ENID, Okla. — March 21, 2026 (The Oklahoma Post)
Someone is absorbing those price increases. Is it you? Here is something the corporate chemical industry does not want to explain on a billboard. The Koch/Epstein team, Iran “excursion”, and atronomical profits.
Nitrogen fertilizers, specifically ammonia and urea, require natural gas to make. Not as a fuel you burn on the side. As the actual raw material. Manufacturers strip hydrogen atoms out of methane feed and combine them with atmospheric nitrogen. That is how anhydrous ammonia and hundreds of byproducts get made. No natural gas and you have no fertilizer. Cheap on the front end really, considering Harold Hamm types feed the machine for pennies on the actual market price of natural gas. Koch owns 3 refineries….Pine Bend: Located in Rosemount, Minnesota. Processing approximately 375,000 barrels of crude oil per day. Corpus Christi East Refinery; Corpus Christi West Refinery: in Texas. Combined with the East facility, these two refineries have a capacity of roughly 350,000 barrels per day.
Now here is where it gets interesting.
Koch Industries leveraged its core oil and gas business to dominate the markets, because the same company selling you the feedstock can also sell you the finished product. They own American oil refineries. When oil prices go up, the refinery charges more. When natural gas prices go up, Koch’s fertilizer division in Enid passes that cost to farmers. When natural gas prices go down, the savings do not follow. Money is then reinvested into the manufacturing and political system. Vertical integration, with Heritage Lobbying, working exactly as designed.
The lobbyist name is Pat McFerron and he represents the Oklahoma District attorneys Association, Tesla, Black rock, and Koch.. He also owns a company that “predicts” court case outcomes. He also owns a company that surveys potential voters. McFerron is a founding partner of CMA Strategies, formed in 2002.
Koch’s reach extends beyond domestic politics. Koch-Glitsch, a foreign subsidiary operating out of Germany and Italy, sold petrochemical equipment to Iran through at least 2007 in what Bloomberg News documented as an apparent circumvention of U.S. trade restrictions. A whistleblower cooperated with U.S. Department of Homeland Security investigators. Koch’s position was that a legal loophole permitted foreign subsidiaries to conduct such trade at the time. No federal conviction resulted. Make of that what you will. One whistleblower, who served as an environmental health and safety manager at Koch’s Plant 1 facility in 2014, attended a corporate compliance session he describes as less focused on regulatory protection than on managing federal encounters. A significant portion of the session, he said, addressed how employees should handle interactions with federal investigators…by lying. Honesty, it had cost Koch money in the past.
As of 2019, just four corporations represented 75% of total domestic fertilizer production: CF Industries, Nutrien, Koch, and Yara-USA.  Three are not involved with Trump/Epstein/Rothschild.
From Farms to Fashion
There is a particular kind of American story that gets told at galas. Iowa girl from modest stock moves to New York, works in fashion, does fittings for Nancy Reagan, goes on a blind date with one of the richest men on earth, and walks away unimpressed. Julia Margaret Flesher’s own assessment of that January 1991 encounter was direct: “I’m glad I met that man because now I know I never want to go out with him.” Somehow this became a courtship.
The two met again at a party later that year, started dating, and were married in May 1996 at David Koch’s home on Meadow Lane in Southampton. Julia Koch and her three children inherited a 42% stake in Koch Industries from David when he died in 2019, making her the richest woman in America with a fortune that has exceeded $74 billion.
The blind date that almost wasn’t produced a Southampton estate, an 18-room duplex at 740 Park Avenue, and inherited control of a private industrial conglomerate that processes 725,000 barrels of crude oil a day and supplies a significant share of the nitrogen fertilizer that grows American and worldwide food.
Julia Koch’s name does not appear in any released Epstein file. No flight log, no email, no black book entry, no court document. What does appear is her address. In August 2010, just two months after Epstein’s release from a Florida jail following his conviction for soliciting a minor, Jeffrey Epstein attended a screening and dinner party at the home of David and Julia Koch on Meadow Lane in Southampton. Oh and wasn’t Charles happy. Publicist Peggy Siegal placed him on the guest list. Among those present that evening: Steve Mnuchin, Rudy Giuliani, Wilbur Ross, Leon Black, Henry Kravis and Steven Schwarzman according to Winter Watch Leon Black later disclosed he had paid Epstein more than $158 million in fees over several years, a figure that prompted his resignation from Apollo Global Management. Kravis and Schwarzman both appear in the broader universe of Epstein-connected documents released through 2026. The Kochs hosted the room with Siegal. Whether the distinction matters is a question each reader answers for themselves. What is not in dispute is that a convicted sex offender worked the Southampton dinner circuit in 2010 with Koch’s and untraceable private money in pocket.
Be Refined
The U.S. petroleum refining industry has been quietly consolidating for decades, and the math is stark. As of January 2025, 131 active refineries remained in operation, down from a peak of 254 in 1982, with the decline driven largely by smaller refineries becoming unprofitable. The number of companies operating those facilities now stands at approximately 58, a figure that has fallen at a compound annual rate of 5.5% over the past five years.
