21st Century Marketplace Vision - Issues - Part I

 People, Ideas & Objects is commencing the publication of our 2026 papers as a series of verbatim individual blog posts. This initiative caters to those who prefer consuming information in consistent, daily installments, a request we are happy to accommodate.

Our schedule includes four weekly updates released every Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday. Each post is designed to cover a single section of the research, ensuring the content remains manageable and can be read in under thirty minutes. We begin this series with our initial paper, originally released on March 27, 2026.

A 21st Century Marketplace Vision for Oil & Gas:

Part I: Issues

We begin.

During the preparation of this document, the scale and intricacy of our 2026 project have grown substantially. The incorporation of Artificial Intelligence has fundamentally redefined the work's architectural scope and overall objectives. Consequently, what was previously known as the Preliminary Specification is now formally designated as the Preliminary Specification with Autonomous Asynchronous Transaction Orchestration. Throughout the remainder of 2026, People, Ideas & Objects will release papers dedicated to enhancing this framework; these contributions should be viewed as incremental updates to the original Preliminary Specification.

Abstract of the Issues

In preparing this paper, it has become evident that the scope and complexity of the project we undertook for 2026 has expanded significantly. The integration of Artificial Intelligence has altered both the architecture and the ambition of the work. What was once framed as the Preliminary Specification is now more accurately described as the Preliminary Specification with Autonomous Asynchronous Transaction Orchestration. Through 2026 People, Ideas & Objects will be publishing papers focused on upgrading the Preliminary Specification. Everything in these papers should be considered incremental to the Preliminary Specification itself. 

Implementing such a comprehensive system today would exceed the capacity of most current producer organizations. However, we are currently in the crucial architectural and planning stage, where precision is decisive. And continues with design and development through our user community. However, during implementation, there will be limited opportunity to redesign foundational elements. Furthermore, mandatory producer participation is required for financial considerations.

A core foundational element, which will be emphasized across all our 2026 papers, is a shift toward greater reliance on markets rather than producer firms. This fully acknowledges the Joint Operating Committee and the industry's three essential markets: Petroleum Lease, Resource, and Financial.

Our user community will have the chance to expand upon these foundational elements and details once their design and development is underway—a topic we will explore in the second paper of this series.

The breadth of the field and topical discussion has expanded to a degree that makes a single comprehensive document impractical. The interdependencies between Artificial Intelligence, Information Technology, accounting, operations, governance, and oil & gas market structure cannot coherently be addressed in one volume.

Accordingly, we have adopted a serialized method of publication. A series of focused papers will be released throughout 2026. Each paper will address a discrete domain within the overall architecture. Complexity will be layered incrementally. Concepts will be introduced, reinforced, and extended over time. This approach is necessary to preserve clarity and obtain greater conceptual uptake.

This initial paper outlines the principal structural issues within the oil & gas industry that the Preliminary Specification addresses. It does not attempt to exhaust the subject. It establishes context. It identifies systemic failures. It anticipates how emerging technologies, when integrated, will reshape the industry’s administrative, accounting, and operational foundations. The scope of these issues are within the domain of markets.

Each paper will remain within a defined length threshold. The objective is to present substantial concepts without overwhelming the reader. Discipline in scope is required to maintain coherence. The common theme is the development and use of “21st Century Markets.”

This series will also represent my final substantive contributions to the project’s architectural and design development. From inception, the design contemplated a transition to our user community and their service provider organizations. Their mandate includes architecture, design, development, implementation, daily management, and ongoing sustained refinement of the software and services supporting accounting and administration in oil & gas.

The structural configuration of that community remains intact. What changes now is responsibility. Stewardship of the Preliminary Specification must transfer to our user community. It is neither feasible nor desirable for a single individual to extend this architecture past 2026. The transition being undertaken in this series of papers is necessary.

That necessity is itself confirmation of the model’s persistence. Just as with the issues in oil & gas, the Preliminary Specification, our user community, and the associated service provider organizations were designed for institutional continuity beyond individual authorship.

The transition will not be without difficulty. Structural and cultural change in a mature industry rarely proceeds smoothly. There will be resistance. There will be uncertainty. There will be institutional friction. Our user community will be the ones industry must look to for administrative and accounting leadership in this transition. 

Engineers and geologists face a choice. They can continue with the status quo: being absorbed in the minutiae of administrative and accounting processes, dealing with countless transaction exceptions, and attempting to navigate the fast-paced world of crypto, AI, and Agentic AI using archaic ERP systems.

