21st Century Marketplace Service Providers Sec 2 - Part XXXVII

Producers Continued

Producers’ Enterprise Resource Planning / Artificial Intelligence Issue  

Corporate leadership is increasingly focused on the competitive implications of Artificial Intelligence across their organizations and industries. The issue is not limited to what executives know they do not know. The greater risk lies in what they do not know they do not know. That risk is compounded by the difficulty of institutional change. As Niccolo Machiavelli, 1469-1527 stated, “It must be considered that there is nothing more difficult to carry out, nor more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to handle, than to initiate a new order of things.”

This paper addresses the structural and strategic implications of Artificial Intelligence for Enterprise Resource Planning and explains why these developments now require board-level attention beyond the digital initiatives producers have previously imposed across their organizations. The matter is no longer one of incremental technology adoption. It is a question of whether producer firms each have the organizational structure, data discipline, governance capacity, and operating model necessary to remain competitive.

The 2025 Oracle Artificial Intelligence Conference served as the catalyst for this analysis. The architectural and product changes introduced across Oracle’s portfolio were substantive and directionally aligned with the evolution of Synallagi for oil & gas. Those engaged in the work of People, Ideas & Objects, our user community, and their service provider organizations are strongly encouraged to review the full conference proceedings. Oracle’s platform-level integration of data, workflow, analytics, automation, and Artificial Intelligence signals a structural inflection point in Enterprise Resource Planning. The coherence of that direction is material to the future of Synallagi and to the future configuration of oil & gas accounting, administration, and operations. (YouTube videos here, here, here, here and here.)

Oracle remains at the forefront of database and Enterprise Resource Planning software. However, Oracle is one participant within a broader technology ecosystem that is advancing rapidly and, in many respects, nonlinearly. What is emerging is not a collection of isolated tools. It is an integrated stack of capabilities whose aggregate implications for oil & gas corporate officers and directors are material and potentially damaging if misunderstood, delayed, or mismanaged.

A defining characteristic of these technologies is their architectural depth and systemic complexity. In retrospect, the personal computer and the Internet appear comparatively simple. Both benefited from decades of assimilation. The current wave will not provide the same adoption timeline. Producers may have only a limited window, measured in years rather than decades, to respond effectively. The cost of inaction will not be abstract. It will appear as operational obsolescence, competitive erosion, stranded organizational capability, and declining access to capital.

These developments are layered over an Information Technology infrastructure whose implications are far more consequential than anything producers have previously experienced. For producer firms with hundreds or thousands of employees, the question is not whether a new tool can be adopted. The question is whether the organization can be brought through a new operating model without losing coherence, control, accountability, or competitiveness. Will all personnel willingly take that step with existing leadership, existing systems, and existing business processes?

This paper identifies the relevant technological shifts, outlines how they can be implemented within Oracle’s Enterprise Resource Planning environment, and defines how Synallagi software and associated services will be delivered to North American oil & gas producers. It also articulates the operational, financial, governance, and competitive benefits of this integration.

North American oil & gas producers require organizational structures and industry configurations that support disciplined, efficient, accountable, and profitable operations. It is increasingly evident that the prevailing producer business model has exhausted its effectiveness. Synallagi is structurally aligned with the organizational forms necessary to optimize these technologies. Its design anticipated the convergence of data architecture, automation, analytics, marketplaces, and Artificial Intelligence. For Synallagi, therefore, this integration is evolutionary rather than disruptive.

Each technological and organizational development will be examined individually and then synthesized into a coherent enterprise-level vision. None of these technologies is entirely novel in isolation. What is consequential is the depth of Synallagi' integration, the strategic clarity of implementation, and the opportunity for corporate leadership to reposition their organizations for sustained competitiveness in global capital markets.

The central issue is straightforward. Artificial Intelligence will not rescue a defective organization. It will amplify the quality, discipline, and accountability of the structure into which it is deployed. For North American oil & gas producers, the strategic choice is whether Artificial Intelligence becomes another layer of complexity imposed on an exhausted business model, or whether it is implemented through Synallagi as part of a new culture of reserves preservation, performance, and profitability. The observations of Andrew McAfee from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology regarding how Artificial Intelligence widens professional differentiation are equally applicable to corporate structures: those organizations possessing the greatest inherent health and architectural discipline will be positioned to capture the most significant competitive gains. 

A Vision for Standardized, Objective Accounting  

For People, Ideas & Objects, the implementation of standardized, objective accounting across every Joint Operating Committee establishes a structural advantage for producers and for the broader North American oil & gas industry. Uniform accounting and reporting protocols applied consistently to all Joint Operating Committees create comparability at the property level. That comparability is the precondition for any credible securitization or tokenization of producing properties using distributed ledger infrastructure such as Solana.

Under this model, investors could participate directly at the asset level through ownership of a defined, proportionate interest in a specific producing property. Financial statements prepared for each property, in accordance with recognized standards such as Generally Accepted Accounting Principles, would allow investors to benchmark that property against any other North American investment opportunity. Competing effectively for capital in North American capital markets requires objective metrics, disciplined governance, transparent accountability, and financial statements that are reliable, comparable, and consistently prepared. Standardized accounting is foundational to that objective.

Securitization in this context represents a structural transformation. Ownership of a tokenized interest would correspond to a proportionate share of the property’s title. The producer firm would no longer rely solely on traditional publicly traded equity in the conventional corporate sense. Established common law principles governing title prevent duplicate conveyance of the same property interest, thereby reinforcing the integrity of ownership. Ownership of the asset would be represented in the investors crypto wallet. Demand for this structure is expected to arise from producer firms seeking clearer regulatory alignment within digital asset frameworks, and from investors seeking direct asset-level exposure rather than indirect corporate-level exposure.

A more significant opportunity emerges beyond the liquidity of tokenized ownership. Through Synallagi, the holder of a tokenized oil & gas property interest is no longer required to possess the engineering, geological, operational, accounting or administrative capabilities traditionally associated with producer organizations. Ownership of the asset remains with the investor, while the expertise necessary to preserve reserves, optimize production performance and maximize profitability is provided through the organizational structures that already govern North American oil & gas operations.

The centrepiece of that architecture is the Joint Operating Committee. For decades, the Joint Operating Committee has served as the industry’s primary exploration and production organization. It provides the legal authority, financial oversight, operational decision-making, engineering and geological coordination, communication channels, strategic direction, innovation framework and commercial relationships through which producing properties are developed and managed. Rather than creating a new institution, Synallagi elevates and extends an existing one.

Synallagi transfers the compliance, governance and administrative framework traditionally concentrated within individual producer organizations into alignment with the Joint Operating Committee seven frameworks, where those responsibilities naturally align with the operational management of the property itself. Supported by our user community and their service provider organizations, the Joint Operating Committee becomes a comprehensive organizational framework capable of governing the complete lifecycle of a producing asset through Autonomous Asynchronous Transaction Orchestration.

The result is that investors are free to own oil & gas properties directly through tokenized interests while relying upon the established engineering, geological, operational and administrative capabilities of the Joint Operating Committee. Ownership, governance and operations are no longer inseparable functions of a producer organization. They become coordinated responsibilities within a common institutional framework that preserves accountability, maintains operational excellence and enables the efficient participation of both traditional and entirely new classes of investors.

Readers need to understand how an outside investor, who chooses to hold the oil & gas crypto asset in their wallet, may or may not have the wherewithal or desire to manage the oil & gas asset. How then would they be expected to participate in the management of their investment? This is the question our user community and service providers of these 21st Century Marketplace Vision papers need to ask themselves and determine how they’ll configure Synallagi to achieve that on behalf of the crypto owners. The benefits of asset securitization through crypto are extensive and beyond the scope of this paper. Liquidity in terms of a direct, long term investment in oil & gas assets is just the beginning. 

