21st Century Service Providers - Part XXI

Autonomous  

Autonomous may be the most familiar term in the phrase Autonomous Asynchronous Transaction Orchestration. It is also the term most likely to be misunderstood. Autonomous is often confused with automation, which is incorrect.

Automation is the use of largely automatic equipment or software to perform a defined task within a manufacturing, production, administrative, or office process. Automation performs what it has been instructed to perform. It executes a predefined function.

Autonomy, as used in Synallagi, is materially different.

Autonomous processes are the disciplined extension of Enterprise Resource Planning, Artificial Intelligence, user community design, service provider execution, Joint Operating Committee governance into operational workflows that no longer wait for manual instruction at every step. They proceed under defined authority, evidence, controls, contracts, audit requirements, and economic purpose.

Autonomy is not independence from governance. It is governance made operational at scale.

In Synallagi, an autonomous process is not an uncontrolled Artificial Intelligence agent acting independently. It is a governed business process embedded within the Enterprise Resource Planning system, operating within the authority of the Joint Operating Committee, the user community, service providers, software rules, contracts, audit controls, Intellectual Property, and the other Organizational Constructs.

A practical definition is as follows.

Autonomous processes are Enterprise Resource Planning enabled business processes that initiate, execute, validate, reconcile, report, adjust, and escalate transactions or operating events without requiring continuous human direction, while preserving evidence of authority, timing, work performed, exceptions, and financial impact.

These processes include the capacity to detect that a transaction or operating condition requires action; apply predefined business rules, accounting rules, contractual terms, and Joint Operating Committee authority; coordinate between producers, service providers, users, and software services; prepare or execute the required transaction; validate balances, approvals, exceptions, and audit evidence; escalate unresolved matters to qualified human authority; and incorporate approved process improvements without exceeding defined governance boundaries.

The key distinction is straightforward.

Automation performs a predefined task. Autonomous processes govern a continuing business activity within defined authority.

The Material Balance Report provides a useful example. Its comprehensive reporting, reconciliation, and analytical purpose is to balance North American oil and gas production volumes across each month. When those volumes are reconciled and verified, they establish a factual operational data foundation. That foundation can become the one authoritative production record for each producer firm, regulators, Joint Operating Committees, working interest owners, and other authorized users of the information.

This is not merely an operational matter. Once production volumes have been validated, accounting can proceed from the same verified source. Revenues, royalties, allocations, entitlements, and related accounting entries can be generated from the production record. The objective is to give production volumes and financial reporting the same evidentiary integrity. The production record and the accounting record should not operate as disconnected interpretations of the same business event.

To achieve that result, volumes must be balanced across working interest owners, contractual allocations, chemical allocations, facilities, products, custody transfer points, and ultimate points of sale. The Material Balance Report is already a standard report used throughout the industry, and balancing is already performed to varying degrees. What has not been practicable historically is balancing this information on a continental basis, across the scale and complexity of North American oil and gas operations. That was beyond the practical capability of legacy systems. That limitation is now becoming obsolete.

The ability to conduct this balancing through autonomous systems supported by Artificial Intelligence is within the scope of today’s technical possibility. Synallagi would not begin as a perfect or omniscient system. It would improve over time as recurring issues are identified, prior resolutions are evaluated, approved methods are reused, and different balancing approaches are applied where they are suitable. A solution that resolves a recurring facility allocation issue in one context may inform the handling of a comparable issue elsewhere, subject always to authority, controls, and verification.

Over time, the range of possible balancing methods will expand materially. The detail involved in monthly oil and gas production, ownership, allocation, processing, transportation, sale, royalty, and accounting activity is immense. As that detail is successively aggregated, the complexity becomes difficult for people to comprehend unaided. Autonomous processes supported by Artificial Intelligence allow that complexity to be governed, reconciled, analyzed, and escalated without surrendering control of the process.

For Synallagi, the operative definition is therefore as follows.

Autonomous processes are governed operational workflows that execute, monitor, adjust, reconcile, report, and escalate business activity with minimal direct human intervention, while remaining constrained by defined rules, authority structures, audit controls, economic objectives, compliance requirements, governance frameworks, Joint Operating Committees, and the Organizational Constructs.

Autonomous processes are Enterprise Resource Planning enabled business processes that can initiate, execute, validate, reconcile, report, and escalate transactions or operating events without requiring continuous human direction, while preserving evidence of authority, timing, work performed, exceptions, and financial impact.

This introduces a new level of complexity into Synallagi. That complexity should not be understated. As the model develops, its scope will exceed the comprehension of any single individual. That is not a weakness in the design. It is the point at which the architecture begins to perform the work for which it is being designed.

We are at the base of that trajectory now. Synallagi is being extended through content-enabled additions, more detailed requirements for developers, and clearer design material for our user community. These outputs will be published on our blog and placed below the existing specifications to support and expand the material already available on the wiki.

I will also reiterate a point made at the beginning of this document. Brevity is no longer a constraint I intend to impose on this work. In a world of comprehensive Artificial Intelligence, a reader with access to a quality Artificial Intelligence tool can extract, analyze, summarize, compare, and contextualize this material in ways that were not previously practical. The value of the document is no longer limited to its immediate readability. Its value also arises from the depth, precision, and continuity of the material available for analysis, especially when combined with the broader background developed in Synallagi.ai and Synnefa.ai by People, Ideas & Objects and others. 

Asynchronous  

Asynchronous operations are defined by People, Ideas & Objects as:

Synallagi applies asynchronous process management to oil & gas ERP by allowing long-running Joint Operating Committee transactions to advance as far as authority, evidence, and available information permit, while preserving missing approvals, signatures, ballots, documents, or other dependencies as governed unresolved states until they can be completed.

Asynchronous means that work does not have to occur at the same time, in the same place, or in a single uninterrupted sequence in order to be valid, coordinated, governed, or completed.

In Synallagi, asynchronous has a specific business and Information Technology meaning. It describes the disciplined organization of business activity so that transactions, decisions, approvals, evidence, exceptions, settlements, and reporting can proceed independently across time, systems, organizations, and participants, while remaining coordinated through defined rules, authority, audit controls, and economic purpose.

Asynchronous does not mean disconnected, delayed, casual, or unmanaged. It means the work is coordinated by architecture rather than by everyone being present at the same moment, or every formal document being completed before any productive work can proceed.

In a Java-based ERP system such as Synallagi, this has practical operational consequences. A process may reach a point where the next required step is out of sequence, incomplete, delayed, or anticipated to arrive later. Rather than stopping the entire process, Synallagi can preserve the state of that process, whether through Java virtual threads, persistent workflow state, or temporary storage in the Oracle database. The system can then continue the process as far as authority, evidence, rules, and available information allow. When the missing step, approval, document, ballot, signature, or evidence is eventually received, the process can retrieve the stored state and complete the transaction.

This is not a relaxation of governance. It is governance made operational in a more efficient form.

In oil & gas, this matters because the Joint Operating Committee, producers, service providers, engineers, geologists, accountants, regulators, software systems, Artificial Intelligence processes, and capital markets do not naturally operate on the same clock. The traditional model forces too much work into synchronous bottlenecks: meetings, approvals, reconciliations, emails, spreadsheet exchanges, monthly waits, and manual intervention.

Joint Operating Committees are a clear example. There are approval processes, ballot processes, counterpart signatures, executed documents, and formal authorizations that may be required before a transaction is finally complete. In practice, verbal consensus may already have been achieved, commercial intent may be clear, and the operational work may already be underway, while the formal paperwork remains incomplete. The administrative system should not be forced to stop all related activity merely because one formal approval has not yet arrived.

Under an asynchronous model, invoices, costs, allocations, evidence, and related processing may proceed on an unsigned or conditionally authorized basis, provided the ERP system clearly identifies the missing approval, preserves the audit trail, applies the appropriate controls, and prevents the transaction from being finalized beyond its authority. The process advances as far as it legitimately can. It then waits only at the point where the missing approval, ballot, signature, or document is required to complete the transaction.

The objective is not theatrical. It is operationally modest but economically material. Synallagi uses asynchronous processing to balance processing load across the month, reduce administrative congestion, and support the service providers who will be responsible for executing much of this work. Rather than compressing too much activity into month end, transactions are advanced continuously as evidence, authority, and information become available.

This is essential to a faster and more reliable month end close. The faster the industry can complete property-level financial statements, Joint Operating Committee reporting, reconciliations, exception handling, Material Balance Report alignment, and financial analysis, the sooner producers and service providers can understand the prior operational month and determine what actions are possible in the next one.

The value of asynchronous processing is therefore not found in abstraction. It is found in operational tempo. The process does not wait unnecessarily. The system does not surrender control. The missing item is isolated, tracked, stored, retrieved, and completed when available. Everything else that can be governed, evidenced, processed, reconciled, and prepared is advanced without delay.

Asynchronous Conclusion:

Asynchronous means business activity proceeds through governed, event-driven coordination rather than real-time human synchronization, allowing each transaction to advance as far as authority, evidence, and available information permit while preserving incomplete steps for later completion.

For Autonomous Asynchronous Transaction Orchestration, the word “asynchronous” is critical because it separates Synallagi from the old administrative model. It means transactions do not sit idle waiting for perfect sequencing, complete paperwork, or synchronized human availability. They progress under defined governance, with each step executed when the right conditions exist, and with any missing authority, approval, evidence, or documentation captured and resolved before final completion.