Alternatively, they can opt for a supportive, deliberative, accountable and valuable system that efficiently manages daily operations and provides meaningful guidance on the performance of their actions. Achieving this, however, demands making the changes prescribed in this and our subsequent 2026 papers.

For those prepared to engage constructively—those who recognize the current framework is not functioning—the Preliminary Specification with Autonomous Asynchronous Transaction Orchestration represents either a significant opportunity or a necessary solution. The publication of this series marks the point at which that choice becomes explicit. If an area interests you as a prospective member of our user community, if you feel the current implementation is flawed and you have a superior understanding or alternative idea or you want to be part of something substantial consider this your invitation to join and contribute. 

Notice

The naming of our product has evolved into a matter requiring resolution. Continued reference to the “Preliminary Specification” has become increasingly impractical, and the extended form—“Preliminary Specification with Autonomous Asynchronous Transaction Orchestration”—is not operationally viable as a working name.

Accordingly, a formal naming process was undertaken.

We have selected Synallagi. (Please note the unique spelling, it’s different for a reason, synology means something other than what we’re looking for.)

While there may be initial unfamiliarity, the name proves to be both pronounceable and memorable with minimal exposure. The domain synallagi.ai has been secured and will serve as the operating environment for our user community and their service provider organizations.

In evaluating naming alternatives within an already saturated landscape, attention turned to foundational terminology. The Greek terms for “market” and “transaction”—Agora and Synallagi—were considered. A review of the United States Patent and Trademark Office confirmed that Agora was not a viable option.

Synallagi Definition

Synallagi, the Greek term for “transaction,” is therefore adopted as the product name of People, Ideas & Objects.

Definition (Google):

"Synallagi" (συναλλαγή) is a Greek term meaning transaction, exchange, or deal, commonly used in business and banking contexts, such as in Dynamic Currency Conversion.

Most appropriate for our purposes. 

A transaction is a Synallagi, but Synallagi’ are not just transactions. The difference is in this definition.

Traditional Transaction	Synallagi
Recorded after the fact	Defined before execution
Partial information	Fully specified structure
Aggregated profitability	Immediate profitability
External audit required	Embedded verification
Isolated system event	Cross-system state transition

In business there are transactions and in oil & gas there will be Synallagi’. When thinking of a Synallagi, actors understand it consists of the transaction, its agreement, its regulatory environment, its participants, its stable-coin being used and the property involved… 

I Always Have to Ask Why, Part II

 Our user community and their service provider organizations will benefit from Synallagi through a materially different treatment of overhead. Tuesday’s blog post addressed how overhead is predominantly treated in oil & gas today, and how that treatment has become one of the underlying causes of the deterioration authored by producer officers and directors.

The comparison with the methodology prescribed in Synallagi is stark. It will, by itself, become a major contributor to the ability of producer firms to achieve and sustain profitability. Today’s post addresses the Synallagi methodology and explains how People, Ideas & Objects can claim what may appear to be a ludicrous reduction in overhead costs across the industry—to potentially single-digit percentages of what is incurred today.

The highlights are straightforward.

First, through the unique configuration of the industry’s accounting and administrative resources into our user community and their service provider organizations, producer overhead becomes variable and tied to profitable production. If Synallagi produces financial statements with the granularity of each Joint Operating Committee, and a property reports an actual, factual profit, production continues. If the property is unprofitable, it is shut in and since all costs are variable it creates a null operation: no production means no profit and no loss.

Second, even the largest producers are now reaching the limits of specialization and the division of labor within their own organizations. Their internal structures cannot support increasingly specialized positions with sufficient transaction volume. Where throughput is inadequate, any theoretical efficiency gained from further internal reorganization is lost.

Synallagi resolves this constraint by defining and supporting the reorganization of accounting and administrative work through our user community and their service provider organizations. Because each service provider process applies across broad industry-wide activity, the necessary throughput exists. That transaction volume supports hyper-specialization, the division of labor, automation, and autonomous intellectual leverage. The result is a level of productivity and cost reduction that producer firms cannot replicate internally.

Since 1776, economic growth has been driven by the expansion of specialization and the division of labor. Adam Smith’s work on the pin factory, published in The Wealth of Nations, demonstrated that reorganizing work into specialized tasks produced a dramatic increase in productive capacity. That example also benefited from the mechanization of physical labor. Today, oil & gas faces an equivalent opportunity in administrative and accounting work: hyper-specialization multiplied by automation and autonomy.