Production Discipline  

Standardized accounting is even more critical within the Decentralized Production Model and its price maker strategy. When a well or property becomes unprofitable, the economically rational response is to curtail production, preserve reserves, and redeploy capital only when profitability thresholds are restored. That decision requires confidence that profitability is measured against the same objective standards applied to every other producing property in North America. Without that confidence, production discipline will fail.

Synallagi is configured to deliver standardized Enterprise Resource Planning reporting, informed during development by our user community and supported through accounting preparation by their service provider organizations. The result is continent-wide consistency in performance evaluation. All operations are assessed against identical profitability criteria, while still preserving the property-specific detail necessary to understand the technical, commercial, and accounting realities of each Joint Operating Committee.

Equally important is structural independence. Our user community and their service providers operate without direct influence from any dominant producer. If the underlying software architecture were derived from the internal systems of a major integrated producer, broader industry adoption would be constrained by perceived bias. Synallagi is built on Oracle Cloud Enterprise Resource Planning infrastructure, reflecting cross-industry best practices rather than the internal preferences of any single oil & gas firm. Producers influence system evolution indirectly through structured interaction with our user community, not through unilateral control.

From a transactional efficiency perspective, distributed ledger infrastructure is economically viable. For example, fixed transaction fees on Solana are commonly cited as approximately $0.000005 per transaction, no matter the size of the transaction's value. At that rate, transaction infrastructure costs are negligible relative to institutional or banking transaction values and interest costs. The economic implication is straightforward: distributed ledger infrastructure can scale to institutional capital requirements without transaction fees becoming a material barrier to adoption. Service providers would have fees involved in the manual aspects of a transaction such as checking title, coordinating legal and audit services for crypto, which would have their own fees or costs.

Standardized financial accounting therefore provides producers with the foundation required to participate credibly in crypto exchange markets and digital asset structures. As Professor Langlois notes, innovation is enhanced when it is distributed across the market. In this instance, the relevant market is the accounting and administrative market of North American oil & gas, an area where innovation has not historically been treated as a necessity. 

That condition can no longer continue. Creative accounting aside, management accounting in oil & gas is materially underdeveloped. A scientific business such as oil & gas requires its own management accounting protocols, designed around reserves preservation, performance, profitability, production discipline, and well and property-level accountability. Our user community and their service provider organizations are structured to enable these developments. Dynamic innovation in management accounting should be welcomed, provided it does not compromise the integrity, objectivity, or comparability of financial reporting. 

Standardization also establishes a consistent knowledge base across the industry. When oil & gas personnel, producers, investors, service providers, accountants, administrators, engineers, and geologists are familiar with Synallagi, its processes, its procedures, our user community, and the role of service provider organizations, a common operating understanding emerges. This shared knowledge base reduces friction, accelerates adoption, improves training, and supports accountability across producer firms and Joint Operating Committees.

Industry acceptance of an objective method of accounting is necessary for several reasons. First, every producer must have the ability to put its case forward to the appropriate member of our user community. That does not assure adoption of the producer’s preferred method as the objective industry-wide methodology. It means the argument can be assessed within a structured, independent, and accountable process.

Second, production allocations are an artful interpretation of science. Synallagi Material Balance Report captures the nuance and dynamic nature of each Joint Operating Committee’s operational outcome. This cannot be fully standardized in the same manner as a chart of accounts or financial statement format. It can only be objective in relation to the specific property, its facts, its technical configuration, its production history, and its defined and agreed allocation methodology. Production allocations are subject to interpretation. Although the accounts, Material Balance Report, and related reporting structures will be standardized, each property’s configuration cannot be identical.

The objective nature of reporting is essential to the assessment of property profitability. If accounting valuation in the Permian is prepared on a different basis than accounting valuation in the Marcellus, producers operating in the Marcellus will not accept the reporting as objective when curtailment decisions are required. Production discipline depends on trust in the accounting method. Without consistent standards, a producer asked to shut in unprofitable production will argue the measurement basis rather than accept the economic reality.

The standardized and objective methods used by Synallagi are independent and not controlled by any single individual, producer, basin, or financial interest. Each member of our user community and their service provider organization influences only a defined portion of the accounting system. They have no practical means to benefit one field over another, one producer over another, or one operating strategy over another. Our user community are not “blind sleepwalking agents of whomever will feed them.” Their independence is a structural requirement of a dynamic, innovative, accountable, and profitable oil & gas industry.

Therefore, Synallagi provides a dynamic and adaptable system capable of responding to changes in the marketplace while preserving standardized and objective accounting and accountability. It will remain consistent with reporting regulations, producer requirements, financial market expectations, and operational reality on the ground. Applying these principles and methods across the industry is the only fair and reasonable basis on which producers can rebuild trust, regain the confidence of the investment community, and compete effectively in North American capital markets.

21st Century Marketplace Service Providers Sec 2 - Part XXXVI

Producers Continued

People, Ideas & Objects Capacities & Capabilities  

The vision set out in this paper is not short-term. It reasonably extends Synallagi through 2045–2055. That is intentional. Durable architecture requires long horizons. A long horizon aligns incentives, protects participants’ interests, and signals seriousness of purpose to those considering engagement.

Technology evolves incrementally. Each generation builds upon the prior one. Implementation is cumulative and often additive in effect, yet occasionally transformative in impact. A practical example is the integration of SpaceX’s EchoStar cellular satellite network for the Internet of Things–enabled field data capture of production volumes. This eliminates the need for costly, fragmented, ground-based internet infrastructure in remote locations—an approach that would otherwise require decades of groundwork deployment and capital inefficiency.

Without Synallagi, each producer would be forced to assemble these technologies independently—replicating the same scope of functionality, highly specialized IT capabilities, governance, integration, and process management on fragmented corporate IT budgets. Each would compete for limited Information Technology resources in the labor market. Each would duplicate effort. None would be licensed for the use of People, Ideas & Objects Intellectual Property embedded in Synallagi. Nor would they benefit from any shared Intellectual Property developed across the producer population. 

The aggregate outcome would be predictable: redundancy, inefficiency, maintenance burdens, and capital waste at scale for a non-competitive administrative and accounting capability.

The structural reality is clear. No producer is an island. The increasing integration required among Joint Operating Committee participants demands coordinated technological architecture. Information Technology capacities and capabilities must now extend beyond the reach of even the largest standalone producer. Will producers be constrained by their partners' Information Technology capabilities?

Hardware is no longer the constraint. Cloud infrastructure has commoditized access to computing power. Software architecture is the binding constraint—and it is becoming more complex, not less. Accordingly, software development, implementation and maintenance must follow the same shared, cloud-based economic principles as infrastructure. As a variable cost based on usage.

Synallagi operates within accounting and administration—domains that have historically not been considered competitive advantages for producers. That assumption is no longer totally defensible. In a capital-intensive industry competing in dynamic North American markets, Information Technology capabilities in accounting and administration are rapidly evolving from back-office utilities into competitive necessities.

The future demands access to shared architecture, disciplined accountability and governance, and scalable design. People, Ideas & Objects Marketplace Vision as captured in Synallagi exists to deliver precisely that.

A Vision of the Oil & Gas Producers Working Environment  

The working environment of the future is fundamentally different from the administrative and operational systems that exist today. Synallagi establishes two permanent operational environments that continuously support every producer, engineer, geologist, accountant, administrator, service provider organization, and Artificial Intelligence capability operating within the North American oil & gas industry.

The first is the Marketplace Interface, the commercial environment through which organizations discover opportunities, negotiate Synallagi transactions with the service industry, collaborate with our user community, engage service provider organizations, and coordinate the activities that preserve reserves, improve performance, and increase profitability. Through this common operating environment, the Petroleum Lease Marketplace, Resource Marketplace, and Financial Marketplace function as an integrated commercial ecosystem where assets, the service industry, specialized resources, professional services, field service resources, capital, knowledge, and opportunities flow continuously between participants. Every significant commercial activity within Synallagi originates, interacts with, or is completed through one or more of these Marketplace Modules, making the Marketplace Interface the primary environment in which North American oil & gas organizations conduct business.

