(The Epoch Times)—Two Oklahoma officials are concerned that a state retirement system’s overseers may have tailored a proposal request (RFP) to favor an investment firm that allegedly boycotts oil and gas companies.
Oklahoma State Treasurer Todd Russ and Auditor and Inspector Cindy Byrd are concerned that the RFP gave BlackRock Investments responsibility for 60 percent of the Oklahoma Public Employee Retirement System’s (OPERS) assets—approximately $7 billion— in possible violation of state law.
BlackRock is on a list of companies barred by state law from handling state funds because it boycotts oil and gas companies. The oil industry has been a driver of Oklahoma’s economy for over a century.
State Street, another firm handling state funds, is also on the prohibited list. But it hasn’t drawn quite as much attention as its larger competitor.
This may violate the Oklahoma Energy Discrimination Elimination Act of 2022 (EDEA). The law prohibits state investments from being handled by any firm that boycotts oil and gas producers.
BlackRock representatives did not respond to an email from The Epoch Times. However, in a letter to the Oklahoma Treasurer’s office, BlackRock Senior Managing Director and Vice Chairman Mark McCombe said BlackRock is focused on its responsibility to its clients.
“BlackRock does not boycott energy companies,” Mr. McCombe wrote in the letter.
According to the letter, BlackRock has $319 billion invested in public energy companies worldwide, with $15 billion invested in Oklahoma. More than 90 percent of that is “invested in traditional energies like oil and gas.”
There are indications that the investment firm is separating itself from ESG investing. In recent weeks, BlackRock has stopped using the term. In a report released in August, BlackRock reported backing 7 percent of ESG proposals at company meetings in the 12 months to June, a sharp drop from last year when it supported 22 percent and 2021 when it voted in favor of nearly half.
In the letter, Mr. McCombe pointed out that ESG policies are a reality and that there is a trend of increased government regulation and consumer demand for alternatives to carbon-based energy.
“As fiduciaries, we advise clients on major structural trends that we believe may impact their portfolios. One such trend is the change in government policies, technology, and consumer preferences associated with the transition to a low-carbon economy,” the letter reads. “Our investment decisions are governed strictly by our fiduciary duty to clients, and that duty requires us to prioritize our clients’ financial interests above any commitments or pledges not required by law.”
But Mr. Russ and Ms. Byrd say their concerns go beyond the EDEA law and boycotting oil companies. The pair also questioned the RFP process at the Oklahoma State Pension Commission meeting on Sept. 12. The commission oversees several state pension and retirement funds.
After that meeting, Joseph Fox, OPERS executive director, promised to explain why BlackRock was selected.
Mr. Fox did not return an email from The Epoch Times. However, he did send information to Mr. Russ and Ms. Byrd. In a memo dated Aug. 23—the same day the commission voted to hire BlackRock—Mr. Fox wrote that BlackRock most closely met the requirements set by OPERS for the investment work.
OPERS Claimed Exemption
He wrote that OPERS claimed an exemption under the EDEA law based on its “fiduciary responsibility” to the state employees whose funds are being managed.
“A state governmental entity shall not be subject to any requirement of this act if the state governmental entity determines that such requirement would be inconsistent with its fiduciary responsibility concerning the investment of entity assets or other duties imposed by law relating to the investment of entity assets,” the EDEA exemption reads.
According to the OPERS memo, divesting would cost at least $9.7 million in fees and other costs.
“It is conceivable that the total loss in market value experienced by the plans due to these actions could potentially be multiple times that of the estimated costs stated above,” the OPERS memo reads.
But Mr. Russ said the exemption claimed by OPERS does not apply. He claimed the RFP was written to eliminate most of BlackRock’s competition.
RFP Process ‘Tightened’
Mr. Russ said “rigged” was too strong for the RFP process. But, he said it did appear OPERS officials had one company in mind.
“The RFP within itself wasn’t a problem. They tightened up the RFP to meet the current constituent and investor,” Mr. Russ said.
Ms. Byrd was less diplomatic in her assessment.
“In the auditing world, we do call that practice ‘bid rigging,’” she said.
On Sept. 14, Mr. Russ sent a letter to Mr. Fox and the OPERS Board of Trustees outlining three concerns. Based on those, Mr. Russ wrote, the OPERS board should have selected another firm or sought more applicants.
Mr. Russ sent copies of the letter to the Speaker of the Oklahoma House of Representatives, Rep. Charles McCall, Oklahoma Senate President Pro Tempore Sen. Greg Treat, and Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond.
Neither Mr. McCall nor Mr. Treat returned calls seeking comment. Phil Bacharach, a spokesman for Mr. Drummond’s office, said the Attorney General had no comment.
In the letter, Mr. Russ wrote that rather than spread the state investments among different managers to reduce risk; the OPERS board kept more than half of the pension funds under BlackRock.
His letter claims five of the eight funds had low or no switching fees. To determine the costs for the last three would require a complete RFP process, which Mr. Russ claims did not happen.
He wrote that respondents were given only three weeks to present their proposals in this case. Mr. Russ pointed out that previous RFPs allowed up to six weeks for a response. He claimed that OPERS summarily decided to keep BlackRock without fully considering the competing firms.
Finally, he wrote that the decision to retain BlackRock’s services violated OPERS fiduciary duties because of BlackRock’s commitment to ESG principles.
“Companies like BlackRock and State Street have openly made commitments to use all assets under management—including OPERS’ assets—not for the benefit of OPERS, but for their own ideological objectives,” Mr. Russ wrote.
Bill Pan contributed to this report.
