislative emergency. Billed as relief for small producers, the tax cut benefited energy giants as well as the oil companies of nine future Pioneers, including a $85,176 tax break for Hunt energy interests. Bush appointed Hunt to the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board in 2001.
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Of Special Interest
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| Profile last updated
Dec 5, 2003
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