21st Century Service Providers - Part XX

 Autonomous Asynchronous Transaction Orchestration  

The purpose of the 21st Century Marketplace Vision series, beginning in 2026 and continuing forward, is to define the material changes being made to Synallagi as it is upgraded to include Autonomous Asynchronous Transaction Orchestration.

To date, this concept has been addressed indirectly. We have approached it from several perspectives, but have not yet provided a complete operating definition or comprehensive vision. That is understandable. Autonomous Asynchronous Transaction Orchestration is not a narrow feature that can be inserted into Synallagi through a simple amendment or explained retrospectively through a short clarification. It represents a substantial expansion of architecture, process design, marketplace structure, Artificial Intelligence, workflow governance, transaction execution, auditability, and operational control.

For that reason, the subject is being addressed through a series of focused papers and podcasts rather than through one comprehensive document. Each paper will add another layer of understanding. Together, they will define the broader vision, the operational consequences, and the opportunities this creates for producers, our user community, service provider organizations, investors, and the greater North American oil & gas economy. These papers are incremental. They build on Synallagi' specification as it exists today while extending it into a more capable, governed, and commercially effective operating architecture.

The first two papers in the 21st Century Marketplace Vision for Oil and Gas series addressed Issues and Our User Community. This paper, focused on Service Providers, is the third in the series, with additional papers scheduled to follow.

This is also an appropriate time to make a formal announcement regarding the delivery environment for Synallagi with Autonomous Asynchronous Transaction Orchestration. What we have historically referred to as Cloud Administration and Accounting for Oil and Gas software and service now has a formal name: Synnefa.ai.

To step back briefly, Synallagi is the Greek word for “transaction.” In a broader commercial sense, it also carries the meaning of “the deal.” Synnefa is similarly Greek in origin and means “clouds.” Synnefa.ai is therefore the natural companion to Synallagi. Synallagi defines the transaction. Synnefa.ai defines the cloud-based software and service environment through which transactions, marketplaces, accounting, administration, Artificial Intelligence, governance, and orchestration are delivered to the North American oil & gas economy.

Admittedly, Synnefa.ai may be a little more difficult to pronounce and remember at first. The easiest way to think of it is by recalling a childhood moment when a father might yell downstairs during roughhousing with friends or siblings: “That’s enough, eh.” Drop the word “that,” keep the “s,” and the pronunciation is essentially “senough eh.”

Synallagi.ai and Synnefa.ai may require some adjustment from our user community and the industry at large. That is a reasonable imposition. The naming reflects the architecture. Synallagi defines the transaction, the deal, and the commercial event. Synnefa.ai defines the cloud environment in which those transactions are orchestrated, governed, monitored, executed, reconciled, audited, and reported. New terminology always requires time. After all, how did people first pronounce Xerox?

An Oil & Gas Synallagi

A business is not merely an organization, an asset base, a strategy, or a legal entity. A business is a continuing system of transactions: exchanges, commitments, obligations, deliveries, receipts, payments, adjustments, allocations, settlements, approvals, evidence, and records. These are what we define as Synallagi. Without these transactions, there is no business activity to administer.

The question, therefore, is direct. What is a Synallagi in oil & gas? What is its scope? What is its scale? What volume of transactions is processed by individual producers, by each Joint Operating Committee, and by the industry as a whole? Equally important, who is currently administering these transactions, and are they the appropriate resources to be doing so?

These are the questions our user community is addressing with our software developers. Their work is to design and develop the software processes that their service provider organizations will ultimately deliver through Synnefa.ai. The objective is not merely to automate existing administrative work. The objective is to identify the transaction, define its authority, determine its evidence requirements, establish its audit controls, process it efficiently, and integrate it within the broader accounting, operational, marketplace, and governance architecture of Synallagi.

Consider the drilling contract. The contract, the file, and the management of that contract are substantial. Drilling a ten million dollar shale well, followed by a five million dollar frac completion operation, is not administered on a few pages. It involves contracts, bids, technical specifications, field reports, service orders, approvals, equipment, materials, personnel, logistics, timing, safety, geological interpretation, engineering judgment, cost control, and performance evaluation. Yet many non-operated producers are asked to accept their share of those costs through fifteen to twenty account lines on a Statement of Expenditures. These are often the same accounts, and substantially the same costs, that were approved earlier through the Authorization for Expenditure. On that basis, accountability is deemed to have been achieved.

Every two years, the cost of an operator audit is shared at the Joint Operating Committee. The auditor reads the tour reports, reconciles the number of casing joints, reviews invoices, examines supporting documentation, and tests whether the costs charged to the Joint Account are appropriate. The process is not without merit. There is both science and art involved in a proper audit. However, from the perspective of meaningful administrative innovation, the process appears to have frozen some time ago.

Since the 1980s, operators have rarely accepted audit challenges to the integrity of their systems. A confirmed error can carry significant consequences within the operator firm. For an operator to accept an audit finding, refund the amount, and adjust the underlying methodology would be an extraordinary event. It rarely occurs, in part because the engineers responsible for the work are diligent. Precision is an honourable attribute of their profession, and the professional standard they apply to the well is substantial.

Most of what occurs within a fifteen million dollar drilling and completion is managed by the engineer. Much of the administration around that contract is also managed by the engineer. The strategic question is whether this administrative time is the best use of that engineering resource. Engineers should be competitively evaluated on their ability to make the well financially viable and to generate value for the Joint Operating Committee. Their primary contribution should be scientific, technical, operational, and economic performance.

Ensuring that auditors do not find mistakes is good practice and should continue. Accountability is not optional. The question is whether there are better ways to make a ten to fifteen million dollar shale drilling Synallagi achieve the same or greater accountability with less administrative effort, stronger evidence, better auditability, and greater efficiency. The opportunity is to reduce the administrative burden on engineers, technical resources, accounting personnel, administrators, service providers, and all others involved, while improving the quality of the transaction record itself.

At the other end of the scale is another oil & gas Synallagi: processing an employee expense account for a brief meeting at Starbucks. This too can become an administrative burden. It consumes the time of senior management preparing expense reports, the time of those reviewing them, and the time of those processing them. The dollar value may be insignificant, but the administrative pattern is not. Across a producer organization, repeated small transactions accumulate into substantial overhead, delay, and distraction.

Today, business credit cards can be issued to employees and configured so that only authorized and eligible business expenses are written directly as Synallagi through Oracle Cloud Enterprise Resource Planning. Personal costs, or costs that do not qualify under the company’s transaction policies, are sent directly to the employee for settlement. No form filing. No manual review of coffee receipts. No unnecessary internal processing burden within the producer organization. The process can be reduced to a simple designation by the employee that a charge is corporate. If the transaction is eligible under policy, authority, and configuration, it is processed on that basis.

These two examples define the scale of the issue. A fifteen million dollar drilling and completion transaction and a small employee expense item are both Synallagi’. They differ in value, complexity, risk, authority, evidence, timing, audit requirements, and operational significance. Yet both must be identified, governed, processed, recorded, reconciled, and reported. The task before our user community, software developers, and service provider organizations is to determine how each type of oil & gas Synallagi should be structured within Synallagi and delivered through Synnefa.ai.

A Synallagi Material Balance Report example is included as Appendix II of our Master Appendix. In that example, a Synallagi is created at the wellhead based on an agreed production allocation methodology. Volumetric values are captured through Internet of Things devices placed at defined points within the production system. These values are then reported to the producer through satellite and cellular-based communications.

From that point, Synallagi’ automation takes the volumetric reporting and applies the contractual, regulatory, royalty, revenue, processing fee, ownership, and other requirements necessary to determine the financial consequences of production for the month. Where amendments to volumes, prices, ownership, contractual terms, processing costs, or other variables are required, those amendments are processed through the automation of the relevant business processes.

Production volumes are then reconciled across the continent on a monthly basis. This is conducted autonomously through Artificial Intelligence and overseen by our user community’s service providers. Once continental balancing of the volumetric data has been achieved, the industry increases its level of accountability. Volumes are no longer merely reported by individual producers as isolated operational data. They are captured, calculated, reconciled, amended where necessary, and converted into financial consequences that are recorded on the financial statements.

The result is a level of integrity in production volumes that is consistent with the financial information reported by the producer. The Material Balance Report therefore becomes more than a reconciliation tool. It becomes an example of how Synallagi can convert physical production activity into an accountable transaction architecture, with evidence, timing, authority, reconciliation, and financial impact all embedded in the process.

The strategic question is broader. What other oil & gas transactions can be managed in a similar manner? Does that list include components of the drilling contract? In my opinion, it must. The unnecessary consumption of administrative time across oil & gas can be tamed and, over time, iteratively eliminated through our user community’s capabilities, structure, and architecture.

Autonomous Asynchronous Transaction Orchestration by Synallagi can therefore be applied to a wide variety of value-adding activities that reduce the overhead cost of oil & gas administration. These overhead reductions are in addition to the revenue enhancements gained through our price maker strategy. The value is not found in one isolated process. It is found in the systematic identification, redesign, automation, orchestration, and governance of the transactions that currently consume the industry’s time, capital, and technical resources.

Whether the issue is reducing the administrative burden placed on engineering and geological resources, eliminating the tedious and unnecessary internal processing of expense reports, or using Internet of Things devices, satellite communications, automation, and autonomous operations to calculate, report, reconcile, and value production volumes, each case represents a Synallagi. Each transaction can be defined, designed, built, implemented, monitored, and managed through our user community and their service provider organizations.

