Less than a week after the Erie Town Council’s deadlocked vote rejected a proposed mineral rights agreement tied to the Draco Pad, Councilmember Brian O’Connor has called for a reconsideration of the decision. The council is scheduled to revisit the topic on June 23, reopening one of the most divisive debates facing the town.
The request for a revote followed a social media post by Matthew Owens, CEO of Alameda Mineral Advisors, the firm hired by the town to negotiate the deal. In the original version of his LinkedIn post, Owens explicitly urged O’Connor to call for a reconsideration of his vote, a directive that was later edited out.
Beyond the immediate political maneuvering, Owens’ public defense disclosed specific details from confidential Executive Sessions regarding bids, valuations, and negotiations. Residents were repeatedly denied this exact information prior to the vote under the guise of executive session confidentiality. While Owens released these details publicly to defend the merits of the deal, he did so without providing the underlying documentation. Furthermore, several of his assertions directly contradict the public record.
In his post, Owens outlined several key figures regarding the negotiations:
- Marketing Reach: Alameda solicited bids from 25 companies, 19 of which declined to submit offers.
- Competing Bids: The highest competing offer was approximately $5.5 million.
- Internal Valuations: SM Energy (formerly Civitas) internally valued the mineral rights between $54.7 million and $71.1 million. Unsolicited offers implied a baseline valuation of roughly $43 million.
- Contract Changes: Alterations made to the final agreement after Alameda’s active involvement ended allegedly reduced the deal’s total value by roughly $8 million.
Owens’ claim that Alameda actively solicited competitive bids directly contradicts his own previous statements. In a prior council study session, before being cut off by the Town Attorney, Owens told council members and a Yellow Scene reporter that he was “instructed not to” conduct a competitive bidding process by “the people who hired [him].”
When pressed in the comments of his post regarding competitive bidding, his editing choices, and SM Energy’s track record, Owens sidestepped the questions. Instead, he engaged critics with generalized political arguments and personal character attacks…