As our third consideration of how overhead is different in Synallagi. People, Ideas & Objects adopted its corporate name in 2008, drawing from Professor Paul Romer’s New Growth Theory. We applied that theory by examining the producer resource configuration and asking a practical question: which administrative and accounting needs could be performed more effectively by firms whose actual business is accounting and administration?

Producers do not claim competitive advantage from accounting prowess. Their competitive advantages are their land and asset base, and their engineering and geological capacities and capabilities. It therefore makes little commercial sense for every producer to build and maintain duplicate accounting, administrative, Enterprise Resource Planning, and Information Technology infrastructure.

A consolidated, standardized, objective, actual, and factual accounting infrastructure, shared across the industry through Synallagi, eliminates that redundancy. The infrastructure is built once and used across the industry on a variable cost basis tied to profitability.

This produces two critical benefits that directly address deficiencies in the current model.

First, if a property is shut in due to poor performance, none of the associated variable overhead costs are incurred for that month. Producer cash is preserved. 

Second, if the property produces, those variable overhead costs are included in the commodity price of the profitable production. The cash incurred to pay the overhead cost is then returned to the producer within approximately sixty days for reuse. A cash float is created. Again, producer cash is preserved.

Under Synallagi, overhead needs to be financed for approximately sixty days. That is all. Once financed, the system provides the financial resource to replenish itself each month.

Contrast that with the current industry methodology discussed in Tuesday’s blog post. For reasons that remain unexplained, producer overhead continues to be treated under the same legacy methodology despite the existence of this solution. The result has been the loss of substantial liquidity each month, the loss of support for producer capital structures, and wholesale damage to the value of the industry, including its secondary and tertiary industries.

That does not mean producers' current methodology is without advantage to someone. What remains unknown is what is contained within capitalized producer overhead that makes officers and directors continue such a damaging practice. Until that is known, the persistence of the methodology remains a material question.

People, Ideas & Objects has been able to reasonably estimate natural gas revenue losses arising from chronic shale overproduction this century. Those losses now total approximately $5.0 trillion and continue to build at roughly $33 billion per month. Oil overproduction would likely represent a similar order of value, although there is no practical, objective method to measure or quantify it with the same precision.

The consequences of overhead treatment belong in the same category. They represent a major component of Synallagi' value proposition.

These are only three of the many tangible ways Synallagi can create substantial value for oil & gas producers. Producer officers and directors may dismiss these matters as opportunity costs and continue to say they will simply “muddle through.” We disagree.

These are not abstract opportunity costs. They are tangible forms of value that any real business would identify, measure, and remedy.

Drill and produce is not a business model.

And if these losses are merely opportunity costs, as producers suggest, then why did Shell and others sue Venture Global last year in an unsuccessful attempt to recover some of these natural gas revenue losses?

21st Century Markets - Our User Community, Podcast # 36

 As I mentioned in Tuesday’s blog post, the two Artificial Intelligence hosts distance themselves from the content of the paper I published, largely due to the direct criticism directed at the officers and directors of producer firms.

Over the next few years, the scale and depth of the destruction authored by these individuals will become increasingly apparent. What will also become clear is the inadequacy of the industry’s response. Under normal circumstances, when an industry is called upon to step up its effort and deliver, it would be expected to leverage the value accumulated over prior decades. That accumulated value would provide the foundation from which new opportunities could be pursued and incremental value realized.

The difficulty with oil & gas is that there is no remaining value available to leverage. It has been squandered, dissipated, and leaked out of the industry.

Producers appear to believe they will simply resume normal operations once investors back the money trucks up to the loading dock again. What they do not appear to understand is that investors now expect profitable organizations. How profitability is achieved, why it is necessary, and how it is sustained still seems to escape them. Confident in their existing outlook, producers continue to believe that changes to their overhead methodology or organizational structures are unnecessary. The language of “building balance sheets” and “putting cash in the ground,” along with other less offensive variations of the same thinking, will likely experience a resurgence in popularity.

Synallagi’s position is different. In a capital-intensive industry such as oil & gas, capital should be the predominant cost passed to the consumer through the commodity price. If a producer’s Property, Plant, and Equipment balance were reduced to $0.00, that would not only be regulatorily compliant; it would also indicate that the producer had become highly competitive. There would be no remaining capital cost to price into the commodity. All production would be profitable. And a producer would have the independence of thought to pursue their own direction.