Synallagi treats the transaction as the elemental unit of business. Each transaction carries economic, legal, operational, accounting, evidentiary, timing, and governance consequences. By organizing business around transactions, Synallagi provides the architecture through which producers, the Joint Operating Committee, our user community, service providers, Intellectual Property, Artificial Intelligence, and markets coordinate their work.

This is the iterative vision in which Synallagi, with Autonomous Asynchronous Transaction Orchestration delivered through Synnefa.ai, now stands. It is not a static design. It is an operating architecture through which each transaction can be identified, improved, automated, governed, reconciled, and eventually optimized. We are not simply asking how existing transactions can be processed faster. We are asking what the transaction is, who should administer it, what evidence it requires, what controls govern it, how much human effort it deserves, and how Synallagi can make the business of oil & gas more dynamic, innovative, accountable, and profitable.

Notice

At this point, People, Ideas & Objects is announcing the Transaction as Synallagi ninth Organizational Construct.

The Organizational Constructs, in no particular order, are now as follows. Trust and Transactions will be published as part of the 21st Century Marketplace Vision series of papers.

• The Joint Operating Committee.
• Hyper Specialization and the Division of Labor.
• Endogenous Technical Change, including the shared infrastructure of Synnefa.ai.
• Markets.
• Intellectual Property, possibly the most consequential Organizational Construct for our user community and their service providers.
• Information Technology.
• Innovation.
• Transactions, in the comprehensive form of Synallagi.
• Trust.

Organizational Constructs define, support, and constrain the domain of the producer firm, the Joint Operating Committee, and markets. They are direct replacements for bureaucracy. They provide the means to define boundaries, responsibilities, authority, accountability, and the structure of the software itself.

It is reasonable to expect overlap between the domains of each Organizational Construct. Where that overlap occurs, the operational architecture is strengthened. Much of the domain delivered by Synallagi will involve multiple overlapping constructs. In many cases, several Organizational Constructs will apply simultaneously, creating a tighter control framework through which the oil & gas industry can operate with greater accountability, efficiency, discipline, and profitability.

This notice therefore commits People, Ideas & Objects to write the Trust and Synallagi Organizational Constructs as one of the deliverables in this series:

21st Century Marketplace Vision: Trust and Synallagi Organizational Constructs.

Podcast # 37 - 21st Century Service Providers - Section 1

 People, Ideas & Objects are excited to share Podcast #37, which covers Section 1 of our third paper, “21st Century Marketplace Vision for Oil & Gas - Part III - Service Provider.” The full paper is accessible through our Paper Index, and you can download the episode directly via the Podcast Index.

21st Century Service Providers - Part XIX

 An Inversion

These positions contain a broad range of attributes. The role may appear narrow because the producer process being managed is only a small slice of the industry’s accounting or administration. Yet that narrowness in scope is precisely what creates the opportunity for depth to manage the complexity introduced through Synallagi.

The focused nature of the role contrasts with the broad scope of disciplines, technologies, regulations, geophysics, chemistry, facts, and market conditions that influence the producer. By specializing in one process, both our user community members and their service providers can focus intensely on these details of a specific subset of industry operations. They are then able to manage the scope of accounting, regulatory, administrative, Information Technology, marketplace, and Intellectual Property expertise as hyper specialists, codify that in the software specification and support the tacit knowledge delivery to industry through their service provider organization. 

This is arguably the inverse of today’s situation. At present, people are placed inside the incomprehensibly broad and diverse domain of a producer organization's knowledge, expected to understand everything, provided with limited authority to act, inadequate resources, and made responsible for “doing it that way” because it has been done that way for decades. Taking on a scope of complexity too difficult to comprehend, standardize or simplify. Responsible for everything with no authority over anything.

The choice now rests with the people currently working in oil & gas accounting and administrative roles. Which environment appeals to them, Synallagi or bureaucracy, and which does not? There are places and advocates for people who desire each approach in oil & gas. To guarantee that Autonomous Asynchronous Transaction Orchestration is executed correctly, members of our user community and service providers act as the primary supervisors of individual specific processes across the population of North American oil & gas producers. A global industry wide data set for that process.

The appeal to potential participants in Synallagi is clear. They are not avoiding change. They are managing career risk in an industry notorious for inaction, retribution, excuses, and institutional resistance. Synallagi offers a different path: specialized authority, defined responsibility, advanced software development tools and resources, and a direct role in rebuilding North American oil & gas around a culture of reserves preservation, performance and profitability.

Revisiting Speed as an Issue 

In the first paper of the 21st Century Marketplace Vision series, (Podcast Index) we identified the principal issues confronting the North American oil and gas industry. Among them was Time. We stated directly that time is speed, and speed is cost. If the industry continues to believe that time and speed are not material factors in today’s difficulties, or that they will not become far more consequential in the future, then there is much to be concerned about.

The pace, tempo, and operational intensity now required of organizations are difficult to overstate. The burden is already overwhelming. To continue without removing bottlenecks, streamlining processes, and restructuring organizations to sustain today’s operating requirements is a material strategic failure. The greater concern is that while the industry struggles to maintain today’s pace, tomorrow will have already moved beyond its reach.

What has become evident is that the officers and directors of producer firms have allowed the oil and gas industry, the service industry, and the broader oil & gas economic infrastructure dependent upon producers to atrophy. Action that advances the sound governance of North American oil and gas does not appear to be aligned with their interests. Their interests are personal, entrenched, and, by their own standards, well satisfied.

This leads to the need for a new operating philosophy within the industry. Ernest Hemingway expressed the logic of sudden failure in The Sun Also Rises:

How did you go bankrupt?

Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly.

I have argued many times that bankruptcy has become part of the business model employed by producers. It allows systemic failures to be rolled over repeatedly. Officers appear largely unaffected by the declaration of bankruptcy and may even be granted substantial bonuses shortly before it occurs. Directors and shareholders are shown to the street. Bankers take control and are forced to exchange debt for newly issued common shares. The same assets and, often, the same officers continue forward. Those who should have acted, and did not, emerge adequately protected. Others bear the cost and the process begins again.

The industry is now at a point where continued inaction cannot be tolerated. Too much is at stake, and too much damage has already extended beyond the boundaries of oil and gas. The absence of meaningful action on business-related difficulties that have persisted for the better part of fifty years is difficult to reconcile. There is little discussion, no credible initiative, and no sustained effort from those who have held the authority, responsibility, resources, and accountability to resolve these problems.

Speed is therefore not a secondary issue. It is a primary strategic constraint. The distance the industry must travel to reach People, Ideas & Objects Synallagi, our user community, and their service provider organizations is substantial. The time required to deliver our product, even with disciplined efforts to limit development timelines, is significant. Every period of continued inactivity increases the complexity of the solution. That is evident in the expanding scope of this 21st Century Marketplace Vision series. Delay increases the degree of difficulty, raises execution risk, and increases the probability of failure. In practical terms, delay escalates cost.

The future will impose demands on producer firms that are not yet fully understood. Consumer energy needs will increase. Investors may begin to prefer oil and gas assets traded through crypto-based instruments rather than equity interests in producer firms. Geologists who have spent their careers specializing in a specific zone may find their capabilities stranded when the producer firm employing them shifts its attention to clean energy, Libya, Argentina, or some other corporate diversion. Synallagi changes that outcome. Their skills would have been made available to any Joint Operating Committee operating within that formation, augmenting its capacities and capabilities as required, independent of any individual producer firm’s change in strategy.

The potential of the North American oil and gas industry has never been greater. The need for a dynamic, innovative, accountable, and profitable industry has also never been more urgent. The industry will be required to fund and support opportunities now emerging across the North American economy. It is being tasked with providing the energy foundation for what may become an Artificial Intelligence defined, Information Technology based Industrial Revolution.

That race has not yet begun. Each industry is ready at the starting line. Oil and gas, however, is lined up backwards, fifty meters behind the start, fully convinced it will win.

21st Century Service Providers - Part XVIII

 Summary of Our User Community Members

In the second paper of this 21st Century Marketplace Vision series, we discussed the role and responsibilities of our user community. If we were to summarize what the industry needs from them, it is leadership in the accounting and administrative domains of oil & gas.

Each member of our user community is licensed to manage a specific domain or process within Synallagi software. Their role is to deliver Synallagi software and service through their service provider organization to the industry at large. This delivery combines the explicit knowledge captured in the software with the tacit knowledge applied by their service provider organization.

What Synallagi proposes is a radical rebuilding of the oil & gas industry to address the business issues identified in Part I: Issues of this series. These are issues the industry has failed to resolve for the past half century. Today’s Information Technologies now make it possible to support a new organizational structure in which our user community and their service provider organizations are formed from the transfer of producers’ administrative and accounting resources into a more specialized, accountable, and commercially effective structure.

Through shared infrastructure, hyper specialization, the division of labor, and other features of Synallagi, People, Ideas & Objects offers producers a compelling value proposition. Reasonable assumptions suggest that the number of people required to populate these roles within our user community and their service provider organizations will be materially smaller than the number currently required to account for and administer the industry. It is also reasonable to expect that only a limited portion of today’s administrative and accounting professionals will be interested in these roles. These two facts appear to be synergistic. 

The prevailing assumption may prove largely correct: a substantial portion of the work people currently perform will be absorbed by Artificial Intelligence. That raises the obvious concern that humans may be displaced in significant numbers. However, an alternative and more constructive outcome is also possible. Rather than mass displacement, Artificial Intelligence may materially improve the quality of life for most people by changing the structure, duration, and value basis of work itself.

