Jerry Winkelman



By Scott Fitzgerald

Staff Writer



Where is Jerry Winkelman?

The entrepreneur announced in June he and his newly formed J.W. Energy company were reactivating a gas refinery plant near Thomas and building a new plant near Enid.

Now, Wink-elman can't be found, as servicepeople in the business have tried calling him and visiting his Enid office.

"We were poised to assist him (Winkel-man). It seems the project has stalled at the best," said Vern Choquett, of Trinity Consul-tants, an environmental consulting office in Oklahoma City that had a tentative agreement with Winkel-man to assist J.W. Energy with the lab-yrinth of Department of Environ-mental Quality regulations that must be fulfilled before any working operation at a refinery could begin.

Choquett said he and Winkelman had spoken in July about a site visit to the Thomas refinery, but on Thursday Choquett said he could not reach Winkelman by telephone.

Likewise, Chuck Tillett, a process management specialist with Emerson Process Management, CSI Division, had a meeting with Winkelman Wednesday at the J.W. Energy office in the former Champlin Petroleum Co. building at Maine and Washington.

Winkelman was nowhere to be found, Tillett said.

The News -- Eagle tried reaching Winkelman Thursday through three telephone numbers he had given out. All three numbers have been disconnected.

The J.W. Energy office was locked Thursday, and no one answered knocks on the door. The lights were turned off.

Winkelman also could not be reached at a residence in the 1600 block of South Madison listed under his name in the telephone directory.

Realtor/landlord Tom Andrew said Winkelman was asked to move. A forcible entry was filed by Andrew Real Estate in May in Garfield County District Court, meaning Winkelman had not paid all the rent due, but the matter has since been resolved. Winkelman moved out and did not leave a forwarding address, Andrew said.

One party Winkelman communicated with previously expressed dismay about the initial reports concerning his plan to reactivate the Thomas refinery.

"We were just shocked," said Leo Hinds, legal counsel for Bel Aire LLC, the Bakersfield, Calif., company that owns the refinery. "There was never an offer to purchase the refinery."

Hinds demanded and got a retraction from the Thomas Tribune newspaper, which reported Winkelman headed up an investing group that had purchased the refinery.

Hinds said interested purchasers, such as Winkelman, have been granted permission to conduct on-site inspections and studies of the refinery, but no offers have been made.

A former refinery manager, Paul Nicholson, said he volunteered much of his time and effort to Winkelman's plans to reopen the Thomas refinery after Winkelman initially contacted him early this year.

Nicholson said his skepticism grew more and more as Winkelman told him he was securing financing from Texas underwriters to the tune of $400 million, yet in the same breath told him he was getting around Enid on a bicycle.

"He (Winkelman) pulled the rug out from all of us. Apparently he was a dreamer. He has done a lot of things to the wrong people. He left me high and dry," Nicholson said.