People, Ideas & Objects believes it is in producers’ best interests to ensure their capital performs on a basis competitive with the North American capital markets. When capital is properly costed into the commodity price, the cash incurred to secure the asset is returned to the producer. That capital can then be redeployed repeatedly, pay dividends or retire debt. Profits are the hard work of determining what performs, how to make it perform, and what does not perform. In other words, actual, factual accounting is a tool for engineers and geologists to commercially tune their projects performance.

The other aspect of the podcast that requires clarification is how Synallagi treats capital. At 19:18 in the podcast, the female voice states:

“Capital must be recognized, passed through to the token holders and recouped quickly so it can be redeployed back into the economy.”

If I were rewriting that script, it would read:

“Capital must be recognized, passed through to the consumer, and redeployed back into the producer firm for capital expenditures, dividends, and the retirement of debt.”

The distinction is material. The capital cost is ultimately borne by the consumer, who pays the full replacement cost of the commodity. Token holders, as described in the podcast scenario, would not incur that cost. Nor would they be interested in an investment structure that required them to pay twice, only to receive the 1% return described by the presenter. The actual return to token holders would depend on their skill, judgment, understanding of oil & gas, and historical costs.

Those are the podcast errors that should be noted.

The practical difficulty with NotebookLM is what I would call the 95% rule. It may get 95% of the material correct on the first run. However, when a second version is generated, the system often assumes the first version needs to be reinterpreted. It then moves in a different direction, where the error rate can increase rather than decline. For that reason, it is often necessary to accept the initial run, correct the material points manually, and recognize the immense value of the tool despite its limitations.

Pod up

🎙️Podcast

📝Synallagi

📚Index

I Always Have to Ask Why

 One of my preferred sections in yesterday’s publication was the comparison of overhead costs and their treatment under current industry practice versus the treatment proposed in Synallagi.

In a soon-to-be-released Artificial Intelligence-generated podcast, the two simulated presenters criticize the level of animosity I display toward producers, officers, and directors. They make a point of stating that they had nothing to do with the paper and that they are not endorsing either position.

I regard that as something of an achievement. When Artificial Intelligence qualifies its own output based on the intensity of my criticism toward producers, it suggests the argument has been presented with sufficient force to require contextual distance.

My reasoning is straightforward. My frustration arises from the scale of the disaster authored by producer officers and directors, and from the fact that these consequences were foreseeable. They had ample warning. The investment community’s actions and communications in 2015 made the problem explicit. A market-based remedy, Synallagi, was available. Yet the issues were not addressed.

The following is some of the allegedly offending text from the paper. Given the scale of the financial and operational damage involved, I have to ask: why is civility still presumed to be the appropriate standard?

Comparing Our User Community to Today’s Overhead Structure

People, Ideas & Objects has raised the industry’s overhead problem many times. We have documented it extensively. At one stage, we also identified capitalized interest and stock-based compensation as costs receiving similar treatment. Notably, interest and certain related costs were later removed from this reporting method under discussion and, soon afterward, from broader industry practice. We first noted this development on our blog on November 10, 2008.

What remains materially unchanged in 2026 is the capitalization of overhead. Why has gross overhead continued to be reported in the same manner? The discussion that follows suggests this is one of the principal mechanisms through which cash continues to bleed from the industry and their accountability reporting distortions continue to persist.

The relevant question is why capitalized overhead has not been corrected. Is there a specific intent behind the desire of officers and directors to continue reporting overhead in this manner? If so, what is that intent? Why has it persisted? And why were some related costs remedied while overhead remains untreated eighteen years later?

People, Ideas & Objects maintains that, under Synallagi, our user community and their service provider organizations would operate at single-digit percentages of today’s fixed gross overhead. If there is a chronic and systemic source of overproduction in oil & gas, it lies in the fixed gross overhead carried by producers. That is where the problem begins to reveal itself. Capitalization is the mechanism that makes the issue less visible. It creates a distinct cash flow problem while also distorting reported financial performance.

The argument begins with two observations.

• First, overhead costs at any point in time amount to roughly 10 to 20 percent of revenue.

• Second, at any point in time, approximately 85 percent of gross actual overhead is capitalized.

A related issue concerns overhead charged to Joint Operating Committees. Those charges are based on estimates agreed through the Council of Petroleum Accountants Societies. In the broader industry picture, those overhead allowances are effectively zero. Any amounts charged are earned by the operator. Any net recovery merely reduces post-capitalization overhead costs. Under Synallagi those overhead allowances are replaced by the actual, factual overhead costs.