Prior to the Industrial Revolution, the standard working year was approximately 3,000 hours. Today, it is generally understood that a full-time position requires approximately 1,700 to 2,000 hours of work per year. It is reasonable to ask whether, in the near future, the standard full-time work commitment will be reduced again, perhaps to something closer to 900 to 1,000 hours per year. This may be the more probable outcome. Artificial Intelligence will assume responsibility for a meaningful portion of the work that previously consumed human time, while humans will be redirected toward supervision, judgment, design, governance, accountability, and higher-value decision-making.

The critical issue is not simply whether Artificial Intelligence replaces tasks. The more important question is whether Artificial Intelligence generates the incremental value and profitability that employees previously contributed through time-intensive work, while the employee’s remaining contribution becomes equally valuable through higher-quality, higher-leverage activity. If that occurs, their compensation will become less dependent on hours worked and more directly tied to value creation, profitability, accountability, and measurable contribution.

This aligns with the compensation structure we are developing for our user community and service providers. Their compensation will not be organized around the traditional industrial measure of time alone. It will be configured and managed through our Targeting Framework, which will be described in detail in a forthcoming paper in this series. A Targeting Framework aligns compensation with the value, profitability, accountability, innovation, and performance generated for the oil & gas industry through Synallagi. (See Appendix I, Our User Community Compensation.)

Those most inclined to pursue leadership roles will likely be the first to move toward our user community. Others will occupy what might be described as hands-on mid-management roles, administering Synallagi software, supervising its automation and autonomous Artificial Intelligence functions, and delivering the tacit knowledge that service providers bring directly to producers.

Recruitment for our user community and their service provider organizations is therefore inherently limited. It is an opt-in process. Participants will determine their own acceptable level of career and financial risk and decide accordingly. Participation is subject to an application process, and prospective participants will receive a clear understanding of the work and its requirements before they are asked to commit fully to the change.

Our user community members are individually owned and operated organizations in which People, Ideas & Objects have no financial interest. We license them to envision, architect, design, and develop the specific software producers will need. The basis of our user community member’s license is the exclusive right to manage a specific domain through their wholly owned and operated service provider organization.

Historically, we have stated that this work was undertaken with direct input from oil and gas producers themselves. That phrase is imprecise and, in hindsight, materially incomplete. It may suggest that producer firms alone were the source of industry input, when the intended meaning was always broader. The development of Synallagi depends on the full North American oil and gas ecosystem, not merely the producer firm perspective.

The correct scope includes our user community, service providers, engineers, geologists, accountants, administrators, contractors, service industry firms, financial participants, technology providers, Artificial Intelligence specialists, and the wider range of disciplines required to rebuild oil and gas accounting, administration, operations, governance, and marketplaces. Producers are participants in this environment, but they are not the exclusive or dominant source of operational knowledge.

People, Ideas & Objects remedial effort is to correct this language going forward. We will no longer frame the work as producer-directed or producer-defined. Instead, Synallagi will be described as ecosystem-informed, user community-led, service provider-enabled, and technologically supported. This more accurately reflects the structure of the work, the source of its knowledge, and the institutional model required to establish a culture of reserves preservation, performance and profitability.

Another error we seek to correct in the definition of Synallagi is the methodology of how our user community earns the domain of user community license they’ll own and operationalize through their service provider organization. In prior discussion we noted that Artificial Intelligence would be used to assimilate the contributions of all of our user community input and then designate who contributed the most valuable. We now wish to change that to:

Artificial Intelligence-based license allocation is a high-risk governance topic if not framed carefully. Allocation of exclusive service provider licenses cannot appear arbitrary, opaque, or merely algorithmic. It should be positioned as an Artificial Intelligence-assisted recommendation process, subject to governance, review, appeal, audit trails, conflict-of-interest controls, and People, Ideas & Objects’ final authority. Otherwise, the license allocation model could create perceived unfairness inside our user community.

A Summary of Service Provider Organizations

The role of the service provider is more operational in nature. Service provider organizations are responsible for the day-to-day accounting and administration of oil & gas processes. Some may initially assume these positions will be drone-like, defined by repetitive output and limited discretion. Nothing could be further from the case.

Just as our user community members will have a high level of interaction with oil & gas engineers, geologists, accountants, administrators, contractors, service industry firms, financial participants, technology providers, Artificial Intelligence specialists, and the wider range of disciplines required to rebuild oil and gas accounting, administration, operations, governance, and marketplaces. Their service provider organizations will have equally significant operational relationships with them. In many respects, they are the eyes and ears, feet and hands of our user community members. This is particularly important during initial software implementation and during scheduled deployment of Oracle and Synallagi quarterly upgrades.

If a service provider is responsible for one aspect of a regulatory domain, it will become expert in that domain (subject to rotation) and use that expertise to ensure producers always achieve the most profitable means of oil & gas operations. This includes anticipating changes in the business environment, interpreting regulatory developments, and ensuring that the software reflects these changes in a timely and accurate manner.

If a service provider is responsible for a process element within the Material Balance Report, it will understand both its own domain and the up and downstream effects that changes in other areas may have on its process. The service provider must maintain awareness, interpretation, and advocacy within its domain to ensure producer profitability remains the governing priority.

As employees of a user community member’s organization, service providers operate within a team responsible for managing a defined process across the industry. They are able to influence change through the exclusive role of our user community members in architecting, designing, developing, and innovating the software for that specific process.

They will use the most advanced technologies to ensure their process is operational, functioning as designed, and continuously tested for accuracy and effectiveness. Their role is not to interfere casually with the process itself. Rather, they are custodians and supervisors of the machines, automation, and Artificial Intelligence used to conduct the work.

To organize the diverse population of service providers into a coherent and manageable framework, the development of a comprehensive taxonomy will be essential. We anticipate classifications such as process-domain service providers, cloud infrastructure service providers, coordination service providers, Artificial Intelligence governance service providers, and audit and compliance service providers, among many others. As our user community and their service provider organizations evolve, additional classifications will naturally emerge to reflect increasing specialization and the division of labor.

The Industrial Command & Control software being developed by People, Ideas & Objects and our user community may provide the foundation for identifying, organizing, supporting, and coordinating these classifications. In doing so, it will help ensure that the appropriate expertise, responsibilities, and capabilities are consistently aligned with the operational requirements of the North American oil and gas industry.

21st Century Service Providers - Part XVII

 Note to Reader  

This paper examines the role, objectives, methods, and structure of our user community’s service provider organizations. Building upon our previous papers on our user community and issues, it continues the evolution of Synallagi through a series of initiatives that strengthen both the organizational framework and the software itself. These developments will include the expanded application of Artificial Intelligence, the incorporation of stablecoins and cryptocurrencies, and the addition of two new Organizational Constructs: Trust and Transactions. (Note: transactions are not merely records—they are one of the fundamental organizational constructs around which the entire architecture is built.)

Each of these developments represents a significant subject in its own right. This paper, the first part of two on the Service Provider's Vision, introduces them as components of an integrated vision rather than attempting to examine each in exhaustive detail. Much remains to be written, and these concepts will be expanded in subsequent papers throughout our 21st Century Marketplace Vision series.

Readers will likely notice that these two papers are longer than previous publications and that many concepts are revisited from different perspectives. This is intentional. The architecture of Synallagi is highly integrated, with each component influencing many others. As new capabilities are introduced, they must be understood not only individually but also in terms of their relationships with the broader system. Revisiting concepts in different contexts helps establish those connections. This first paper of two speaks to many of the issues involved.

Although the overall vision is straightforward, the technologies and organizational structures supporting it are evolutionary. They build incrementally upon one another, with each advancement creating the foundation for the next. This reflects the direction in which business, software, and Artificial Intelligence are rapidly evolving. Our objective is therefore to introduce these developments in a disciplined, sequential manner, allowing readers to understand both the individual innovations and the larger architecture they collectively create.

The vision presented here represents only one stage in a much broader progression. As this series continues, additional research, refinements, and capabilities will be incorporated, progressively revealing the complete 21st Century Marketplace Vision and the role Synallagi is intended to play in the future of the North American oil and gas industry.

These papers are intentionally detailed. That level of depth is necessary for our user community and their service provider organizations to contribute the analysis, knowledge, and practical experience required to develop Synallagi over the long term. The architecture cannot be built from broad concepts alone; it requires comprehensive discussion of the underlying principles, assumptions, processes, and interactions that define the system.

Their length also reflects the realities of the Artificial Intelligence era. These papers are intended not only for human readers but also as training and reference material for the Artificial Intelligence tools that our user community and service provider organizations will employ. The greater the depth and context available, the more effectively those systems will be able to analyze the material, identify relationships, generate insights, and contribute new perspectives within their respective domains of expertise.

For many years I pursued brevity, and failed at it most every day. In retrospect, that failure may prove to have been an unexpected advantage. What once appeared to be excessive detail can now be recognized as a valuable asset in a world where powerful Artificial Intelligence systems derive greater understanding, richer context, and more meaningful insight from comprehensive bodies of knowledge than from abbreviated summaries.

An Entire New Discipline  

During the summer of 2004, while promoting the Preliminary Research Report, I had the opportunity to have an acquaintance review the work. After reading it, he offered a simple observation that has remained with me ever since:

“It’s an entire new discipline.”

Over the past two decades, no comment has resonated with me more deeply. It reinforced my belief that we were moving in the right direction and, more importantly, that the scope of what was being proposed had been recognized by someone whose judgment, experience, and accomplishments I greatly respected.