Business Operations Management Vision  

Business Operations Management is not simply an operational module. It is the commercial decision-making environment through which producers continually evaluate the economic performance of every property, facility, project, and investment under their responsibility.

Engineers and geologists can no longer focus exclusively on production performance or reserve development. Every technical decision is evaluated alongside its financial, commercial, and organizational consequences. Operational excellence and commercial performance become inseparable, allowing technical expertise to be measured by the economic value it creates.

When a property or individual well becomes unprofitable and is shut in, Business Operations Management becomes the environment in which recovery strategies are developed, evaluated, authorized, and executed. Rather than relying solely upon engineering judgement or experience, engineers and geologists construct multiple pro forma financial scenarios using the property’s actual historical accounting records at the well level as the analytical foundation. Historical production volumes, operating expenses, capital expenditures, maintenance costs, revenues, decline curves, and financial performance are projected forward to evaluate the economic consequences of proposed production increases, cost reductions, capital improvements, operational efficiencies, or alternative development strategies before financial commitments are made.

A property consisting of twenty-five wells may appear to be unprofitable when viewed as a single operating unit. However, financial analysis at the individual well level may reveal that only two wells, because of an obscure operational or economic condition, are destroying the profitability of the remaining twenty-three. In that circumstance, shutting in the entire property would be extreme, while shutting in only the two uneconomic wells becomes the rational commercial decision. The challenge with today’s systems is that this level of financial granularity does not exist. Engineering and production data are often available at the well level, but the corresponding accounting and financial information is aggregated at the property, field or higher level, forcing producers to make engineering decisions without a complete understanding of the underlying economics, which can be different and are dynamic, based on unseen business decisions. Synallagi is designed to integrate operational and financial information at the level of the individual well, allowing producers, engineers, geologists, accountants, and Artificial Intelligence to identify these anomalies, evaluate alternative remediation strategies through pro forma financial analysis, and execute the course of action most likely to restore the property’s overall profitability.

The objective is not simply to return a property to production. The objective is to determine which combination of engineering, operational, financial, and commercial decisions is most likely to restore sustainable profitability while preserving reserves, improving operational performance, and strengthening long-term enterprise value. That will be the redefined job description of oil & gas scientists.

Every successful remediation, every unsuccessful attempt, and every innovative operating practice represents intellectual capital that should not be lost. Through the Research & Capabilities and the Knowledge & Learning Module, Synallagi enables the producer to capture these developments, validates them through operational experience, refines them through continuous testing, and deploys improvements throughout the producer’s organization and contribute to the development of their producer firms engineering and geological capacities and capabilities competitive advantage. Innovation therefore becomes a persistent organizational capability rather than an isolated individual achievement.

The result is that organizations no longer repeat the same investigations, rediscover the same solutions, or incur the same costs simply because institutional knowledge has been forgotten over time. Instead, every implementation strengthens the collective knowledge of the enterprise, allowing each subsequent investment decision to begin where the previous one concluded.

Business Operations Management therefore evolves beyond an operational reporting system into a continuously learning commercial platform where engineering expertise, financial analysis, organizational knowledge, and Artificial Intelligence combine to improve every future investment decision. Innovation is no longer episodic. It becomes an institutional process that continually compounds the commercial capabilities of producers, service provider organizations, and the North American oil & gas industry as a whole.

Engineers & Geologists  

We have identified the scientific resources of producer organizations and the Joint Operating Committee as the primary users of Synallagi. The objective is not simply to provide engineers and geologists with additional information, but to provide them with the financial, operational, and commercial intelligence necessary to improve decision making throughout the lifecycle of every property, project, and investment.

Business Operations Management integrates engineering, geological, operational, and accounting information into a common decision-making environment where technical expertise is evaluated alongside commercial performance. Information is available at a level of detail and financial granularity that supports both ad hoc investigation and pro forma financial analysis using the actual historical accounting records of individual properties and wells. Rather than relying upon assumptions derived from aggregated financial information, engineers and geologists can objectively evaluate how proposed production increases, cost reductions, capital investments, operational improvements, or alternative development strategies are likely to influence future profitability before financial commitments are made.

This raises a more fundamental question.

Who does the engineer or geologist ultimately work for?

Traditionally, the answer has been straightforward: the producer organization that provides employment. Within Synallagi, however, scientific expertise becomes visible to the broader marketplace. Engineers and geologists develop specialized knowledge through years of experience operating particular reservoirs, geological formations, production methods, completion techniques, and recovery strategies. Those capabilities frequently extend well beyond the needs of a single producer.

Members of the Joint Operating Committee, other producer organizations, and service provider organizations may all operate properties with similar geological characteristics or operational challenges. Through the Marketplace Interface and Business Operations Management, those organizations gain the ability to identify scientific expertise based not upon resumes or professional networks, but upon demonstrated commercial outcomes and objectively measured performance.

The competitive advantage therefore shifts from experience alone to demonstrated value creation.

Synallagi objectively measures the financial benefits generated by engineering and geological innovations using the Targeting Framework. By removing proprietary producer information while preserving the measurable commercial outcomes, improvements can be evaluated, certified, and attributed to the individuals and organizations responsible for creating them. Engineers and geologists therefore develop professional reputations based upon independently verified improvements in reserves preservation, performance, and profitability rather than subjective opinion or organizational hierarchy.

The result is a marketplace in which scientific expertise becomes increasingly portable. Opportunities are created because the value of an individual’s contributions can be demonstrated objectively, allowing specialized knowledge to benefit multiple producers and Joint Operating Committees while creating broader career opportunities for the scientific community.

This evolution extends beyond individual expertise.

Every successful innovation, whether developed by an engineer, geologist, producer organization, or service provider organization, becomes a candidate for institutional learning. Through the Research & Capabilities Module and the Knowledge & Learning Module, Synallagi captures new ideas, validates them through operational performance, refines them through continuous testing, and deploys proven practices throughout the organization. Innovation therefore becomes an Organizational Construct that systematically transforms individual discoveries into enduring organizational capabilities. Organizations no longer repeat the same investigations, rediscover forgotten solutions, or incur unnecessary costs because valuable knowledge has been lost over time.

Engineers and geologists are not expected to become experts in Synallagi itself. Through Synnefa.ai, producer organizations are supported by a specialized network of service provider organizations that administer, configure, maintain, and continuously improve the platform while assisting scientific resources in applying its capabilities to their day-to-day work. These service provider organizations combine accounting, administrative, technical, operational, and Artificial Intelligence expertise with the producers’ engineering and geological knowledge, allowing scientific professionals to concentrate on solving reservoir, production, and development challenges while Synallagi delivers the commercial, financial, and organizational intelligence necessary to support informed decision making.

For many scientific professionals, Intellectual Property will become the most valuable asset they create. As Artificial Intelligence assumes responsibility for increasingly routine analytical work, competitive advantage shifts toward proprietary methods, specialized knowledge, unique workflows, and validated innovations that Artificial Intelligence can amplify throughout the enterprise. As People, Ideas & Objects has observed:

“Artificial Intelligence is the killer application for Intellectual Property.”

The significance of this statement is realized when Intellectual Property is no longer viewed as documentation, but as an operational asset that Artificial Intelligence can execute, refine, and scale throughout an organization.

Recent observations from Andrew McAfee of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology reinforce this direction. He argues that lower-cost Artificial Intelligence will not reduce competitive differences between organizations; instead, it will widen them because stronger organizations are better positioned to combine software, organizational capability, and specialized expertise. Early evidence also suggests that Artificial Intelligence reduces the effort spent on routine coordination while allowing highly skilled professionals to devote more time to exploration, innovation, and solving increasingly complex problems.

The question therefore is no longer whether Artificial Intelligence will influence the future of engineering and geology.

The question is which future the oil & gas scientist intends to help build.

