Robert S. Kerr - Carl Albert Center Congressional Archives

By the end of the 1920s, Kerr had teamed up with his brother-in-law to form the flourishing Anderson and Kerr Drilling Company. Anderson “had a nose for oil" while Kerr "had a talent for finding investment capital." During the 1930s, collaboration with Phillips Petroleum Company resulted in profits and new personnel. Following Anderson's retirement in 1937, Kerr convinced Dean McGee and R. B. Lynn, both longtime Phillips employees, to join him. When Lynn left the business in the early 1940s, McGee was named executive vice president and the company was renamed Kerr-McGee Oil Industries.

“Whether there is any oil in the future of politics, there...will be a lot of politics in the future of oil.”