Oil pumpjacks operate in Williams County in September 2024. A North Dakota agency is ending public notices of oil and gas lease auctions in local newspapers. (Photo by Kyle Martin/For the North Dakota Monitor)
BISMARCK, N.D. (North Dakota Monitor) – The North Dakota agency responsible for managing state-owned minerals is changing how it keeps the public informed, prompting concerns about a lack of transparency.
The Department of Trust Lands is moving ahead with plans to stop publishing notices in local newspapers of oil and gas lease auctions after a lawmaker’s attempt to delay the rule change was defeated in an interim legislative meeting.
Rep. Don Longmuir, R-Stanley, made the motion in Thursday’s meeting because he fears the change will result in less transparency for communities in his district, which includes a significant slice of the state’s oil field.
“That’s the one thing we always hear so much about, is transparency. Well, transparency is letting as many people know in as many ways as you can,” Longmuir said.
The Department of Trust Lands is responsible for managing state-owned lands and minerals. The agency plans to continue posting digital notices of lease auctions on its website and through Efficient Markets, the company that runs the process for the state, to ensure potential bidders are aware.
Ending these notices in local newspapers will save the agency time and money, Land Commissioner Joseph Heringer said.
“We have a specific target market here, and the target market is oil and gas companies who will develop the leases,” Heringer said. “The goal is to get as many of those so you can get the most bids and the highest bids.”
Opponents of the change said public notices should not be viewed as advertising for industry. Local communities, mineral owners, landowners and others all benefit from knowing if state-owned mineral acres in their area have been nominated for an upcoming lease auction, said Cecile Wehrman, executive director of the North Dakota Newspaper Association.
“This belongs to the people of North Dakota and while it’s the state government’s job to manage these things, it’s in all of our interest how that’s managed,” said Wehrman. “To have the minimum requirement that they let us know when that’s happening is a very small ask.”
She said this action is part of a trend of agencies attempting to eliminate requirements to publish public notices of government activity in local newspapers in recent years.
“If this same provision would have gone before the full Legislature, I do not believe it would have been successful,” Wehrman said.
But the Department of Trust Lands’ obligation to publish public notices was in the agency’s administrative rules, not state law, and required the consent of the interim Administrative Rules Committee, not the full Legislature.
“This situation with the land board is unfortunate because the publication requirement was within their administrative rule, and they amended that, and so it didn’t go through the same legislative process that we’re used to,” said Katie Winbauer, a Bismarck attorney who serves as a lobbyist for the newspaper association.
The Legislature defeated proposals to eliminate requirements to publish requests for bids on highway construction and county commission minutes in local newspapers as recently as the 2025 legislative session.
“Over and over again, in the last session, we had strong support for continued publication of all kinds of notices in newspapers,” Wehrman said.
It’s possible the newspaper association will ask the full Legislature to amend state law in the 2027 legislative session to require the Department of Trust Lands to resume publishing notices of oil and gas lease auctions, Wehrman said.
The chair of the interim committee that allowed the agency to proceed with the rule change, Sen. Bob Paulson, R-Minot, noted this action will not affect other types of public notices. But he also said society is transitioning to more of an online culture and publication of public notices in newspapers “makes less and less sense.”
“At what point does it become, you know, a burden for these organizations financially, where the return on investment just isn’t there?” Paulson asked in an interview. “So that’s one aspect of it.”
Detractors of the rule change argue newspapers are still essential in many rural communities throughout the state. Research by the North Dakota Newspaper Association shows newspapers reach at least 75% of households in a majority of the state’s counties. A 2024 survey by the organization showed 80% of North Dakotans prefer public notices be published by an independent source, rather than the government, Wehrman said.
Longmuir said many of his constituents, especially the older generations, are not necessarily online and still prefer to get their news through physical newspapers.
“We want to keep all of our population informed, not just those that are tech savvy,” the lawmaker said.
Wehrman said the Department of Trust Lands has paid an average of $17,000 annually in the last three years for public notices, according to the newspaper association’s system, which includes the cost of all public notices and not just oil and gas lease auctions. Heringer said he believes all the agency’s public notices are published through the newspaper association.
A member of the agency’s staff has previously estimated the department spends between $30,000 and $40,000 annually to publish public notices, half of which is for notices of oil and gas lease auctions.
“Even so, I would argue that even $30,000 is a very small amount of money to pay to keep local mineral owners somewhat abreast of the types of oil activity that is going on, especially when we’re dealing with an industry where it is so hard to find any public information,” Wehrman said. “If the general public is going to be required to go out of their way to even find out when those auctions are happening, that’s going to be a real disconnect for the people who live in oil country.”
Heringer said there is a “broader, ongoing public debate” on the utility of publishing notices in newspapers as society becomes more digital and acknowledged the agency has had internal discussions on how to continue reaching demographics of the public, especially the older segment of the farming and ranching community, who may not keep tabs on the agency’s website.
“That’s been something we’ve kind of gone back and forth with and debated internally as an agency,” Heringer said.
The rule change will take effect April 1. The Department of Trust Lands will continue to publish public notices of planned auctions of surface land, as required by the state constitution.
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