A New Discipline  

The observation that Synallagi represents an entire new discipline extends beyond the development of innovative software. A software application solves a problem. A discipline establishes a body of knowledge that others can study, apply, refine, and extend over time.

As the Marketplace Vision papers have evolved, the individual concepts have begun to reveal themselves as parts of a coherent organizational framework rather than independent software capabilities. The Marketplace Modules, Business Operations Management, Autonomous Asynchronous Transaction Orchestration, Organizational Constructs, Research & Capabilities and Knowledge & Learning Module, Targeting Framework, Intellectual Property, and Artificial Intelligence no longer operate as separate ideas. Together they describe how organizations can be designed to continuously improve their commercial, operational, and financial performance.

This distinction is important. The objective of Synallagi has never been simply to automate existing business processes. It is to redefine how knowledge is created, validated, preserved, shared, and transformed into enduring organizational capability. Innovation becomes an Organizational Construct. Knowledge becomes a strategic asset. Organizational memory becomes a competitive advantage. Artificial Intelligence becomes the mechanism through which these capabilities are scaled throughout the enterprise.

Viewed collectively, these principles begin to define more than an Enterprise Resource Planning system. They establish a systematic approach to organizational design for the Artificial Intelligence era, where every Organizational Construct, Marketplace Module, business process, and Synallagi transaction contributes toward the common objective of creating sustainable commercial value.

21st Century Marketplace Service Providers Sec 2 - Part XXXV

Producers  

The reconstruction of the North American oil & gas industry begins with a fundamental reconsideration of the producer firm itself. Central to this transformation is the establishment of the Joint Operating Committee as the industry’s primary Organizational Construct, complemented by elevating the Markets Organizational Construct to a position equal in strategic importance to the producer organization. Together, these Organizational Constructs redefine how producers participate in exploration, production, capital allocation, innovation, and competition.

At first glance, it may appear that People, Ideas & Objects, through Synallagi, our user community, and their service provider organizations, seeks to diminish the role of the producer firm. The opposite is true. Our objective is to strengthen the producer by removing the structural constraints that have limited its ability to compete. What is being displaced is not the producer itself, but the hierarchical bureaucracy that has dominated the industry for decades and increasingly become an impediment to performance, innovation, accountability, and profitability.

People, Ideas & Objects redefines the producer firm by reconstructing its administrative, accounting, operational, and governance foundations. This represents the natural progression of the specialization and division of labor that has reshaped every major industry. Administrative and accounting functions evolve from isolated internal activities into specialized capabilities delivered through our user community and their service provider organizations. The producer, in turn, becomes more agile, more innovative, and better equipped to concentrate on its primary responsibilities of exploration, development, and profitable production.

For more than half a century, North American oil & gas has operated within organizational structures that rewarded activity more consistently than performance. Capital deployment gradually became the industry’s principal competitive mechanism, while profitability, accountability, and organizational learning became secondary considerations. Over time, this produced a culture that accepted “muddle through” as an operating philosophy rather than treating sustained profitability as the defining measure of success.

The consequences of that organizational design are now evident. Large segments of the industry continue to consume capital in order to produce, while lacking the information, organizational structures, and decision-making frameworks necessary to consistently identify where value is created, where it is destroyed, and how performance can be systematically improved. Organizational inertia has replaced organizational adaptation, leaving many producers culturally committed to methods that have repeatedly failed to restore competitive performance.

This persistence cannot reasonably be attributed to a lack of opportunity. Since publication of the Preliminary Specification (now Synallagi) in August 2012, the industry has experienced repeated opportunities to reconsider its administrative and organizational foundations. During the same period, investors steadily withdrew their confidence from producer firms whose financial performance and accountability failed to improve. Yet the underlying organizational structures have remained largely unchanged.

The purpose of this section is therefore not to criticize existing producers, but to define a new organizational model for those to institute a culture of reserves preservation, performance and profitability. We examine what a producer becomes when markets, the Joint Operating Committee, Artificial Intelligence, specialized service providers, and modern Enterprise Resource Planning architecture are integrated into a coherent organizational framework. In doing so, we describe not only how producer firms can be reconstructed, but how a new generation of industry leaders can emerge to rebuild North American oil & gas upon the enduring principles of resource preservation, performance, and profitability.

In many respects, this represents A New Discipline. It is a discipline that treats organizational design as a competitive advantage, recognizes markets as active organizational participants rather than external forces, and positions profitability as the outcome of superior organizational architecture rather than simply higher commodity prices or greater capital expenditure.

A Vision for Service Providers Leadership  

People, Ideas & Objects’ vision for leadership in oil and gas will be demonstrated through our user community and their service provider organizations. Together, they will provide the business, accounting, administrative, operational and software leadership required to rebuild the industry around reserves preservation, performance and profitability.

Oil and gas now finds itself locked into an organizational configuration that is no longer adequate to serve the majority of its needs. Time, resources and people are being deployed, employed and consumed without creating commensurate value. People, Ideas & Objects have described this as a modern software bug. The Enterprise Resource Planning system that should enable the organization has instead become one of its largest constraints.

Producer officers and directors appear to have learned that if they do not upgrade their Enterprise Resource Planning systems, then their status quo cannot be challenged. This has created a static environment of systems atrophy, manual workarounds and declining accountability. Rather than functioning as an operating platform for performance and profitability, legacy ERP software has become a defensive mechanism for organizational inertia.

This static Enterprise Resource Planning environment has persisted in oil and gas throughout this century, and possibly for a decade before. Oracle abandoned the effort to convince producers of the need for meaningful upgrades in 2000. IBM did so in 2005. This leaves People, Ideas & Objects’ Synallagi as the only comprehensive proposed development now being undertaken for the oil and gas industry. Since 2003, our principal reward has been the hostility of producer officers and directors whose methods and means of operation were being challenged.

The demands placed on the industry will be insatiable and among the most difficult in its history. An organizational structure inherited from a bygone era will no longer be adequate. Information Technology offers new ways to organize work, with the most significant change arising from the enhanced communication capabilities of the Internet. As the Internet of Information transitions to the Internet of Value, materially greater levels of change will be implemented over materially shorter periods of time.

The difference this time is that the required changes are not experimental. They are no longer being introduced on a trial basis, as optional technological initiatives, or as speculative improvements. They are being demanded by market realities and operational necessity. Ignoring the Internet of Value will impose significant costs on any individual or organization that chooses to remain outside its development.

The dynamic nature of these Information Technologies, combined with the changing requirements of oil and gas, will create a highly interactive operating environment. People, Ideas & Objects have always believed this would be the case. Accordingly, we have built our organization around continuous development and continuous delivery to satisfy the evolving needs of oil and gas. This principle defines not only People, Ideas & Objects, but also our user community and their service provider configurations.

Oracle Cloud Enterprise Resource Planning has demonstrated that an Enterprise Resource Planning system can operate on a quarterly upgrade cycle. Oracle has also demonstrated a quarterly financial reporting cadence in which reporting can be completed within six working days. People, Ideas & Objects’ Synallagi will bring this software discipline, upgrade cadence and reporting expectation into oil and gas.

Through this design and configuration, Synallagi will lead the oil and gas industry not only in optimal performance and profitability, but also in the organizational structural changes necessary to keep producers dynamic, innovative, accountable and profitable. The objective should be stated clearly. People, Ideas & Objects, our user community and their service provider organizations are working to ensure that the oil and gas industry never again finds itself trapped in the type of constrained organizational structure it occupies today.

In a previous paper, 21st Century Marketplace Vision — Part II: Our User Community, we detailed the compensation model for both our user community and their service provider organizations. That discussion included Enterprise Resource Planning Implementation Revenues, Maintenance and Support Revenues, and Dynamic Value Revenues earned by our user community and their service provider organizations. Dynamic Value Revenues are the mechanisms that maintain the commercial alignment of our user community and their service providers with the value and profitability earned by producer firms.