That individual was Mr. B. J. Seaman of Calgary. Together with his brothers, Doc and Don Seaman, he helped establish Bow Valley Industries, an organization that played a pivotal role in the emergence and growth of Canada’s independent oil and gas producer sector. He was also one of the original owners of the Calgary Flames, reflecting a lifetime of leadership, entrepreneurship, and commitment to the community. His obituary provides only a brief summary of a remarkable life, but it is fitting that I acknowledge him here.

More than twenty years later, I believe Mr. Seaman’s observation has proven remarkably prescient. What began as the Preliminary Research Report has evolved into Synallagi—a comprehensive architecture encompassing Enterprise Resource Planning software, marketplaces, Intellectual Property, our user community, their service provider organizations, governance, Artificial Intelligence, and new organizational structures for administering the North American oil and gas industry. It is no longer simply a software project or a business model. It is a framework for organizing an industry around resource preservation, performance, accountability, innovation, and profitability.

Looking back, I believe Mr. Seaman recognized something that was not yet fully apparent, even to me. The objective was never merely to build better software. It was to establish a fundamentally different way of thinking about the administration, governance, and operation of the oil and gas industry. In that respect, his assessment remains the most meaningful observation anyone has made about this work. His comment has sustained my motivation in the many trying times since.

It is, indeed, an entire new discipline.

Synallagi offers a solution to the systematic destruction of the shale endowment by the industry's leadership. Within a mere two decades, what was one of the greatest sources of wealth for the world's leading economy has been squandered and decimated. This outcome alone should be sufficient grounds to disqualify the continued tenure of those irresponsible, unaccountable and North American producer officers and directors. 

It is no longer sufficient for a producer to merely own oil and gas assets. Ownership of the reserves alone does not ensure profitability. Unprofitable reserves are valueless in a competitive market. Producers must have access to the software, systems, user community, service providers, Intellectual Property, and governance architecture that make those assets capable of generating profitable production. Everywhere and always.

Synallagi changes the operating discipline of the industry. Unprofitable production is shut in to maximize producer profitability, preserve reserves, and prevent the continued destruction of commodity value. Unprofitable properties are not abandoned to seek a new frontier. They’re transferred to the inventory of innovative projects where Synallagi’ user community, their service providers, and producer firms engineers and geologists work with standard, objective and factual accounting information and analysis to determine what is the most effective and efficient way to return them to profitable production and to perform financially and competitive as necessary in North American capital markets and to do so as quickly as possible.

This distinction is critical. The purpose of shutting in unprofitable production is not contraction for its own sake. It is disciplined value preservation. Producing at a loss destroys a property's reserves, weakens producer balance sheets, damages the service industry, undermines investor confidence, and contributes to continued commodity overproduction and overall price declines. Shutting in unprofitable properties creates the economic space required to safeguard other properties profitability, restore the shut-in properties profitability and rebuild credibility. (See Appendix VIII Synallagi' Price Maker Strategy.)

No amount of conventional cost control will solve the problem. Producers have spent decades reducing costs, pressuring the service industry, deferring maintenance, capitalizing expenditures, and stretching the productive capacity of assets and organizations. That strategy reached its limit decades ago and has only served to transfer the bust portion of the boom / bust cycle to the service industry. It is and has always been oil & gas overproduction, or unprofitable production and the resulting damage to commodity prices at issue.

Since 2012, Synallagi has been in the marketplace offering a full “rip and replace” Enterprise Resource Planning software development and implementation model. The past fourteen years, including the past eleven years in which producers’ capital structures have lacked any support, reveal two defining characteristics of the status quo.

First, the “muddle through” culture remains deeply entrenched, persistent, and immovable. Second, the industry’s recurring strategic redirections—from heavy oil, to shale, to clean energy, back to shale, and now toward international opportunities—have followed a predictable eighteen-month cadence without resolving the underlying issues. Each pivot has deferred accountability rather than restored performance.

The result is not stabilization. The difficulties have become more prevalent, systemic, and chronic. The deeper and broader our analysis proceeds, the clearer it becomes that the existing organizational configuration is incapable of resolving the industry’s structural problems.

Synallagi’ cumulative value add is therefore material. It is not a marginal efficiency initiative. It is a market rehabilitation mechanism. The oil and gas commodity markets will require a dedicated multi-year rehabilitation and recovery. That recovery cannot occur without effective production discipline. Synallagi provides that discipline through standardized, objective determinations of profitability at the Joint Operating Committee level and the operational consequences from unprofitable production being shut in until it can be returned to profitable status. Something we have stated repeatedly over the past fourteen years, yet the monetary value of the issues has only amplified.

Production discipline is ultimately established through the North American capital markets. Producers who wish to maintain their capital structures, independence, and access to investment capital must consistently meet the performance expectations of those markets. Failure to do so inevitably places both their financial independence and long-term future in question.

Only disciplined production provides the means to optimize a producer’s production profile in accordance with those expectations. By ensuring that only profitable production occurs, production discipline preserves capital, protects commodity values, strengthens investor confidence, and establishes the financial performance required to compete successfully in the North American capital markets. It is not simply an operational objective; it is a foundational requirement for long-term producer performance and independence.

The full paper can be accessed here.

Another Day, Another Paper

 In keeping with our tradition of publishing the ugliest content we possibly can—and doing so consistently—People, Ideas & Objects is pleased to announce the third paper in our 21st Century Marketplace Vision research series.

From the outset, it became apparent that the concepts underlying Synallagi had grown too broad and too interconnected to be presented effectively in a single document. Attempting to do so would produce a paper so large and complex that much of its meaning would be lost. Instead, we have chosen to publish this work as a series of focused papers, allowing readers to absorb the concepts incrementally and build a deeper understanding of where Synallagi is headed with Autonomous Asynchronous Transaction Orchestration.

This third paper examines the role of our user community’s service provider organizations. The subject has been divided into two papers, with this publication representing Part 1 of 2.

Our service providers are the operational foundation of Synallagi. They combine their tacit industry knowledge with the explicit knowledge embedded within the software, delivering both to the North American oil & gas industry. Their role extends beyond implementation and support. They are responsible for continuously refining business processes, developing innovations, and ensuring that producers realize the full value of Synallagi.

Like members of our user community, service providers participate in a performance-based compensation model that rewards measurable value creation. Performance incentives remain persistent with the individual, and shared with our user community members, encouraging long-term innovation and continuous improvement. These incentives are objectively calculated through the Synallagi Targeting Framework, which measures the economic value generated by service provider innovations and allocates compensation according to the benefits realized by producers. The Synallagi Targeting Framework will be the subject of a future paper in the 21st Century Marketplace Vision series.

This paper may also be read in conjunction with the accompanying Appendix 1 Our User Community Compensation:

To make the material more approachable, we will publish the paper in sections over the coming weeks, allowing readers to absorb the concepts in manageable portions should they prefer a more gradual approach.

At the same time, we are expanding the Synallagi wiki to distinguish between what has traditionally been the Business Specification and the next stage of development—the integrated Technical Specification. Increasingly, these two perspectives cannot be separated. The technical architecture has become an integral component of the business architecture, particularly as Artificial Intelligence, automation, orchestration, governance, and marketplace design become inseparable elements of the overall system.

These technical specifications will be published alongside these research papers and incorporated into the wiki as development progresses. And you can be assured I’ll never forget about the podcasts, which somehow figure out what it is I’m saying. 

21st Century Marketplace Vision - Our User Community - Part XVI

Autonomous Asynchronous Transaction Orchestration

Material Balance Report Example

Extending our Material Balance Report example to include Autonomous Asynchronous Transaction Orchestration is where additional value is created through autonomous action.

The first installment of the Material Balance Report example primarily addressed automation. This second part addresses autonomy. (Please see the full Material Balance Report example in the Master Appendix of the Reference section in this paper.)

Automation is process management operating under human control. It executes defined and repeatable work. For example, net propane production multiplied by the price received equals revenue. The system then writes the result as an entry to the General Ledger. The process is completed without human handling. It can also be reviewed, corrected, or intervened upon without disrupting the broader system.

The autonomous nature of the Material Balance Report is different. It operates within the dynamic monthly balancing of a corporate volumetric system. This process considers volumetric reporting from other producers across the North American oil & gas infrastructure. It balances production from source through to each commodity’s ultimate disposition. Human intervention in that autonomous process is disruptive. The implications of such intervention are unknown and unknowable in advance.

Material and Partnership Balance

In addition to the overall and comprehensive System Balance, Synallagi’ Material Balance Report is supported by the Material Balance and Partnership Balance.

At first glance, these may appear heavily facility-dependent and straightforward. That assumption would be wrong. This is where the autonomous nature of Synallagi begins to earn its value. Within a defined functioning domain, autonomy will operate predominantly in this area.

The advantage is that the operational and accounting requirements of each Joint Operating Committee are extensively documented. These documents define volumetric reporting, product disposition, ownership interests, facility interests, processing arrangements, and settlement obligations. The complexity of these agreements is dynamic. No two Joint Operating Committee volumetric allocations should be assumed to be the same.

This is fertile ground for autonomous operations. The objective is to reduce data rework, improve accuracy, and increase partnership satisfaction.