The core issue is straightforward. When overhead is capitalized, those costs are recovered over the life of the reserves. Producers allocate capital costs across all proven reserve volumes reported by their independent reservoir engineers. The cash spent on overhead in a given month is therefore returned in small increments each month over the life of the property.

That creates a structural cash problem. Each month, each producer must find new cash to fund the next month’s overhead. No cash float is created because overhead is not priced into the commodity, is not passed through to the consumer, and is therefore not returned to the producer in the current month to fund the next month’s overhead.

The materiality of overhead in oil & gas therefore creates a persistent drain on cash. This was masked when investors were subsidizing the majority of producer capital expenditures, which included capitalized overhead. Once that support disappeared, producers turned after 2015 to every available source of capital to sustain operations and overhead.

Today, with working capital diminished and in many cases negative, producers are financially and operationally impaired. They are barely able to fund the capital spending required to sustain production. Each year becomes more difficult as their competitive position depreciates further. Their prior conduct toward the service industry has compounded the damage, leaving trust, motivation, capacity, and capability far below what the service industry now requires.

People, Ideas & Objects therefore asks why a policy that has been in place for decades, and that is demonstrably destructive to producer cash requirements, has remained unchanged after more than a decade of industry discussion. What is it about capitalized overhead that makes it so necessary?

For all practical purposes, capitalized overhead has been a root cause of the loss of support for producer capital structures. That loss of support began in 2015, when investors withdrew because of poor performance and a fundamental lack of accountability. 

Nothing meaningful has been done to address either issue. How, then, does this critical cash problem remain in place in 2026?

There must be some continuing intent, motivation, or institutional desire to preserve the practice despite the absence of liquidity, the loss of capital structure support, and the existence of alternatives such as Synallagi.

This leadership has taken shale, one of mankind’s greatest endowments of wealth, delivered to the greatest economy known to man, and for the sake of whatever remains concealed in overhead accounts, destroyed its present value.

21st Century Marketplace Vision for Oil & Gas - Our User Community

I am pleased to present the second paper in our 21st Century Marketplace Vision series. This paper addresses our user community: People, Ideas & Objects’ primary competitive advantage, operational focus, and ultimate customer.

A 21st Century Marketplace Vision for Oil & Gas

Synallagi with Autonomous Asynchronous Transaction Orchestration

Part II: Our User Community

The value contained in this paper is substantial. It should be read by anyone with an interest in Synallagi, and by those concerned with the financial and operational performance of North American oil & gas producers. It sets out why our user community is central to rebuilding the industry around dynamic, innovative, accountable, and profitable operations.

When There Is Money on the Table, the Fight Begins

 People, Ideas & Objects will publish a short series of posts over the next few weeks addressing producer Annual Reports, First Quarter 2026 results, and Annual Meetings. These events provide a useful point of reference for an issue that has remained largely unspoken for decades. It has not been addressed by those with the responsibility, accountability, and authority to resolve it. The consequence is now visible in the market as a serious and developing crisis.

Faith, trust, and confidence in producer officers and directors have continued to erode since 2015. In our April 7, 2025 paper, Oil & Gas Arbitrage: The Market Finds a Way, People, Ideas & Objects described a method by which investors could participate directly in oil & gas. The paper noted that higher commodity prices would not only increase the value of those investments, but would also expand the volume of commercial reserves classified as proven. On that basis, strategic investment in oil & gas becomes especially attractive if commodity prices rise.

There also appears to be a material increase in institutional ownership of oil & gas producers, with some reports placing ownership above ninety percent. Producer officers and directors may therefore face a more difficult Annual Meeting season if oil & gas prices move higher. Rising prices create value. Value attracts attention. And when there is money on the table, the fight begins. Few parties object when there is nothing left to contest. People, Ideas & Objects being one of the few exceptions.

The current gas-to-oil price ratio of 35.2:1 remains in unacceptable territory, as it has since the beginning of commercial shale production. On that basis, People, Ideas & Objects estimates that natural gas losses could potentially be running at $52.5 billion per month. These losses are not inevitable. They are the product of decisions, structures, and the continued absence of an effective operating system. Synallagi was designed to address precisely these issues.

People, Ideas & Objects has repeatedly identified the structural causes. One example is the continued dumping of large volumes of highly differentiated, and at times negatively priced, Permian natural gas into Henry Hub, the continental reference point for natural gas pricing. This is not a minor technical issue. It reflects a disqualifying leadership failure. It also reflects an apparent indifference by producer officers and directors to the value being destroyed.

