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University and college endowments have profited mightily from their stakes in oil and natural gas companies, exceeding all other asset classes, Robert Shapiro, chairman of Sonecon LLC, said in a Jan. 23 press call.

For at least a decade, such shares produced the highest returns for those endowments and crushed other U.S. stocks in comparable time frames, said Shapiro, a former U.S. Department of Commerce official.

Climate activists such as Bill McKibben have launched initiatives to get universities to divest within five years from corporations that hold fossil fuel reserves. But McKibben’s campaign, called “Do the math,” to rid endowments of oil and gas holdings might prove to have an ironic slogan.

The math, in fact, adds up exceptionally well for higher education endowments that invested in oil and gas stocks. The ratio of returns for oil and natural gas assets to their share of endowments’ total assets was 2.8 to 1, Shapiro said.

Shapiro, an economic advisor to the presidential campaigns of Bill Clinton, Al Gore, Sen. John Kerry and President Obama, said his study had nothing to do with McKibben’s campaign. He said the study was meant to show the best payoff for educational needs.

“University endowments can do whatever they want,” he said. “The question is do they want to dump their highest-performing assets?”

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