Is the property natural gas or oil? Do all partners own any gathering and processing facilities equally? Do some pay custom processing fees? Where is the point of sale calculated? What volumetric trade-offs have been made among partners? Some partners may exchange oil for gas. Others may purchase gas at the wellhead to satisfy a gas contract indexed to Henry Hub pricing. A producer’s share may be defined up to a maximum volume, with an option to take the remaining balance. Royalty responsibility may vary by agreement, product stream, ownership interest, or disposition.

Each month’s composition is guaranteed to be different. Yet the variables remain consistent. They are based on complex formulas, chemical compositions, ownership positions, contractual elections, and operational outcomes.

Consider a well completed in a dual zone as a test to evaluate the performance of the second zone. That decision changes the chemistry of the well’s production. The completion may have included new producers in the area, while some existing partners opted out and accepted a penalty on their interest. The surrounding area may contain many unique Joint Operating Committees, each representing distinct assets and ownership interests, all serviced by one comprehensive gas plant that ships specification products by pipeline and tank car.

In that situation, the facility must first satisfy the Partnership Balance of the parties involved. It must then satisfy the Material Balance of internal production, gathering, processing, disposition, and sale. Only then can it participate in the broader System Balance.

Any change to the System Balance, Partnership Balance, or Material Balance must be evaluated against the other two balances. Do they need to be adjusted? If so, why? If not, why not?

A change in the Material Balance may cause the Partnership Balance to change while leaving the System Balance unaffected. These relationships are dynamic, fluid, and influenced by producer actions and decisions both within individual Joint Operating Committees and outside their asset ownership group.

Autonomous’ Impact on Automation

Astute oil & gas readers will recognize that many autonomous actions will trigger the automations discussed in Part I of the Material Balance Report example. That is expected, desired and also appropriate.

Automations are driven by accounting, production, and regulatory reporting requirements that are mechanically derived from specification volumes, ownership allocations, pricing, or sales values. Therefore, any change in prescribed volumes can trigger an amendment to a General Ledger account or create an accrual.

During the course of a month, an automation may be triggered many times by autonomous amendments. That does not blur the boundary between automation and autonomy.

Automation executes defined accounting, production, and regulatory processes. Autonomy evaluates, adjusts, and balances within its authorized domain, based on the factual knowledge of the Joint Operating Committee, its operating environment and dynamic nature. At no time does automation wander into the autonomous domain. Likewise, autonomy does not enter the automation domain. Each operates within its licensed authority, defined scope, and controlled purpose.

Our User Community Experimentation

Artificial Intelligence Experimentation

I have often noted the step change Artificial Intelligence made in Information Technology when, in 1997, it defeated Garry Kasparov in chess. Nineteen years later, Artificial Intelligence defeated Lee Sedol in Go. In both instances, Artificial Intelligence generated strategies and moves that had not been previously documented or anticipated.

This was not new thinking in the sense of inventing new rules. It was the application of long-standing rules in ways human beings had not seen, discovered, or accepted. People such as myself once considered Artificial Intelligence to be nothing more than algorithms and vast processing power. That remains technically true. However, the ability to identify what we have overlooked, ignored, or blinded ourselves to is materially different from dismissing Artificial Intelligence as merely algorithms and processing power. Once discovered, these insights often appear obvious. The value lies in finding them.

A further development is now emerging in software development itself. First, for those unfamiliar with an Integrated Development Environment, that should be corrected. Software development has achieved substantial productivity gains over several decades through these tools. They provide support, assistance, automation, and structure to the development process. Operating on top of the ubiquitous nature of object-oriented programming, they have materially improved developer performance. Modern programming languages can reuse frameworks, including Oracle Cloud Enterprise Resource Planning, by adopting established object libraries and related software structures. I would like to see our user community take the example of the IDE and apply that iterative development to the Material Balance Report and other areas of Synallagi. 

A significant opportunity now exists in legacy systems. COBOL code has been running on mainframes for more than half a century. Many of the people who wrote those programs are no longer available. Those who still understand COBOL are scarce, and few are volunteering to maintain these systems indefinitely. As a result, the useful life of many of these applications is limited. They must eventually be rewritten in modern languages.

Artificial Intelligence tools such as Claude from Anthropic and ChatGPT from OpenAI are now being applied to that backlog. Their purpose is not merely to generate code fragments, which has become a common use of Artificial Intelligence in software development. They are being used to analyze and rewrite substantial legacy code bases. Developers are discovering something consistent with the earlier chess and Go examples. Artificial Intelligence is providing a new perspective on software that has operated for decades. In doing so, it is identifying bugs that may have existed for the full life of those applications, correcting them, and improving the underlying systems.

This is an important distinction. Producing small portions of code within a much larger code base is one thing. Applying Artificial Intelligence agents to entire legacy systems is another. The latter may provide more efficient, more reliable, and more resilient software. It also introduces a new method of reviewing, understanding, and improving systems that have long been treated as operationally untouchable.
This is only the first-order consequence of applying Artificial Intelligence to large volumes of COBOL code. We are still at the beginning of this process. We should expect further changes in how Information Technology is designed, developed, maintained, and governed. It is reasonable to expect that programming languages themselves will soon evolve in response to these capabilities.

For People, Ideas & Objects, this has direct implications. Our user community and their service provider organizations will not merely operate software. They will act as architects and designers of the Enterprise Resource Planning software for oil & gas. Their role will be to develop, design, implement, continuously improve and iterate on the software processes that provide producers with the most profitable means of oil & gas operations.

People, Ideas & Objects has experienced, throughout its history, the belief that producers have constrained budgets for Enterprise Resource Planning and accounting. Those constraints have produced systems capable of meeting corporate tax, Securities and Exchange Commission, and other statutory reporting requirements. They have not produced adequate management or operational accounting. Engineers and geologists generally do not see accounting information because it does not exist in a usable operational form. Instead, they rely on independent engineering estimates as their principal source of information. This reinforces the mistaken belief that accounting and Enterprise Resource Planning budgets are unnecessary. From that perspective, the system only needs to pay the bills.

Our user community configuration is theoretically capable of providing overhead at single-digit percentages of what is incurred today. This cost-performance expectation is supported by converting fixed overhead into variable cost, applying hyper specialization, and sharing non-competitive elements of a producer's infrastructure including accounting and administration. The appropriate question, therefore, is not only cost but quality will be enhanced.

Assume the budget has been constrained, as I suggest. There is no compelling reason to accept or reject that claim outright. However, when viewed through the Chess, Go, and COBOL examples, Artificial Intelligence creates a practical question. What is the probability that our user community and their service provider organizations will begin generating value for producers through management, administration, accounting, and systems capabilities that no one has previously had the opportunity, incentive, or tools to consider?

That probability is material.

When this is combined with the compensation model defined in this paper, the incentives model becomes stronger. Our user community and their service provider organizations will be motivated to search for these improvements on behalf of producers. Because the infrastructure is shared, innovations developed in one area can be applied across a broad spectrum of producers. Our user community members operating domains are defined by Intellectual Property licenses. Therefore sharing of these innovative approaches may occur. Even small improvements become economically meaningful when they are deployed at industry scale.

This is the strategic implication of Artificial Intelligence experimentation. It does not merely automate existing work. Properly applied, it reveals the weaknesses, omissions, and unexploited opportunities embedded in legacy systems and legacy thinking. For Synallagi, this becomes a design principle. Artificial Intelligence should be used to discover what the industry has not seen, what current systems cannot express, and what producers have never had the operational information to act upon.

Our User Community Experimentation

A point of caution is required before discussing innovation or experimentation in software development. What is not required in the first development iteration is innovation in Synallagi’ business model itself.
Synallagi’ vision functions as an integrated architecture. Adjusting individual elements to accommodate specific local conditions may appear beneficial in isolation. However, those changes could unintentionally disrupt the broader model, impair related modules, or weaken operational capabilities elsewhere in the system. The initial development phase is therefore not the appropriate time to modify the business models embedded within Synallagi.

Those innovations can occur later. Once the software has been developed, implemented, stabilized, and placed into market operation, the Synallagi model can be tested, refined, and extended based on evidence.

There is already substantially more to accomplish than exists in a traditional software development process. We must not overextend the first iteration. Incur time the producers can not afford to lose. Initial work will include several one-time demands, including familiarization with Oracle Cloud Enterprise Resource Planning, onboarding new members into our user community, establishing development discipline, and integrating service provider participation. These activities will consume material time, attention, and organizational capacity.

For that reason, the first development phase should remain focused on Synallagi’ established business model. That focus will provide consistency, discipline, and clarity throughout development.

Once the software is fully operational in the marketplace, innovation on the model becomes appropriate. At that point, we can examine the interactions, constraints, and implications that arise across the various domains of operation. New producers may also have been formed around alternative value-generating operating models. Their requirements, performance, and influence on Synallagi’ development will need to be assessed and incorporated where appropriate.

The objective remains unchanged. People, Ideas & Objects is focused on providing the oil & gas industry with dynamic, innovative, accountable, and profitable operations, everywhere and always. Achieving that objective requires constant change within the activities of our developers, our user community, and their service provider organizations.

However, change must be sequenced. The initial development phase requires commitment to the overall vision. Innovation should strengthen the architecture, not fragment it before it is operational.

Conclusion

The defining characteristics of North American oil & gas producers today reflect a history shaped by a serial succession of once-in-a-lifetime events. The first major rupture was the collapse of oil prices to approximately $10 per barrel in 1986. That price environment cast a long shadow over the market through the remainder of the 1980s and much of the 1990s.

In response, the industry institutionalized one operating strategy: muddle through. It became systemic. It became cultural. It became the default method of management. I am not aware of the means and methods being used within producer organizations to deal with the pace and complexity of business today. It must be paralyzing. 

