Manage Minerals at Scale With a Lean Team

Managing Portfolio Complexity With a DIY Well Database

The J.E. and L.E. Mabee Foundation, also known as the Mabee Foundation, is a nonprofit with a 75-year legacy of issuing grants. Central to its mission, the foundation has amassed mineral interests in more than 3,600 wells, creating a significant stream of royalties that provides financial support for their grants. The efficient management of this vast royalty portfolio is critical for the foundation to continue making a meaningful impact in the communities it serves.

The challenge, however, lies in the sheer scale of the foundation’s mineral portfolio. The responsibility of overseeing the foundation’s oil and gas assets has historically involved a labor-intensive process. Staff members were tasked with the manual examination of revenue details delivered via mail, which included hundreds of documents detailing revenues, production costs, and deductions. This not only made it difficult to grasp an overview of asset performance but also to identify potential operational disruptions, such as wells being temporarily shut down. Recognizing potential increases in monthly revenue from drilling new wells and gaining better insight into property-related activities could enable more timely and effective grant allocations.

Further complicating matters was the foundation’s reliance on an internally developed access database. Maintained by an in-house engineer, this bespoke system posed sustainability concerns for the organization. The foundation recognized the need for a more sustainable, long-term solution that could streamline analysis and automate many of these processes.