Crude oil production in the Uinta Basin has long been captive to the capacity of refineries in Salt Lake City. Texas oilman Jim Finley has championed shipping oil out of state, and basin production is now soaring.
Jim Finley is a bit of a ghost. Outside of oil industry circles, few people have probably ever heard of the man. He rarely speaks in public.
One exception was in October 2021, when Finley, the CEO of Texas-based Finley Resources, presented to a coalition of seven oil-producing counties in eastern Utah. Following his speech, coalition board members and staff applauded Finley for his investments in Utah’s oil-rich Uinta Basin, and thanked him for making time to speak. One personnoted that he is a particularly difficult man to get hold of.
“Sometimes nobody knows where I am,” Finley said.
“On purpose,” someone else chimed in. Finley chuckled.
The Texas oilman has played a key role in spearheading the kind of oil boom that has long evaded the remote basin. In just over a decade, he’s become one of the top producers in the Uinta and is now playing an outsize role in shaping Utah’s energy future.
Finley has thrown his support behind a controversial rail line that would makeit easier for him and the basin’s five other producers to export oil to out-of-state markets, while simultaneously boosting export capacity via trucking and existing rail. He has his fingers in every aspect of basin production, from drilling oil and mining sand for hydraulic fracturing to operating a transloading facility and a growing fleet of oil trains. Powerful political allies have helped him expand his empire, primarily by funneling public money toward infrastructure projects that benefit the oil sector.
Chris Kuveke, a researcher at BailoutWatch, a watchdog group that provided HuffPost with extensive research on Finley’s portfolio and operations, called Finley “the mastermind” of the basin’s current oil boom.
“He has a long history of using campaign finance and lobbying as influence to get his projects where he wants them to be,” Kuveke said. “He knows what he’s doing. He has a serious track record of influencing the industry that he wants to grow, being a linchpin. And that’s what he’s doing in the Uinta.”
Finley and other producers’ long-term vision for the Uinta could lead to as much as 350,000 barrels of crude oil being railed from Utah to Gulf Coast refineries every day, roughly tripling current basin production and increasing U.S. annual carbon emissions by 1%.
Oil and gas industry players and longtime observers, including two who requested anonymity to speak plainly about the Uinta’s trajectory, credited Finley for the basin’s recent growth.
“He kind of broke the seal,” a current industry official told HuffPost, adding that other basin producers have followed Finley’s lead in shipping oil out of state.
A retired industry professional called Finley the “puppetmaster” of Utah energy policy, and admitted to having “a degree of rueful admiration” for how he’s secured public funds for his ventures.
“It is a classic story of using ‘other people’s money’ — in this case, that of Utah taxpayers — while leaving them stuck with the environmental and public health bill,” the retired professional told HuffPost.
Finley did not respond to HuffPost’s multiple requests for comment.Nor did Brent Talbot, the president of Finley Resources, or other company representatives ― continuing a pattern they’ve demonstrated with othernews outlets. If not for a presentation Jim Finley gave at a tax conference in Utah in 2022, and a press release announcing his company partnering with Uintah Basin Technical College, HuffPost likely wouldn’t know what he looks like.
“He’s very much behind the scenes,” Kuveke said. “I think he recognizes that he can get a lot more done with his capital, and he can protect his reputation.”
Well pads used for horizontal drilling are seen in the Uinta Basin near Duchesne, Utah, in July.
‘The best oil we’ve ever seen’
In July 2022, Talbot held court over a meeting of Uinta oil and gas drillers. He was there, he said, to deliver a message from his boss: The company’s success in the basin would “lift all ships.”
“You guys are sitting on a jewel of a resource. It’s something that Jim Finley has been trying to tell people for seven or eight years, and finally it’s coming to fruition,” Talbot said. “What drives him…
Read More: Meet The Secretive ‘Mastermind’ Behind Utah’s Oil Boom