Muddle through is the business equivalent of a pilot announcing, “Brace for impact.” Everyone expects the next unknown event to disrupt operations. The industry has normalized operating in fear. In that environment, the capacity to endure uncertainty becomes an individual career advantage rather than evidence of effective organizational design. At the same time Information Technology has its own difficulties to deal with. As Jensen Huang states. 

Warning is good, scaring is not. We need to be more cautious about the role we play and the reputation we’ve earned (Y2K) is far more consequential than when we were not listened to. 

The 1986 collapse was not the result of a deliberate decision by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries to set oil at $10 per barrel. It was largely the result of a breakdown in production discipline. (See today’s headlines for definition and clarification.) Through the early 1980s, the organization attempted to maintain higher prices through production quotas. Several members exceeded those quotas (cheating), while non-member production continued to increase. By late 1985, Saudi Arabia, frustrated by lost market share, increased its own production materially. The result was a surge in supply and a collapse in prices by mid-1986. It was more accurately a market-share war than a coordinated policy to establish oil at that level.

At nearly the same time, experimental monetary policies were introduced in response to the market crisis that began on October 19, 1987. Those policies helped create an environment in which four percent interest rates are now treated as high. The long-term consequence may be one of the most damaging economic distortions of the period. When money is cheap, capital is misallocated. Misallocated capital investment across the economy is now one of the principal issues requiring correction. The culture of treating home renovations, vehicles or vacations as “investment,” including replacing marble countertops every few years, is one visible symptom of easy money.

Professor Friedrich Hayek offered one of the most compelling explanations of how the economy operates. His argument placed central importance on signals. Prices, markets, and the cost of capital communicate information that no central authority can fully know or properly administer. When those signals are distorted, muted, or intentionally confused, the economy itself begins to look confused.

That is the environment we now inhabit. Where the price system, markets, and the cost of capital are all distorted. Government signals are inconsistent. It should surprise no one that married couples now begin their economic lives carrying $300,000 in combined student loans and $500,000 in mortgages.

The solution is to move back toward the market system. Prices must guide decisions. Performance must determine outcomes. In oil & gas, that performance must be accurate, factual, objective, and unimpeachable financial performance.

If a property is not profitable, do we have the right to produce such a valuable commodity? It should be worked over to increase production, reduce costs, or otherwise improved until it can return to profitable production. Unprofitable production is not discipline, it’s wasteful.

This transition will involve serious dislocation, as Hayek’s work would suggest. The correction of distorted signals is rarely comfortable. Yet the alternative is the continued destruction of capital, capacity, trust, and commercial value.

For oil & gas administration and accounting, our user community and their service provider organizations represent the beginning of that journey. Their role is to raise performance, improve it continuously, and refocus the industry on the economically sustainable attributes required for profitable operation.

The objective is not to survive the next uncontrolled event. The objective is to build an industry that no longer depends on fear, excuses, or muddling through.

North American oil & gas requires a market-oriented, performance-driven, and accountable operating model. Some may argue that United States oil & gas has reached a ceiling in productive capacity. Within the current industry configuration, that may be true. An industry operated chronically and systemically without profitability, while taking investor capital for granted, will eventually exhaust its productive capacity.

That is not a geological limit. It is an organizational, financial, and operational limit.

Synallagi, together with our user community, provides the methodology for moving beyond that constraint. The opportunity is not merely to preserve existing capacity. It is to establish substantially greater capability through dynamic, innovative, accountable, and profitable oil & gas producers, everywhere and always.

21st Century Marketplace Vision - Our User Community - Part XV

Integrating hebia.ai’s Seven Pillars into Synallagi

George Sivulka’s seven pillars advocate for a fundamental transition: moving from individual Artificial Intelligence productivity toward a robust institutional Artificial Intelligence capability. This framework posits that durable value is not achieved by simply accelerating individual tasks, but by redesigning the institution to coordinate, learn, decide, and act collectively at scale.

Within this context, Artificial Intelligence in Enterprise Resource Planning represents a total redefinition of operational competence rather than a mere tool upgrade.

For Synallagi, the inclusion of these seven pillars of Artificial Intelligence within our Information Technology Organizational Construct. Means the architecture will evolve beyond providing user assistance. It must also function as an institutional operating system for oil & gas profitability—one that disciplines bias, detects signals, coordinates actions, and generates a strategic competitive advantage while acting autonomously within a framework of governed authority.

Tokenized Assets Demand Reporting Discipline

A Synallagi-driven marketplace assumes a world in which transactions occur among individuals and organizations operating across jurisdictions, currencies, and multiple representations of value. In that environment, the Internet of Information becomes inseparable from the Internet of Value. The network no longer serves merely to transmit information. It becomes the infrastructure through which value itself is represented, transferred, and exchanged. Currency, Intellectual Property, data, and asset interests all become capable of direct movement across the network. A Synallagi becomes the means and the method. 

That development has immediate consequences for oil & gas. If ownership interests in Joint Operating Committees are to become tokenized, then the underlying asset must be supported by accounting and reporting of a standard sufficient to attract capital and satisfy SEC compliance requirements. The aggregated and ambiguous financial statements of the producer firm will not meet that test. They do not provide the property-level, actual, factual, monthly reporting needed to support a tokenized operating interest. Each Joint Operating Committee must therefore be able to publish its own detailed financial statements. Synallagi is designed to provide that discipline and information. Offering an investor more shares in a producer will pale in comparison to the ability to own a crypto interest in a Joint Operating Committee directly.

The implication is fundamental. Tokenization does not diminish the need for accounting rigor. It intensifies it. As value becomes more fluid, accountability and reporting must become more exact.

The Operating Surface of Synallagi

Marketplaces will become the method through which oil & gas is viewed, managed, and acted upon. In practical terms, engineers and geologists will work with Synallagi’s Marketplace Interface on one computer screen and the Business Operations Management Module on another. Through those two environments, Joint Operating Committee operations and marketplace interactions, are brought together into the engineers and geologists working environment.

This is the operating surface of Synallagi. Beneath it sit the structures that make the environment function: transactions, contracts, currencies, participants, compliance requirements, and the logic of operational authority itself. These elements are not separate from operational action. They are embedded within it. The user acts once at the business level, and the system carries the action through its required transactional, contractual, and compliance consequences. That is what it means for institutional Artificial Intelligence to act unprompted, supported by Synallagi, our user community and their service provider organizations.

Governed Autonomy

Our user community and their service provider organizations are responsible for architecting, designing, developing, implementing, maintaining, and supporting this environment. Their role is not to perform each transaction manually. Their role is to build and supervise the system that performs the work. They intervene where necessary to remedy exceptions, improve design, refine logic, and oversee the Artificial Intelligence and automation that conduct marketplace activity. Engineers and geologists continue to exercise business judgment. Process execution increasingly resides with the system.

This is why Synallagi must be understood as Autonomous Asynchronous Transaction Orchestration rather than as isolated automation alone. The issue is not simply whether tasks can be automated. The issue is whether unprompted activity can be organized coherently across parties, assets, obligations, and time. That requires more than software. It requires trust, an assembled body of Intellectual Property, a defined authority structure, a licensing framework, and a disciplined organizational method.

People, Ideas & Objects have chosen to use the Intellectual Property of Synallagi with Autonomous Asynchronous Transaction Orchestration precisely to keep this unprompted environment within defined bounds. Unprompted execution without governing structure is not efficiency, it’s disorder.

Why Open Source Is Not an Adequate Governance Model

The attraction of open source development is understandable, but in Synallagi’s context it is inadequate. The issue is not whether software code can be written collaboratively. The issue is whether oil & gas transactions, compliance obligations, operational accountability, and autonomous execution can be governed through an ambiguous structure of ownership, support, responsibility, and authority. They cannot.

A community of developers contributing according to available time and personal interest does not constitute an accountable operating model for oil & gas. It leaves unresolved the central questions. Who owns the system? Who supports it? Who is responsible for its features or failures? Who has the authority to change it? Who can a producer call when a process breaks, an obligation is missed, or a design defect appears? These are not peripheral matters. They are the operating core of the system.

If producers surrender oil & gas transactions to autonomous and automated systems without a single overall method of organization, and without retaining some structured influence over that method, they leave themselves open to disorganization and failure. Open source software code is not the same thing as governed autonomy.

Why the Organization Must Be Rebuilt

The conclusion is straightforward. Artificial Intelligence will not be effective in oil & gas if it is merely layered onto existing organizational arrangements. The organization itself must be redesigned. Synallagi is built on that premise. The system is not a tool added to the producer firm. It is a reorganization of the institutional environment through which oil & gas business is conducted. We could compromise with today’s leadership and bring a hybrid solution. However, that would take much longer to deliver and be of a compromised and questionable value proposition.

The lesson is the same one raised in the comparison to the textile mills. The factories that electrified first did not necessarily win. The factories that redesigned the floor around electricity did. Oil & gas now has its electricity in the form of Information Technology and Artificial Intelligence. The question is whether it will redesign the factory. Synallagi is that redesign.

Synallagi Intellectual Property

Synallagi Intellectual Property Funding and Ownership Policy, Version 1.0

The development, protection, and controlled use of Synallagi ERP software depends upon a clear policy governing both the source of development funding and the ownership of all related Intellectual Property. People, Ideas & Objects’ position is that the ultimate source of funding for Synallagi should arise from the production of oil and gas. In the preferred case, producers would participate directly in these developments due to Synallagi improving their profitability, accountability, and operational performance. To date, however, producer response has indicated reluctance rather than support. Accordingly, People, Ideas & Objects proceeds on the basis that funding must ultimately be secured from the economic value generated through profitable oil and gas production.

