Chris Wright testifies on his nomination to be Secretary of Energy at a U.S. Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee hearing on January 15, 2025.
Ting Shen/AFP via Getty Images
Chris Wright took to social media in 2019 to market his oil-and-gas company in an unorthodox way: by taking a swig of fracking fluid from a dixie cup. “We’re doing this demonstration to illustrate that the biggest challenge with energy in the world today isn’t toxic chemicals in frac fluid,” he said. “It’s the fact that so many people around the world don’t have access to energy that makes long, healthy, wonderful lives possible.”
Energy—specifically fracking—has certainly led to a wonderful life for Wright, who cashed in with a series of companies, downplaying the threat of climate change along the way. He ran publicly traded Liberty Energy until the moment Donald Trump made him secretary of energy, then entered office with a fortune of roughly $100 million, enough to make him one of the president’s wealthier cabinet secretaries, alongside Howard Lutnick (net worth: $3.3 billion), Linda McMahon ($3.3 billion), Scott Bessent ($600 million) and Doug Burgum (over $100 million).
Born in New Jersey and raised in Denver, Colorado, Wright studied mechanical and electrical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of California, Berkeley. In 1992, when he was just 27 years old, he founded Pinnacle Technologies, which developed hydraulic fracture mapping technology that could measure how fractures grow underground.
His timing could not have been much better, coming just before America’s fracking revolution. In 2000, while still serving as CEO of Pinnacle, Wright also became chairman of Stroud Energy, a shale-gas production company based in Fort Worth, Texas. He cashed in on Pinnacle in 2002 when Carbo Ceramics bought the company, earning Wright an estimated $9 million in cash and stock. Four years later, Range Resources bought Stroud for about $450 million, and Wright’s stake in Stroud was enough to make him tens of millions—and earn him a sabbatical.
Wright took a break from the oil-and-gas hubbub after tying up the Stroud deal and finishing his time as CEO of Pinnacle in 2006. “I went from two jobs to zero jobs, and I thought, ‘This is great,’” Wright said. “I coached my kids’ soccer, basketball and little league baseball teams. I did some bike racing.” Around the same time, Wright bought property in Big Sky, Montana, where he built a home at the exclusive Yellowstone Club, the private ski resort now frequented by the likes of Mark Zuckerberg, Tom Brady and reportedly Taylor Swift.
After a few years off, Wright was drawn back into the oil and gas industry. He rounded up some of his old colleagues from Pinnacle and founded Liberty Resources in 2010 while moving from San Francisco to Denver, initially focusing on developing land in the Bakken fields of North Dakota. When he wasn’t satisfied with the available frackers, he cofounded his own fracking services firm, Liberty Oilfield Services. The industry took a turn for the worse from 2014-2016, and Wright shifted his focus from Liberty Resources to the service business to try to save the jobs threatened by the downturn. “Ultimately, people and culture, to me, are the most exciting part of any business,” Wright said. “I’d never laid off anyone in my life, and I wanted to keep that record alive.”
Wright’s focus shift ended up being a good move. After going public in 2018, Liberty’s stock struggled amid industry downturns and the COVID-19 pandemic. Wright doubled-down, buying oil-and-gas giant Schlumberger’s OneStim business, which provided pressure pumping services in the U.S. and Canada. In October 2021, Liberty acquired PropX, which expanded Liberty’s ability to deliver and handle proppant, a key substance that keeps fractures in rock open after frac fluid is withdrawn. The company now consistently generates more than $4 billion of annual revenue, four times as much as it did in 2020.
“He’s not only extremely smart, he’s also a very good business leader,” says Waqar Syed, an analyst covering Liberty Energy for ATB Capital Markets. “He knows how to convert these great ideas into business ideas, and to make money off it for himself and other shareholders.”
Wright served as Liberty’s CEO and chairman from the company’s inception until he left for Washington earlier this year. At the time he entered the Cabinet, Wright held a 1.6% stake in Liberty Energy worth roughly $50 million. Ethics rules required him to sell his shares shortly after taking office, which proved to be a stroke of good luck for Wright. Liberty’s share price has fallen by almost 40% since he resigned, a result of what energy analysts say is another industry-wide downturn. Wright also divested shares of other major energy companies, including Chevron and Expand Energy, putting another $6 million or so in his pocket. He still owns a few smaller oil-and-gas investments, worth less than $1 million apiece.
Without the big energy investments, Wright’s most valuable holding is now his woodland mansion in the Yellowstone Club, which sits on about six acres, measures 9,500 square feet and is worth an estimated $38 million before debt. Wright also has a couple of homes in the Denver area, worth a total of about $4.5 million before debt, as well as investments in real estate portfolios with properties across the U.S. and Mexico. Other holdings include stakes in BioFire, a private gun manufacturing company making “smart guns,” and Wayfare Tavern, a San Francisco restaurant. Not that he’s focusing much on any of holdings these days now that he’s busy working for the president.
Wright met Trump in April 2024. “It was a fabulous dinner dialogue with a number of energy leaders at Mar-a-Lago,” Wright told Forbes. “I’ve met politicians before, and they want to have a tagline and take a photo with you. But he wanted to go back and forth and dialogue about energy.” The interaction made him enthusiastic about accepting the job when Trump asked him to be energy secretary. In his new role, Wright—who is called a “climate denier” by critics but sees himself as a “climate realist”—seems mostly interested in helping the industry that made him rich. As he told Fox News last month, “More energy is better than less energy. More affordable energy is better than more expensive energy. It’s just common sense.”