Producer officers and directors have had fourteen years to consider Synallagi as a remedy for the industry’s fundamental problems. Over that period, the cumulative natural gas revenue loss now exceeds $5.0 trillion. Objectively evaluated, those funds could have supported the service industry, enhanced dividends, strengthened competitive organizations and people, expanded liquefied natural gas export capacity, and financed pipelines or other critical infrastructure.

Instead, the standard response has been excuses, blame, and the manufacture of viable scapegoats. Many producers have gone silent once their prior statements proved unreliable. Inaction remains the preferred strategy. “Muddle through” continues to serve as the operating doctrine.

Yet something appears to be changing. The market is beginning to see the issue more clearly. Institutional ownership, commodity price movement, Annual Meetings, and sustained underperformance are converging. Producer officers and directors may soon discover that their period of silence, deflection, and unaccountable control is nearing its end.

21st Century Marketplace Vision for Oil & Gas - Issues

People, Ideas & Objects is pleased to publish the first in a series of papers on 21st Century Markets in North American oil and gas. This first paper addresses the difficult issues now becoming evident to producers and others across the industry, and outlines the methods we have chosen to resolve them.

A 21st Century Marketplace Vision for Oil and Gas
People, Ideas & Objects
Preliminary Specification
With
Autonomous Asynchronous Transaction Orchestration
Part I: Issues

In addition, we have released a podcast that accurately discusses the impact of Autonomous Asynchronous Transaction Orchestration and its implications for implementing Artificial Intelligence within an Enterprise Resource Planning system. It also explains how our user community and their service provider organizations will expand their method of earning revenue. Traditional hourly billing will remain, but it will no longer be the sole basis of compensation. Revenue will increasingly be earned through a shared participation in the value their innovations generate across the industry.

For example, if a software process under their management is improved in a way that generates an incremental $5,000 per month for each producer in the industry, an important question follows. What level of incremental monthly revenue should our user community and their service provider organizations earn from that innovation?

This model of revenue generation has the potential to transform the industry into one that is dynamic, innovative, accountable, and profitable. It creates an environment in which each administrative and accounting professional is motivated to develop the most efficient and effective method of performing their role within the industry.

The pricing structures for both oil and gas remain unaddressed and unresolved. The current organizational structure of producers lacks a mechanism to effectively manage the pricing issues stemming from overproduction. Consequently, the method identified within Synallagi's framework is necessary. Our user community must take the initiative to architect, design, develop, and implement the specific means to achieve this resolution. As a result, those who contribute to solving this challenge will be eligible for those bonus and revenue-sharing opportunities.

A Change in the Name of Our Product

The Preliminary Specification is no more. We are introducing Synallagi.

“Synallagi” — pronounced si-NAL-a-gee — is derived from the Greek term συναλλαγή, meaning transaction, exchange, or deal, and is commonly used in business and banking contexts, including Dynamic Currency Conversion.

But Synallagi is intended to convey more than a transaction alone. It encompasses the full set of attributes surrounding that transaction: the factors that influence it, define it, and constrain it. These include the associated contracts, prices, volumes, regulations, property interests, and stablecoin used as currency. It is therefore a more comprehensive expression of the term transaction, extended to reflect the greater obligation and responsibility embedded in Autonomous Asynchronous Transaction Orchestration.

A Brief Gripe From a Professional Gripper

Many have expressed concern about our extended absence. The explanation is straightforward. This topic is comprehensive, and the work required has been equally so. I expect we will be publishing many papers throughout 2026 on the subject of a 21st Century Marketplace Vision.

Society is changing quickly. In business, chaos and control are emerging as two dominant operating conditions. Oil and gas has already spent much of this century in the early stages of chaos. We can therefore anticipate the nature of the choices that lie ahead. Since we understand both the condition of the industry and the importance of oil and gas to the broader economy, the question becomes unavoidable: what is our role in remediating this?

The ingredients of a chaotic market are already visible. Is the focus now on shale, or Argentina, Iraq, and Libya? Or does the emphasis on those jurisdictions serve another purpose: to avoid the disorder left behind here, to abandon accountability altogether, or to pursue some other objective?

Lastly, producers continue to deliver Permian associated gas into Henry Hub, the continental reference point for natural gas pricing. These Permian differentials are often greater than the price producers receive, and at times they are negative. Despite being fully aware of the broader implications these actions have on continental natural gas prices, producers continue to demonstrate no meaningful capacity to resolve these costly and difficult issues.