We understand that we keep an eye on it, we are familiar with it, and we monitor it. As far as New York, there has been oil and gas drilling in New York for a long time and it continues to be relatively active which just isn’t fracking. So, that continues and the volume and activity moves up and down over time as to be extracted with the price of oil and gas, but it’s something that, you know it’s an area we’ve been lending into for quite sometime and are staying close to it to monitor our exposure.
Alexander Twerdahl – Sandler O’Neill
Ok, thanks. And then just final question, I know that you’ve been pretty vocal about an acquisition being your most preferred use of excess capital, but does the special dividend sit on that stack of potential uses as well or is it just raising your regular dividend as you have been doing really the only option for dividend?
Mark Tryniski – President & Chief Executive Officer
We looked at one time dividend and we looked at other companies that have done it. We looked at other uses of that capital which we think over time would be more productive. Frankly, we just talked to a lot of our largest institutional investors and other investors and had those conversions with them and it’s almost universal that they’re opposed or not in favor of a large one-time dividend. So we will monitor our opportunities to deploy that capital, we are in the banking business so we would prefer to deploy the capital through M&A other thing that help us to grow our business over time.
We look at buybacks, we did buyback some shares in the fourth quarter, but there was kind of a runoff there in the market and we decided to step back for the time being, but I think that if you look at the rate of capital accumulation it runs about after the dividend $45 million a year. So, I’d say it’s a good problem to have Alex in one which we spend a lot of time evaluating again in terms of priorities M&A would certainly be first, share buybacks we would not exclude given the substantial level of what we view is excess free capital right now are unlikely be considered in the near-term one-time dividend.
Alexander Twerdahl – Sandler O’Neill
Okay, great. Thanks for taking my questions.
Mark Tryniski – President & Chief Executive Officer
Sure, Alex.
Scott Kingsley – Executive Vice President & Chief Financial Officer
Thanks Alex.
Operator
And next we will hear from Collyn Gilbert with KBW.
Collyn Gilbert – KBW
Thanks, good morning guys.
Mark Tryniski – President & Chief Executive Officer
Good morning Collyn.
Scott Kingsley – Executive Vice President & Chief Financial Officer
Good morning Collyn.
Collyn Gilbert – KBW
I was just curious given your comments on indirect and I know that you would kind of indicated obviously that it was getting more competitive last quarter too. Is there a point or you will pull back some growth in that segment or how you are guys thinking about that kind of longer term and then that leads to my kind of part B of that question is just how you’re thinking about loan growth in general for the rest of 15?