We have seen what occurs when a primary industry such as oil and gas operates without adequate profitability. The consequences are not confined to producer firms. They flow through the broader oil and gas economic infrastructure and impair every participant dependent on the revenues generated from the sale of oil and gas. Profitability is the only durable source of funding available to sustain the industry. There are no alternative revenue streams capable of supporting the service sector, the subsequent tiers of industry, or the producer firms themselves.

McKinsey recently advanced an argument that is consistent with People, Ideas & Objects’ prior discussion regarding the natural gas loss calculation. Value has been seeping out of the industry through the “muddle through” and indifferent approach of producer firm officers and directors. People, Ideas & Objects calculated that approximately $5.0 trillion in value has been lost this century as a result of their unwillingness or inability to manage the business. That calculation was based on the deterioration of the pricing structure of natural gas relative to oil on a heating value basis. Historically, natural gas traded at approximately a 6:1 ratio against oil, reflecting its equivalent heating value. In 2024, that relationship deteriorated to levels as extreme as 52.5:1, with today’s factor being 31:0.

People, Ideas & Objects attributes this value destruction to the industry’s failure to transition from a business model based on resource scarcity to one based on the abundance made possible by shale. Chronic overproduction of oil & natural gas has destroyed industry value and will require substantial remediation to correct. Meanwhile, the value that should have accrued to the industry, its investors, its service industry, and its broader economic infrastructure has instead been captured as consumer discounts or by downstream and adjacent firms marketing the product at full value.

McKinsey states:

Oil and gas production in the United States has outpaced the infrastructure needed to get products to market, increasing the premium for those who control these flows. This is especially true for gas, due to the large interconnected global market for liquefied natural gas, and exacerbated by the global data center industry increasingly looking to gas as a source of energy.

McKinsey also notes:

Operators are therefore seeking more control over paths to market, both to protect their access and to capture the arbitrage of price dislocations that have become more frequent as volatility grows. The increase in midstream consolidation, with $180 billion worth of deals in the last three years, speaks to this trend, as midstream organizations rush to maximize their share of this value pool.

McKinsey’s $180 billion assessment appears consistent with the theme of People, Ideas & Objects’ $5.0 trillion assessment for the 21st century and currently over $30 billion / month, although it is not as comprehensive in scope and does not address the full twenty-five-year period. One critical area is Permian associated gas, which is often treated by oil producers as a byproduct rather than as a primary source of value. 

The practice of producer firms retaining cash for internal priorities, executive compensation, and balance sheet optics while leaving insufficient value to sustain the remainder of the industry is not a durable operating model. Prior to 2015, producer performance had deteriorated to the point where annual external capital was required merely to maintain operations. The difference today is decisive. That annual infusion of capital is no longer available. Profitability must now be generated internally, and it must be generated with the recognition that the industry’s economic requirements extend well beyond the producer firm.

The service industry, and every subsequent tier of the oil and gas economy, is as dependent on oil and gas revenues as the producers themselves. Their employees, investors, suppliers, contractors, and communities are no less dependent on those revenues than producer employees are dependent on their paychecks. A producer firm does not operate in isolation. It operates through a continental economic structure that must remain profitable, capable, and investable if producers themselves are to continue functioning.

The value of oil and gas production will be realized somewhere, by someone, at some point in the value chain. Oil & gas as a primary industry has a responsibility to ensure that the producer firm receives its profitable share of that value while also ensuring that the service industry participants upon whom producers depend are profitably sustained. Allowing value created by the service industry, funded by investors, and required by the broader industry, to dissipate downstream after producer officers and directors determine they have been adequately compensated is not management. It is value leakage at continental scale through uncaring incompetence.

When producer investors identify accountability and profitability as the reasons for abandoning their interests, the matter has reached a terminal phase unless the firm acts decisively to remediate those deficiencies. Continued inaction after eleven years does not represent prudence, patience, or strategic restraint. It reflects an unwillingness or inability to confront the conditions investors have already identified as disqualifying. It is a futile debate to discern which is more tragic. That investors were forced to act in 2015. Or that in 2026 this fact does not seem to register on the officers and directors.

This is where the service provider role within Synallagi becomes material. Service providers must evaluate how their services, and the software they deliver through Synallagi, enhance profitability and value across the industry. Acting through the user community member who owns their organization, they must identify the software developments, process changes, and operational innovations required to produce measurable value for the broader oil and gas economy.

Within this structure, our user community’s service providers are not merely vendors. They are the operational agents through which profitability, accountability, and value restoration become executable. Their responsibility is to convert the explicit knowledge embedded in Synallagi into applied commercial performance. That performance is supported by their tacit knowledge, process specialization, and direct engagement with the requirements of producers, Joint Operating Committees, and the broader oil and gas economy.

The user community and their service provider organizations are motivated by mutual monetary benefit. They have a direct economic interest in developing the value-enhancing capabilities the industry requires. Through People, Ideas & Objects’ Targeting Framework, which will be addressed in a future paper in the 21st Century Marketplace Vision series, they will share in the perpetual value generated by these innovations.

To be precise, I have identified several of the larger value failures, including natural gas price losses, failures in realizing Liquefied Natural Gas markets developments to rehabilitate natural gas prices, Permian associated gas being dumped into Henry Hub pricing, and the industry’s limited recognition that shale changed the business model from scarcity to abundance. However, these observations represent only one perspective, and a perspective formed from outside the industry’s daily operations. What those working inside the industry know, identify, and as service providers will be able to change may be equally dramatic and equally value generating for both themselves and producers.

All values identified in these papers will therefore be subject to the Targeting Framework. The resulting value generated will accrue to our user community and their service provider organizations according to the objective evaluation of their contributions. This ensures that innovation is not merely encouraged rhetorically, but compensated structurally, perpetually, and in proportion to the value created. It will also keep score overall in terms of how much value has been generated by Synallagi, our user community and their service provider organizations. 

Synallagi' Targeting Framework objectively evaluates changes proposed and implemented by our user community and service providers. It determines objectively and monetarily how those changes enhance profitability, increase industry value, or improve accountability and performance. It then calculates and distributes the proceeds arising from those improvements.

When service providers conduct process management across all producer firms, even a small innovation can generate material value at industry scale. The service provider’s share may represent only a small percentage of the total industry benefit. However, that share will be perpetual and consistent for as long as the innovation remains operational and continues generating value.

This is the purpose of an objective and independent Targeting Framework: to evaluate, assess, calculate, and distribute the benefits created through innovation, accountability, and improved performance. It converts improvement into compensation, compensation into motivation, and motivation into a durable mechanism for rebuilding profitability across the North American oil and gas economy.

21st Century Marketplace Service Providers Sec 2 - Part XXXIV

Markets, as an Organizational Construct  

The Role of Service Providers in Synallagi  

Where do our user communities service providers fit in an environment such as the Synallagi crypto and stablecoin transaction example? Please remember Synallagi are applicable to every form of transaction involved in oil & gas. The example being used is only the most complex for the issues being discussed. 

Can accounting continue to focus only on debits and credits, legal only on the agreement, land only on implementation, and production and exploration only on their respective portions of the transaction as it moves sequentially through the producer’s organization, department by department?

Or does accounting and administration now require a new organizational configuration? One that is proactive, transaction-centered, and accountable at the point where economic events actually occur?

The Synallagi example suggests the latter. In this environment, accounting, legal, land, production, exploration administration, and any other required disciplines are no longer passive departmental participants receiving work after the fact. Their roles, responsibilities, authority, and accountability must be defined proactively at the transaction level. Synallagi is building this environment through our user community, and it will be their service providers who actively support, supervise, and interact with the elements of each transaction.

This includes the population of transaction types arising from producers, Joint Operating Committees, and Marketplaces.

Our user community members are responsible for a specific process within the Synallagi architecture, design, and development. In the crypto and stablecoin example, many processes are evident: title verification, stablecoin validation, counterparty review, compliance, legal documentation, Accounting Voucher control, Partnership Accounting, Material Balance Report integration, regulatory filing, and post-transaction closure.