The industry is not fragmenting. It is concentrating. Marathon Petroleum, ExxonMobil, and Valero Energy now sit at the top of the domestic refining market , controlling a share of national capacity that would have looked like an antitrust violation in another era. Fewer owners. Fewer refineries. The same amount of gasoline. Prices set accordingly.
Koch Industries is primarily a pipeline, crude oil trading, and nitrogen fertilizer operation. Their leverage over food costs runs through the natural gas and fertilizer supply chain, not petroleum refining. Hamm knows this too.
Fertilizer prices are now higher across every major category compared to one year ago. Anhydrous is up. UAN products are up. Diesel is up. Those costs do not disappear. They move downstream, into food prices, into farm debt, into the grocery bill you paid last Tuesday. While the younger co owners of Koch hang out on islands.
The EIA projected natural gas prices averaging $4 per MMBtu in 2026, roughly 16% above 2025 levels. You will feel that at the food register before you feel it at the pump. Natural gas prices and anhydrous are expected to double by the end of the year.
The companies positioned to weather this war (Koch) are the ones who created the problem; they own all sides of the transaction. Everyone else is just absorbing it. With Georgia Pacific (Koch) toilet paper I might add.
Profits manufactured through crime. Just restrict logistics. Create uncertainty. Pay politicians.
Writing By: Robbie Robertson | Editing by Robbie Robertson
Editor’s Note:
Sources
Flint Hills Resources, “Who We Are” https://www.fhr.com/who-we-are
Pine Bend Refinery, “About the Flint Hills Resources Pine Bend Oil Refinery” https://pinebendrefinery.com/pine-bend-mn-oil-refinery/
Pine Bend Refinery, Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pine_Bend_Refinery
Bloomberg Markets / Boothe Global Perspectives, “Koch Brothers Flout Law Getting Richer With Secret Iran Sales” https://bootheglobalperspectives.com/article/1373898433WBG319122229/koch-brothers-flout-law-getting-richer-with-secret-iran-sales
Seattle Times, “Koch Industries Flouted Law With Secret Iran Sales” https://www.seattletimes.com/business/koch-industries-flouted-law-with-secret-iran-sales/
The American Prospect, “The Return of the Koch Brothers” https://prospect.org/power/2024-02-01-return-of-koch-brothers/
WUFT / Price of Plenty, “The Cost of Growth: Fertilizer Companies Cash In While Farmers and Communities Struggle” https://projects.wuft.org/priceofplenty/profit/the-cost-of-growth-fertilizer-companies-cash-in-while-farmers-and-communities-struggle/
Farm Progress, “Input Cost Squeeze Could Continue in 2026” https://www.farmprogress.com/soil-health/input-cost-squeeze-likely-to-continue-in-2026
American Farm Bureau Federation, “Fertilizer Outlook: Global Risks, Higher Costs, Tighter Margins” https://www.fb.org/market-intel/fertilizer-outlook-global-risks-higher-costs-tighter-margins
DTN Progressive Farmer, “For Second Consecutive Week, All Eight Major Fertilizers See Prices Move Higher” https://www.dtnpf.com/agriculture/web/ag/crops/article/2026/02/25/second-consecutive-week-eight-major
Statista / EIA, “Operative Oil Refineries in the U.S. 2025” https://www.statista.com/statistics/1447051/operative-oil-refineries-in-the-us/
IBISWorld, “Petroleum Refining in the US Industry Analysis, 2025” https://www.ibisworld.com/united-states/industry/petroleum-refining/449/
Wikipedia, “Connections of Jeffrey Epstein” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connections_of_Jeffrey_Epstein
Wikipedia, “Julia Koch” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julia_Koch
Wikipedia, “David Koch” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Koch
Daily Mail / Winter Watch, “Jeffrey Epstein Partied With Trump’s Closest Advisers at Dinner Hosted by David Koch” https://www.winterwatch.net/2019/07/jeffrey-epstein-partied-with-trumps-closest-advisers-including-wilbur-ross-rudy-giuliani-and-steve-mnunchin-at-dinner-hosted-by-david-koch-just-2-months-after-his-release-from-prison/
Bloomberg Billionaires Index, “Julia Flesher Koch and Family” https://www.bloomberg.com/billionaires/profiles/julia-f-koch/
Inside Philanthropy, “Four Things to Know About Julia Koch’s Philanthropy” https://www.insidephilanthropy.com/home/2022-10-31-a-new-koch-in-town-4-things-to-note-about-the-philanthropy-of-americas-richest-woman
CMA Strategies, “About Us” https://www.cmastrategies.com/about-us
American Accountability Foundation, “Docs Reveal Oklahoma AG Gentner Drummond’s Secret Ties to BlackRock” https://americanaccountabilityfoundation.com/blog/2024/05/09/press-release-docs-reveal-oklahoma-ag-gentner-drummonds-secret-ties-to-blackrock/
Oklahoma Ethics Commission, Registered Lobbyists 2014 https://pay.apps.ok.gov/ethics/lobbyist/public_lobbyist_list.php?yr=2014
Wikipedia, “Epstein Files” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epstein_files
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