“I can’t pick the tops, but I can pick the bottoms.”

Jeff Sandefer was once my teacher in school.Since graduating from Harvard Business School in 1986, Sandefer has had many successful business ventures, amassing a personal fortune of hundreds of millions of dollars.

Here is the story of how this Texas oilman acquired 17 billion barrels of Australian shale oil reserves in a controversial deal that eventually generated roughly $150 million for his philanthropic organizations. Those nonprofit groups now play a major role in Sandefer’s efforts to change higher education in Texas.

Confidentiality agreements prohibit Sandefer from revealing details of the Australian play. He says he can’t even confirm the identity of his partners, the Ziff brothers of New York, even though their involvement is widely known.

Some in the Australian media have portrayed Sandefer’s 2003 investment in Southern Pacific Petroleum as a calculated ploy to force SPP into liquidation and hijack the company’s vast reserves and technology. Read more of this post