Our user community members are the owner-operators of the service provider organizations that employ the service providers responsible for implementing, operating, supporting, and improving the processes they have designed and developed.

It is critical to understand that this paper deals specifically with service providers. This broader series of papers addresses a marketplace vision. Although the Synallagi transaction example appears comprehensive, it is limited at this stage to the crypto and stablecoin dimension of the transaction. Further detail will be added in Appendix VI — Synallagi Divestment Example.

Service providers will operate with Artificial Intelligence support that is active within the transaction lifecycle and across the broader Synallagi environment. Artificial Intelligence will not merely observe the transaction after the fact. It will dynamically identify, select, sequence, and execute the components required to support the transaction as conditions emerge. This includes routing work to the appropriate process, applying the relevant controls, validating compliance requirements, confirming governance conditions, identifying exceptions, escalating unresolved matters, and maintaining the transaction’s status within Synallagi until completion. 

Artificial Intelligence therefore becomes an embedded operational capability within the Enterprise Resource Planning environment, coordinating the transactional speed, volume, complexity, and control in a manner that conventional departmental processing cannot achieve. Critically, this Artificial Intelligence operates within the constraints of People, Ideas & Objects’ Intellectual Property. The Intellectual Property defines the permissible domain, authority, processes, controls, and transaction logic, ensuring Artificial Intelligence does not act outside what has been captured, authorized, and defined within the transaction itself or within Synallagi' broader Enterprise Resource Planning architecture.

The service provider’s role is not to become absorbed in the minutiae of each transaction. Their role is to supervise and monitor outcomes, design the methods and controls by which that monitoring occurs, and ensure that Synallagi is operating appropriately. They do so through their user community member’s exclusive authority to develop the software required for their process, and through the service provider organization’s hands-on management and supervision of the operating processes. This combination of Intellectual Property license, software authority, process accountability, Artificial Intelligence support, and direct operational supervision is what defines the service provider’s role within Synallagi.

This is the role of the service provider in Synallagi.

The service provider functions at a broad, high-level, dynamic operating layer. They are not clerks processing isolated documents. They are process owners, supervisors, analysts, and improvement agents within a system designed to make oil & gas accounting and administration proactive, accountable, and profitable. Those who see value in operating within that environment may find service provider participation to be the appropriate role for themselves.

Innovation is incremental. That point must be emphasized.

The compensation structure detailed in Appendix I shows where the service provider’s motivation should be directed. The objective is to generate producer and Joint Operating Committee profitability or value by enhancing revenues, reducing costs, increasing productivity, improving compliance, accelerating transaction cycle time, reducing error rates, and identifying better methods of execution through the software and services in their domain. These are some of the means available to service providers.

The benefits created by those improvements are shared with the industry and with the service provider who developed them. This sharing occurs through enhanced compensation under Synallagi' Targeting Framework.

One dollar of savings each month for each producer at each well may be material when aggregated across the industry. A change that appears insignificant at the individual transaction level is estimated at $17 million in annual industry benefit when applied broadly. On a reasonable sharing basis, to be determined by our user community, that improvement may provide the originating service provider and user community member with a percentage of that value in additional annual compensation.

That is the incentive architecture Synallagi is designed to create.

The current departmental model is reactive. It waits for transactions to occur, then records, interprets, reconciles, or repairs them. Synallagi changes that sequence. It places accounting and administration inside the transaction lifecycle itself. It defines the requirements before execution, monitors the transaction during execution, and verifies institutional completion after execution.

Our user community designs these processes. Their service providers operate and improve these processes. Artificial Intelligence assists, monitors, conducts and escalates. Synallagi governs the transaction lifecycle.

The outcome is a new accounting and administrative model for oil & gas: proactive, transaction-centered, marketplace-enabled, and accountable to the objectives of reserves preservation, performance, and profitability. 

Our Marketplace Vision  

Vision without action is merely a dream. Action without vision just passes the time. Vision with action can change the world.

Joel A. Barker

A 21st Century Marketplace Vision for Oil & Gas’ action is enabled through Service Providers. Which form the practical implementation of our user community members' vision of the process domain they’re licensed for, operate and manage. 

People, Ideas & Objects Synallagi consists of eleven integrated modules which include three Marketplace Modules: the Petroleum Lease, Financial, and Resource Marketplaces. Originally authored in 2012, these modules incorporated design principles that were materially ahead of their time. Recent advances now enable an order of magnitude increase in sophistication and functionality that would have been inconceivable even two years ago. These upgrades are seen as necessary to maintain today’s competitive market expectations. 

This paper formally augments Synallagi to incorporate what we now designate our product and service as:

Synallagi

“with Autonomous Asynchronous Transaction Orchestration.”

This is not an incremental upgrade. It is a reset of architecture and vision for the next 5, 10, 15, and 20 years.

The foundation of this reset begins with the pristine integrity of data at rest and in motion. Avoiding the classic “garbage in, garbage out” failure mode which becomes existential in an environment where unchecked Artificial Intelligence could amplify errors at machine scale. Autonomous systems are only as effective as the data they consume. These capabilities, properly governed, offer the opportunity to move producers—and the broader oil & gas economy—forward, while preparing industry participants to operate competently within the Artificial Intelligence environment now emerging.

Synallagi’ original Technical Vision, written early this century, anticipated four core technologies:

• The Java Programming Language
• Wireless networking
• The IPv6 network protocol
• Asynchronous Process Management

The revised Technical Vision now expands and refines these foundations to include:

• Data Integrity as a first-class architectural constraint
• AI assisted Java Programming for rigorous static typing
• Ubiquitous wireless connectivity, including satellite integration
• IPv6 networks as the substrate for the Internet of Things
• Autonomous Asynchronous Transaction Orchestration

Autonomous Asynchronous Transaction Orchestration now permeates Synallagi’ entire architecture. The Research & Capabilities and Knowledge & Learning Modules are treated as quasi-markets, reflecting their role in accessing, securing, and deploying scarce engineering and geological capacities and capabilities to specific properties. We will note in this paper the future role that crypto will play in these modules. When securitization* of Joint Operating Committees are possible through crypto, they’ll need to have SEC compliant financial statements prepared and reported consistently. Synallagi is designed to provide those. Secondly the crypto requirements will demand a means of operational and technical capabilities be available and deployable. Research & Capabilities and Knowledge & Learning are the beginning of that, the Resource Marketplace and Work Order are the means of facilitating the engineers and geologists to undertake operational work at any and all industry wide Joint Operating Committees. Fulfilling the operational requirements of any securitized asset. The properties title provided through the Petroleum Lease Marketplace module. The implications of our technical vision are profound; for a detailed examination of its evolution and why its consequences are significant, please refer to Appendix V.

* The CLARITY Act has passed the House and advanced through the Senate Banking Committee, but remains pending before the full Senate. Until enacted, Synallagi treats the legislation as a probable but not settled regulatory framework for digital asset market structure.

This and its follow on paper show our Business Operations Management as a critical module, integrating the Work Order, Job Order, Purchase Order and Material Balance Report. These instruments—long central to Synallagi—become substantially more powerful when enhanced through Autonomous Asynchronous Transaction Orchestration. Together, they provide the only credible mechanism for exerting control over the speed, scale, velocity, volume and complexity of industry data growth anticipated, sophistication of the business and technical environments in the coming decade.

The oil and gas industry faces a challenge due to the increasing demand for earth science and engineering resources, coupled with the anticipated retirement of experienced professionals and minimal or inadequate volume of new graduates. People, Ideas & Objects propose a solution of “Industrial Command & Control” (ICC), which leverages hyper specialization and the division of labour to optimize resource utilization. By pooling technical resources through Joint Operating Committees and offloading lower-end processes to technical service providers, our ICC aims to enhance industry-wide productivity and innovation.

