5 M’s Mineral Management
http://mineralmanager.com/
Energy companies are not the darling of investors due to the uncertainty of oil prices, but one Fort Worth company, 5 M’s Minerals Management, continues to see growth.
The company was formed two years ago to provide mineral and royalty owners with additional help including software that fulfills what President and Chief Operating Officer Ryan Vinson calls “a desperate need” by royalty and mineral interest owners to have the information they need to manage their assets.
“Mineral owners have long sought an affordable and integrated tool that simplifies managing their oil and gas portfolio,” said Vinson. “MineralWare [the company’s software] allows our customers to better understand what they own and ultimately helps them make more money.”
Many mineral and royalty owners spend hours manually managing their assets by going back and forth between many different sources (hard copy property folders, maps, well information, state regulatory websites, spreadsheets and other sources) in an attempt to sort out their records, says Vinson. “MineralWare automatically updates them for you,” he said.
The software tool is central to the company’s offerings, but 5 M’s is a full-service mineral management firm with other services available to mineral owners as needed, Vinson says.
Co-founded by Vinson and John Baum, who serves as CEO, 5 M’s is self-funded and has grown from cash flows to date. Unlike most of the programs in the industry that educate the oil and gas operator side of the business, said Vinson, 5 M’s programs are designed to educate mineral owners and royalty owners on how to better manage their interests, specifically for small to large mineral and royalty owners, mineral managers, institutions, foundations and banks.
“We have put over 1,500 mineral owners through the programs in the past three years – mostly through word-of-mouth advertising,” he said.
Prior to joining 5 M’s, Ryan was head of Oil & Gas Advisory at Bessemer Trust. He was in charge of managing mineral, royalty and non-operated working interests for wealthy clients with interests in over 2,300 wells located across 17 states. He saw some of the issues facing mineral and royalty owners first hand. A former executive at Texas Instruments, Baum is a founder and principal in CER Energy Institute, a firm that provides training programs to royalty and mineral owners. He and his colleague, John Tracy, are the architects of the TCU Energy Institute Royalty Owner Programs.
In May the company took another step forward by adding petroleum geologist Larry Brogdon, an early Barnett Shale pioneer, to the company. Brogdon, along his partners in Four Sevens sold more than a billion dollars in assets to companies such as XTO and Chesapeake during the heyday of the Barnett Shale. Brogdon is the chairman of the Advisory Board of the Texas Christian University Energy Institute, teaches the very popular “Prospect to Production” course at TCU and mentors students planning to enter the oil and gas industry.
“Larry’s vast experience in the oil and gas business and his dedication to education makes him a great addition to the 5 M’s management team,” said Baum. “His deep knowledge of the industry will allow us to grow the business in a meaningful way, bringing our state-of-the-art software solutions to far more mineral owners.”
Brogdon said he believes the technology 5 M’s is providing will have a revolutionary impact on managing mineral assets.
“With a simple click, MineralWare allows clients to access their lease documents, understand their deductions, recover unpaid funds and verify their payment amounts,” he said. “It beats the socks off the old way mineral owners used to troll through boxes for information, wasting time and failing to actually manage the asset. The oil and gas industry has embraced technology and mineral owners need to do the same.”
5 M’s MineralWare fees can be as low as $100 per month and mineral management fees are charged at an hourly rate, according to Vinson.