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your minerals’
Software Lets Mineral Owners Track And Audit Their Royalty Income
Q. AND MINERALTRACKER WAS NEXT? Q. HOW DIFFICULT IS IT TO POPULATE THE DATA?
Right. After we’d started to see people and answer their questions, I went to my partner in the business and said, “What if we could create something where a person could go online, log in and put in the wells they’re being paid on and their unique interest, then see graphs and tables and other information displayed in a format similar to an online bank account?”
It’s a portfolio snapshot, in a way. And that’s where the idea for MineralTracker came from.
A.
The back end of this is that it has all been run through software developers, who are pulling the information in a variety of different formats.
In fact, Lynn Helms and his crew at the Department of Mineral Resources have been ecstatic about this, because they have the cleanest website of any state in the United States, as far as having the data be readily available. They get to kind of showcase that, and they know it’s being put to use, so that’s good. I’ve been on the radio with him and have talked about that some.
Q.
MINERALTRACKER USERS CAN ACCESS DISPLAYS SUCH AS THE ONE SHOWN HERE, WHICH TRACKS AND PROJECTS THE MINERAL OWNER'S NET ROYALTY INCOME OVER TIME. IMAGE: MINERALTRACKER
HOW MUCH DOES MINERALTRACKER COST? Q.
A.We’re trying to keep it as simple as possible: the rate for one user is $99 a month, and everybody who wants to try MineralTracker can do so for 30 days for free.
Furthermore, if there are, say, five brothers and sisters who’ve inherited something from their parents, and all five of them are being paid on the same wells at the same interest, we give breaks for adding multiple accounts underneath the same umbrella.
From the beginning, we wanted to make this available to people for less than $100 a month. The thinking was that if your royalties are something that you rely on and are a meaningful part of your life, then for what you pay for your cell phone bill, you should be able to audit and check things out for yourself.
WHAT’S THE SIZE OF THE BUSINESS AT THIS POINT?
A.My partners are Joel Brown, who’s also a petroleum engineer from Watford City and is my partner in the minerals management business; and Ryan Yesel, whose background is in software engineering and development. Between the three of us, we own MineralTracker, and we are actively seeking others to grow the business.
After a lot of testing, we officially went live with MineralTracker on Sept. 1; you can find it at MineralTracker.com. We feel that it’s completely viable at this point, and we’re really excited to see it get up and running.