With Synallagi, this transition unlocks the unused and unusable capacity of engineering and geological talent currently restricted by producers to meet their contingent, just-in-time operational requirements. By establishing expansive and dynamic markets for these specialized resources, individuals can extend their unique expertise beyond the constraints of a single traditional corporate structure. For instance, a specialist in shale gas hydraulic fracturing finds substantial demand for their skills across all shale regions. Restricting such talent within a single corporate silo is not only detrimental to overall industry performance but also actively suppresses the professional earning potential of both engineers and geologists. Synallagi’ ICC is designed to accomplish this necessary change for both purposes.

At this point, the industry must confront a fundamental question: when do persistent structural financial failures become a crisis? Is it today, while commodity prices remain tolerable? Or only later, when prices become destabilizing—whether oil at $30, as projected for 2027, or at speculative extremes of $500 to $1,500, with natural gas at $75? By then, industry field capacities and capabilities may have atrophied severely enough that recovery to prior performance levels may take decades. At what point does the industry accept responsibility for preventing this outcome—and at what point does society recognize how compromised its oil & gas system has become? When does society learn of the consequences of long lead times from conceptual approval to oil & gas production?

Throughout this paper, People, Ideas & Objects assert that Synallagi will ultimately be embodied in a User Community that functions as the standardized, accounting, administrative, and Enterprise Resource Planning backbone for North American oil & gas. This is not a monolithic firm on which the industry becomes dependent. Rather, our user community serves as the primary actors across all non-competitive domains of producer organizations, actively supporting its competitive domains of geology & engineering applied to its land & asset bases. 

Podcast # 40: Security & Access Control Business & Technical Specification

 People, Ideas & Objects is pleased to present Podcast No. 40, discussing the Business and Technical Specification for Synallagi’s Security & Access Control module.

This is the first of eleven Synallagi modules that will be advanced to the level of a complete Business and Technical Specification. This greater level of detail will provide the foundation our user community needs as custody of the specification is transferred to them.

We have established several conditions governing our user-community contributions through the first commercial release. Most importantly, contributors must preserve the business models defined within Synallagi until we more fully understand how those models interact. Only then will we be able to comprehend the wider consequences of changing Synallagi at the business-model or architectural level.

Although this podcast is 45 minutes long, it is worth every minute. It takes the seemingly mundane subject of security and places it within the Artificial Intelligence-driven environment in which we now live—and the considerably more demanding environment we can already foresee.

If the speed and complexity of today’s operating environment have not yet overwhelmed us, just give it five minutes.

The Security & Access Control Business and Technical Specification anticipates this future. It establishes how Artificial Intelligence can be employed constructively, reliably and—dare I say it—trustworthily. The alternative is to have Artificial Intelligence agents ripping and tearing at organizations while producing copious volumes of information of questionable provenance and value. And who, exactly, authored the agent?

Synallagi provides North American oil & gas producers with a comprehensive response to their persistent profitability and accountability problems. It brings the industry forward to confront what may become an industrial revolution based upon intellectual leverage—what we describe as A New Discipline.

The previous Industrial Revolution delivered extraordinary mechanical leverage. The emerging revolution adds intellectual leverage. North American oil & gas should be helping to fuel and realize that opportunity.

Structuring and organizing ourselves for this new reality is both our responsibility and our obligation. Synallagi is designed to decrease Organizational Latency throughout North American oil & gas, enabling the industry to respond to the increasingly complex demands being placed upon it.

Continuing along the path of “muddle through” is no longer merely irresponsible. It is dangerous.

Consider This... Hayek on Prices Part II

Part II of Consider This... Price Maker Strategy and Hayek 

Industries Current Practice

Analysis of this graph (@soberlook) from the perspective of producer firms suggests that total costs across the major shale basins range from approximately $48 to $54 per barrel of oil produced. Within that total, operating expenses and royalties account for roughly $28 to $37 per barrel, while capital costs are estimated at $18 to $23 per barrel. 

The capital cost component warrants closer examination because it reflects one of the industry’s most significant misconceptions. The figure shown on the graph is not the commercial cost of recovering invested capital within a competitive timeframe. Instead, it is an accounting allocation that distributes total capital investment across every barrel expected to be produced over the property’s entire productive life. In shale developments, that period may extend for decades and, for certain natural gas properties, potentially generations.

People, Ideas & Objects contend that this accounting convention no longer reflects the realities of modern capital markets. Investors do not commit capital with the expectation that it will remain tied to a producing property for several decades before being recovered. Capital carries an opportunity cost. Every dollar committed to one project is unavailable for new drilling opportunities, debt reduction, shareholder distributions, acquisitions, or alternative investments. Conventional oil & gas accounting largely ignores this economic reality.

Within Synallagi, we therefore propose a fundamentally different treatment of capital recovery. Capital invested in a property should be substantially recovered during approximately the first thirty months of production, corresponding to the period in which most shale wells generate the majority of their productive capacity before expensive decline management and re-fracturing programs become necessary. Recovering invested capital within this period allows producers to continually recycle capital into new opportunities, strengthen their balance sheets, reduce debt, reward shareholders, and finance future development without repeated dependence on external financing.

This approach fundamentally changes the criteria governing production decisions. Production should occur only when commodity prices exceed the property’s full economic cost, including operating expenses, royalties, and the competitive recovery of invested capital. Profitability—not merely positive operating cash flow—becomes the governing principle. The distinction is fundamental.

The graph identifies what the industry commonly describes as “break-even” and “shut-in” prices. In practice, these definitions generally assume production should continue whenever commodity prices exceed operating expenses. Any contribution toward capital recovery, however small, is considered sufficient justification for continued production. Production is expected to cease only when prices fail to cover operating costs.

This is not genuine economic break-even. It is merely an operating cash flow threshold.

Under this approach, producers acknowledge that invested capital is not being recovered competitively, yet continue producing because cash continues to enter the business. Positive operating cash flow is mistaken for profitability. It is not.

Failure to recover capital within a commercially competitive period indicates that shareholder wealth is being consumed rather than created. Although production generates immediate cash receipts, it simultaneously exhausts the underlying investment. Ultimately, the reserves are depleted while much of the invested capital remains unrecovered. Under the Synallagi framework, such production is economically unprofitable for the entire reserve base, regardless of whether operating cash flow remains positive.

Synallagi therefore adopts a different production discipline.

Assuming the cost estimates presented in the graph are broadly representative, production should cease once commodity prices fall below the property’s true economic break-even point. Continuing production below that level reduces corporate profitability, delays capital recovery, and accelerates the destruction of shareholder value.

The consequences extend well beyond the individual producer.

Oil & gas commodities are better understood as price-making markets than price-taking markets. Every producer that continues producing below economic break-even contributes additional supply to an already oversupplied market. That incremental production depresses commodity prices, reducing profitability not only for the individual producer but for every producer participating in the market.

When this behavior persists across an industry for decades, the cumulative effect becomes systemic wealth destruction. The collapse of North American natural gas pricing—from the historic energy-equivalent relationship of approximately 6:1 relative to oil to more than 50:1 during 2024—illustrates the long-term consequences of sustained overproduction without adequate production discipline.

The issue is therefore not one of accounting terminology. It is the absence of production discipline founded upon profitability.

Most industries recognize that unprofitable production cannot continue indefinitely. Temporary losses may be accepted during short-term market disruptions, but businesses eventually reduce production or suspend operations before cumulative losses threaten the enterprise itself. North American oil & gas has largely abandoned this discipline.

Instead, conventional accounting methods defer capital recovery over extraordinarily long production lives, substantially understating the property’s true economic cost of production. A property appearing to break even at approximately $50 per barrel under conventional accounting may require commodity prices approaching three times that amount before invested capital is recovered within a commercially competitive period.