Two Storms, One Harvest
Every food crisis in living memory has been a one-shock event. The 2008 price spike was a commodity bubble. The 2020 shortages were a logistics failure. The 2022 grain scare was a war on one exporter’s ports. Each time, the system bent, adjusted, and recovered, and each time the experts assured us afterward that global markets are simply too big and too diversified to fail.
What nobody in Washington seems eager to discuss is that 2026 is shaping up to be something the modern food system has never actually faced. Two independent shocks, one climatic and one geopolitical, are converging on the same harvest cycle at the same time. Not sequentially. Simultaneously.
Start with the weather. The Pacific Ocean is currently building toward what forecasters now openly call a record event. NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center puts the odds of at least a strong El Niño near 88 percent, with roughly two in three odds it reaches “very strong” status, the tier reserved for perhaps three or four events in the entire satellite era. Every major global model now projects a median peak in Super El Niño territory, and most of them project it exceeding the 2015-16 event, which until now held the modern record. Sea surface anomalies were already brushing the super threshold in mid-July, months before these events normally peak. The atmosphere has already shifted into El Niño mode, and the event is forecast to crest in late fall and early winter.
This is not about “climate change.” It’s about the standard cycles of weather, and the cycle we’re currently in is one that has likely devastated societies in the past. We’re better prepared as a society today, but not all Americans are equally prepared.
Serious households have started doing the quiet math on their own. Grocery bills tell part of the story, and the forecast maps tell the rest, which is why long-term food storage has moved from fringe hobby to mainstream line item in the family budget, with established suppliers like Heaven’s Harvest seeing demand from people who five years ago would have rolled their eyes at the idea. That instinct is not paranoia. It is pattern recognition, and the pattern is worth walking through carefully.
Editor’s Note: Heaven’s Harvest IS a sponsor, but the warnings of this article are real and would be written even if we didn’t have a survival food sponsor. With that said, those who take advantage of what they offer can use promo code “Patriot” for 15% off.
The Fertilizer Clock Is Already Running
While the Pacific warms, the second shock has been unfolding in the Strait of Hormuz. The conflict with Iran turned the world’s most important energy chokepoint into a contested waterway, and the consequences reach far beyond the gas pump. Roughly a third of global fertilizer trade moves through Hormuz, and the disruption sent urea prices up 86 percent year over year by March, with a 53 percent jump in a single month.
The World Bank projects energy prices rising about 24 percent in 2026 and fertilizer about 31 percent. By its own accounting, fertilizer prices ran 35 percent higher in the first five months of this year than the same period last year.
Here is the mechanism the nightly news will not explain. Fertilizer is not a grocery item. It is a time-delayed input. The nitrogen a farmer in Iowa or Punjab could not afford to apply this spring does not show up as a problem this spring. It shows up as a thinner harvest six to twelve months later.
The World Bank’s own food security brief concedes that the effects of reduced applications earlier this season “are likely to become visible only later in harvest outcomes.” Translate that from institutional language into plain English and it means this. The damage is already done, it is already in the ground, and we are simply waiting for it to arrive on the shelf.
Now check the calendar. Six to twelve months from the spring planting season lands us squarely in late 2026 and early 2027. Which is precisely when the strongest El Niño in the instrumental record is forecast to peak, bringing its signature droughts to Southeast Asia, Australia, southern Africa, northern Brazil, and South Asia, the very regions that grow the world’s rice, sugar, and oilseeds.
The World Bank warns openly that a strong El Niño “could disrupt multiple crop belts simultaneously” on top of the conflict-driven input costs. Their baseline projection assumes the Middle East disruptions ease by autumn. What in the last two years of Middle East history suggests that assumption is safe?
The System Has No Slack Left
The comfortable answer is that global markets always adjust. But adjustment requires slack, and the slack is gone. Global cereal production is expected to decline from last year’s records even before El Niño does its work. The UN World Food Programme, hardly a den of right-wing preppers, is calling this the most significant disruption to its supply chains since Covid and the invasion of Ukraine, and its supply chain director put the stakes bluntly.
Today’s supply chain challenges are tomorrow’s hunger crisis.
There is also a political dimension that markets cannot price. When food gets scarce, governments do not behave like economists. They behave like politicians. Export bans, hoarding mandates, and panic buying at the national level turned the modest rice shortfall of 2008 into a global crisis, and analysts are already warning that import-dependent nations are the first dominoes.
The 2015-16 Super El Niño, a far weaker event than what is now forecast, threw tens of millions into food stress across Africa and Asia. This one is projected to be stronger, and it arrives with fertilizer already rationed by price and shipping lanes already contested by missiles.
What Joseph Knew
Scripture does not treat preparation for lean years as faithlessness. It treats it as wisdom delivered in advance to those willing to act on it.
Behold, there come seven years of great plenty throughout all the land of Egypt: And there shall arise after them seven years of famine; and all the plenty shall be forgotten in the land of Egypt.
Joseph did not respond to that warning with a hashtag or a committee. He stored grain during the years of abundance, and when the famine came, Egypt stood while its neighbors begged. The lesson is not that famine is certain. It is that the time to prepare is precisely when preparation still looks optional.
Nobody who filled a pantry in a year of plenty has ever regretted it, and nobody standing in an empty aisle has ever been glad he waited for certainty.
None of this calls for panic, and panic is the enemy of sound judgment anyway. It calls for the same unglamorous prudence our grandparents considered ordinary. Keep some cash margin, know your local growers, and put real food in deep storage while it is cheap and available, because the entire arc of this story is that cheap and available is a closing window.
Families looking for a straightforward place to start can visit Heaven’s Harvest and use promo code Patriot for 15 percent off long-term storable food. The forecasts may yet soften, the strait may yet reopen, and we should pray they do. But hope is a fine thing to hold and a foolish thing to eat.
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