People, Ideas & Objects does not regard conventional debt or equity financing at its own level as the preferred solution. Synallagi provides a distinct value proposition to producers. Where producers are unwilling to support a development that exists for their own direct benefit, there is limited rationale for outside lenders or investors to assume that burden in their place. The more practical structure may be one in which producers secure an appropriate financing instrument, and People, Ideas & Objects draws upon those funds for development requirements. In that event, the financing obligation should ultimately be retired through the producer's enhanced profitability generated by Synallagi.

During development, People, Ideas & Objects charges producers for access to and use of its Intellectual Property. These revenues are used to fund the costs of People, Ideas & Objects and its developers. In addition, People, Ideas & Objects provides the funds necessary for our user community to create and assign to People, Ideas & Objects the Intellectual Property developed in connection with Synallagi. This structure is necessary to preserve Synallagi’s Intellectual Property as a single, defined, and controlled source.

That principle is absolute. All Intellectual Property relating to Synallagi, including source materials, derivative works, improvements, reusable configurations, process designs, development outputs, and related materials created by our user community or arising from the system’s development or use, must vest in People, Ideas & Objects. Such rights may be granted back by license for authorized purposes, but never by divided ownership. Producers payment in any form for development, contribution of ideas, operational participation, or producer funding does not create co-ownership, beneficial ownership, or any residual proprietary claim in Synallagi or its Intellectual Property.

Where Intellectual Property is acquired from our user community, it may be made available back to them through license so they may continue development and related authorized activities within the Synallagi framework. That license must be sufficiently broad to permit productive work, but sufficiently controlled to preserve unified ownership, governance, and architectural integrity. The purpose of this structure is to ensure that Synallagi remains coherent, enforceable, and commercially viable as a long-term platform.

Our user communities service provider organizations are configured differently. Their primary role is not software development, but implementation, operations, and day-to-day task execution. They will bill directly to each Joint Operating Committee, producer, or relevant service industry participant for the services they perform. Those services will be conducted in Synallagi and will be subject to the Targeting Framework. Unless expressly agreed otherwise in writing, such activities do not create ownership rights in Synallagi, its underlying Intellectual Property, or any reusable improvements of general applicability.

This policy is intended to ensure long-term sustainability for People, Ideas & Objects, our user community, and their service provider organizations. Producer revenues must ultimately support the continuing development of Synallagi. People, Ideas & Objects and our user community provide producers with a tangible value proposition that justifies that support. The timing and method by which this support is fully realized remain uncertain at present. What is not uncertain is the policy foundation: Synallagi can only be developed, maintained, and protected if its Intellectual Property remains centralized under the commercial license and control of People, Ideas & Objects.

All Intellectual Property relating to Synallagi, including derivative works, improvements, reusable configurations, and development outputs created by our user community or arising from system use, must vest in People, Ideas & Objects as the single controlled source, with rights of use granted back by license only and never by divided ownership. In turn People, Ideas & Objects commercial license ensures all Intellectual Property remains wholly owned by the original author, Paul Cox. 

For the purposes of this paper, we have outlined the broad commercial and licensing structure of the Intellectual Property relating to Synallagi. This outline is necessarily high level and non-exhaustive. It is provided for explanatory purposes only and does not constitute a legally binding statement of rights, obligations, ownership, or license until such time as the relevant definitive agreements have been prepared and duly executed.

Legacy of IP in Synallagi

People, Ideas & Objects has been engaged with producers since August 2003 on the issue of Intellectual Property ownership. This has been one of the most difficult matters for us to overcome. Producers have shown no interest in losing access to, or control over, a legacy they had long assumed would remain available to them without meaningful compensation.

In August 2003, People, Ideas & Objects published a research proposal to review the use of the Joint Operating Committee as the organizational basis for oil & gas Enterprise Resource Planning. The proposed budget was $750,000. The industry response was systemic and dismissive: “We do not use small research firms.” Producers then engaged a large research firm, which published a precursor document in April 2004. I understood that document as part of the process by which producers could begin to consider whether the Joint Operating Committee was appropriate for Enterprise Resource Planning.

However, People, Ideas & Objects completed and published the proposed research project in May 2004. That publication effectively precluded any later claim that others had independently developed the same concept after our August 2003 proposal. People, Ideas & Objects also notified the other research firm of our work and position. No further action was taken by that firm on the project.

To compete against the Intellectual Property of People, Ideas & Objects, as personally licensed by me, a competing party would need more than an assertion. They would need to refute our ownership and produce a publication history establishing a prior and superior claim. I am unaware of any such publication history.

The current ownership structure is unusual. In most commercial environments, it would be uncommon for an individual to retain ownership of Intellectual Property through this stage of a project, particularly where the expectation is that the same ownership structure will continue. People, Ideas & Objects has established that one third of its revenues are to be paid as royalties to Paul Cox. In conventional producer thinking, this has become an unwanted and difficult issue. The proverbial 800-pound gorilla has entered the boardroom.

That outcome was not accidental. It arose from producers’ short-term thinking and their “muddle through” strategy. By failing to address the issue properly when they had the opportunity, producers left open a series of vulnerabilities that People, Ideas & Objects was able to occupy through persistence, publication, and continued development.

Several critical points form the foundation of this Intellectual Property.

Since early May 1991, I have held the view that the Joint Operating Committee methodology could resolve the structural issue that contributed to the July 1986 oil price crash: chronic and systemic North American overproduction. That overproduction was not merely a market event. It was a symptom of the industry’s organizational structure, and that structure remains visible today.

In May 1991, I began my first attempt to address this issue through a product development initiative then known as Genesys.

During the 1990s, the oil & gas Enterprise Resource Planning market included as many as ten competing vendors. There was, at that time, a robust market offering. Producers, however, chose to exploit those vendors by forcing sales at low or no margin so that vendors could “get their foot in the door.”

The financial consequences were predictable. Enterprise Resource Planning vendors could not generate adequate returns from the oil & gas market. Their investors and bankers concluded the market was too small, too difficult, or insufficiently profitable to support continued development. They exited permanently. The pattern resembles what has more recently occurred in the service industry.

Subsequently:

Oracle left the oil & gas Enterprise Resource Planning development market in 2000 due to a lack of producer interest in new development.

People, Ideas & Objects made its Intellectual Property claim in 2003 and 2004.

In 2005, IBM sold its oil & gas Enterprise Resource Planning application due to a lack of producer interest in building new products. This left Synallagi as the only proposed redevelopment that has continued uninterrupted for the past twenty-one years.

As a consequence of this history, I am persona non grata in the industry.

It is now 2026. I have received no revenue from producers since August 2003. That fact explains why the Intellectual Property is managed as it is. There are no producer investors whose capital contribution would justify assignment of ownership. There are no external investors whose participation requires a different structure. The Intellectual Property remains where the risk, cost, continuity, and authorship have remained.

If IBM sold its oil & gas Enterprise Resource Planning system in 2005 despite holding a majority market share, the obvious question is what that says about the systems producers continue to use today. It suggests that no meaningful systems development has occurred in this market for decades. That outcome is the direct consequence of inadequate payments to Enterprise Resource Planning vendors over time. You get what you pay for.

Producer conduct created the opening for People, Ideas & Objects to establish, preserve, and extend its Intellectual Property position. The industry’s refusal to fund development, support vendors, or engage constructively with the Joint Operating Committee-based architecture left the field open. People, Ideas & Objects occupied that field through publication, continuity, and personal financial commitment. Now, with no investors other than myself, there is no commercial or legal basis to assign the Intellectual Property to producers or any other party. 

Synallagi IP Enhances Trust

People, Ideas & Objects method of Intellectual Property ownership is now strategically significant for North American oil & gas producers. Synallagi provides producers with a system whose domain, authority, and operating boundaries are defined, enforceable, and durable. That should be recognized as timely. Producers now require systems capable of operating in today’s markets while preparing them for tomorrow’s Information Technology-led Industrial Revolution.

As People, Ideas & Objects stated in the March 17, 2025 paper, Hyper Specialization in Today’s Artificial Intelligence and Intellectual Property Enabled Workforce, and in the related podcast, “Artificial Intelligence is the killer application of Intellectual Property.”

This is not merely a statement about ownership. It is also a statement about trust.

Our user community and their service provider organizations know the scope of their domains and authority. They apply their competitive advantages within those boundaries. Synallagi then enforces those boundaries through software, licensing, and blockchain smart contracts. This will also constrain Artificial Intelligence from operating outside a service provider’s defined authority and responsibility.

That enforcement is essential. It ensures that Autonomous Asynchronous Transaction Orchestration does not become uncontrolled automation or autonomous operations. Instead, it operates within defined permissions, auditable rules, and traceable authority.

Our Targeting Framework can then evaluate a given set of values within a controlled environment. Those values remain auditable, traceable, and accountable. This supports Compliance & Governance for the producer, the Joint Operating Committee, and the markets.

The result is a system architecture that provides the security, accountability, transparency, and trust required in an environment where human capacity is increasingly the limiting constraint. Intellectual Property is therefore not only a legal asset. In Synallagi, it is the governing structure that makes Artificial Intelligence, hyper-specialization, and market-based operations reliable at scale.