How The VP's Brother Makes Money

March 2024 ยท 2 minute read

According to Daily Mail, Greg Pence used to run the Pence family's chain of Tobacco Road convenience stores. His father Edward Pence started working at the gas station empire with founder Carl Kiel, per the New York Times. Greg eventually took over the business that ran the convenience stores called Kiel Brothers Oil Co. until the company went bankrupt in 2004. Apparently, this cost Greg's younger brother Mike Pence $673,000, according to 2006 tax filings.

In July 2018, Chicago Tribune reported Kentucky, Indiana, and Illinois spent millions to clean contaminated sites from the business. Kiel Brothers Oil Co. was allegedly responsible for polluting drinking water near the Pence family's Indiana hometown. Greg distanced himself from the cost of cleaning up the multi-state mess, with his spokesperson telling Chicago Tribune, "Greg Pence has had nothing to do with Kiel Bros since 2004. This is another attempt by the liberal media to rehash old, baseless attacks." Another spokesperson explained, "The oil and gas industry changed rapidly in the 1990s and early 2000s, and many small, independent companies like Kiel Brothers were not able to survive."

After the business fell under, Greg became the deputy commissioner of the Department of Environmental Management, which is the same agency that was against Kiel Brothers Oil Co in a legal battle. While the demise of the business and the (literal) mess it caused seemed like a major loss to the Pences, it's not clear how much Greg's finances were personally affected.

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