The consequence is predictable. Investors are presented with financial statements suggesting properties are profitable when, economically, they continue consuming shareholder capital. This misunderstanding has encouraged chronic overproduction, suppressed commodity prices, weakened returns on investment, and contributed to the destruction of industry value for more than four decades.

Synallagi replaces this framework with one founded on genuine profitability. By measuring both operating costs and the competitive recovery of invested capital, producers gain an objective basis for determining whether production creates shareholder value or merely consumes it. Production discipline is therefore governed by profitability rather than operating cash flow alone.

Conclusion

So concludes what I consider to be the first successful paper in our Consider This… series. Unlike the broader 21st Century Marketplace Vision publications, these papers focus on a single issue related to Synallagi, our user community, and their service provider organizations. Their purpose is not to present the entire architecture, but to examine one idea in sufficient depth that its broader implications become apparent.

This paper compared our price maker strategy with Professor Friedrich Hayek’s September 1945 essay, The Use of Knowledge in Society. What is most striking is not simply the elegance of Hayek’s theory, but how closely the behaviors he described eighty years ago resemble those observed throughout the oil & gas industry today. The central question remains unchanged: can decentralized decision-makers, guided by accurate information communicated through markets, consistently outperform centralized administrative control?

Hayek understood that accepting this proposition required a considerable degree of faith. It demanded confidence that no individual or central authority could ever possess sufficient knowledge to allocate resources more effectively than the collective intelligence expressed through market prices. Throughout his career, that proposition remained controversial. Political and economic thought has repeatedly oscillated between confidence in markets and confidence in centralized planning. President George H. W. Bush’s famous characterization of “voodoo economics” during the 1980 Republican presidential campaign illustrates that skepticism. Yet the remarkable economic performance of decentralized markets over subsequent decades has steadily reinforced Hayek’s central thesis.

Our own price maker strategy has encountered much the same resistance. When first introduced, it was criticized as collusive. Our response has remained unchanged. Independent producers, acting through the Joint Operating Committee and making decisions at the individual property level using objective, factual financial information, are not coordinating with one another. They are responding independently to the same market signals. The market itself becomes the coordinating mechanism. Like Hayek’s original proposition, acceptance ultimately depends upon confidence that prices communicate more information than any centralized management structure ever could.

This observation reaches beyond pricing strategy. It extends directly into the Organizational Constructs that underpin Synallagi. Markets are not simply places where transactions occur; they are an Organizational Construct that coordinates specialized knowledge across an industry. Likewise, the Joint Operating Committee serves as an Organizational Construct for exploration, production, governance, and operational decision-making. These structures are complementary rather than competing. The Joint Operating Committee governs the efficient operation of individual properties, while Markets coordinate information, specialization, innovation, and capital allocation across the broader industry. Together they create an organizational architecture capable of responding continuously to changing conditions.

This perspective also changes how we think about the producer firm itself. The traditional assumption has been that organizations and markets exist in opposition to one another. Increasingly, the literature on organizational economics suggests a different interpretation. Firms, markets, and other institutional arrangements are alternative mechanisms for organizing economic activity. The objective is not to replace organizations with markets, but to determine which organizational structure is best suited to a particular function.

Whether North American oil & gas requires the degree of reconstruction proposed by People, Ideas & Objects is, in many respects, beside the point. If markets represent the superior means of coordinating dispersed knowledge, innovation, specialization, and capital, then every aspect of the industry should seek to employ them wherever they create greater efficiency. Producer firms should concentrate on their distinct competitive advantages: ownership of their land & asset base together with their engineering & geological capacities & capabilities. Functions beyond those advantages should increasingly be obtained through competitive markets and the specialized organizations that serve them.

During preparation of this paper I encountered an interesting statement:

“The opposite of organization is not the market; it is disorganization.”

Although I was unable to verify this as a direct quotation, the underlying idea appears consistently throughout the organizational economics literature. Ronald Coase demonstrated that firms and markets are alternative mechanisms for coordinating economic activity. Oliver Williamson expanded this into competing governance structures. Richard Langlois and Nicolai Foss further developed the concept by emphasizing that firms, markets, and capabilities represent complementary forms of economic organization rather than opposing ones.

That conclusion reinforces one of the central themes of Synallagi. Markets should not be viewed as existing outside organizational theory. They are themselves an Organizational Construct. They coordinate information, encourage specialization, stimulate innovation, and allocate resources across an industry in ways that centralized organizations cannot readily duplicate.

Perhaps that is the most enduring lesson from Hayek’s work. Markets are not merely mechanisms for discovering prices. They are mechanisms for organizing knowledge itself. Eight decades after The Use of Knowledge in Society was published, that insight appears more relevant than ever. Artificial Intelligence, digital marketplaces, and Synallagi eleven Organizational Constructs do not replace Hayek’s vision—they extend it into the twenty-first century.

Consider This... Hayek on Prices Part I

 Introducing our new series of papers entitled "Consider This..."

The intellectual collision between the Keynesian framework and Hayekian thought remains a compelling chapter of the late 20th century. Following 1945, the consensus leaned toward the former, yet Hayek's perspective on spontaneous order eventually found its footing. This resurgence was most visible during the 1980s, when leaders like Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher utilized his principles to achieve noted economic outcomes. Nevertheless, the allure of fiscal expansion often leads modern administrations, such as the one under President Biden, to return to significant budgetary and monetary expansion. Hayek’s receipt of the 1974 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences also helped restore his academic profile.

Of note, historical accounts place both economists at Cambridge University throughout the Second World War.

Friedrich Hayek was in Cambridge during the Second World War because the London School of Economics had been evacuated there. During the Blitz, Hayek and John Maynard Keynes reportedly shared fire-watch duty on the rooftops of King’s College, watching for incendiary bombs. This episode is well documented in Hayek biographies and Cambridge histories. 

One nuance is worth emphasizing. It is an oversimplification to say that “Keynes said government was the answer.” Keynes advocated government intervention when aggregate demand was insufficient, but he did not advocate comprehensive state planning of production. Likewise, Hayek did not argue for the absence of government; he accepted important roles for the rule of law, monetary stability, competition policy, and a social safety net. The enduring debate between the two traditions is less about government versus markets than about where each works best and where each reaches its limits.

What Keynes and Hayek advocated for may not have been consistent with what ambitious politicians implemented. We’ve seen a strong move towards the left in the past 50 to 60 years. What Hayek said about the two prominent systems of government was appropriate. “Socialism is simple and seductive, capitalism is complex and subtle.” 

The Price System: Market prices act as an incredibly subtle communication system. Prices signal scarcity or abundance and utility without requiring central coordination. 

Counter-Intuitive Order: It seems absurd to the "naive mind" that decentralization generates better order than a deliberate plan.

Energy producers must now look to the price system as the mechanism for navigating the fundamental transition from scarcity to abundance brought about by shale. People, Ideas & Objects price maker strategy in Synallagi provides the necessary framework for this production discipline. If it’s profitable it produces, providing an application of the most fair, equitable and reasonable production discipline available. 

The purpose of this Consider This… paper is to examine Professor Friedrich Hayek’s seminal September 1945 paper, The Use of Knowledge in Society, through the perspective of People, Ideas & Objects Synallagi price maker strategy. Although written more than eighty years ago, Hayek’s observations remain remarkably relevant to the challenges confronting North American oil & gas in 2026.

Hayek writes:

We must look at the price system as such a mechanism for communicating information if we want to understand its real function—a function which, of course, fulfills less perfectly as prices grow more rigid. (Even when quoted prices have become quite rigid, however, the forces which would operate through changes in price still operate to a considerable extent through changes in the other terms of the contract.) The most significant fact about this system is the economy of knowledge with which it operates, or how little the individual participants need to know in order to be able to take the right action. In abbreviated form, by a kind of symbol, only the most essential information is passed on, and passed on only to those concerned. It is more than a metaphor to describe the price system as a kind of machinery for registering change, or a system of telecommunications which enables individual producers to watch merely the movement of a few pointers, as an engineer might watch the hands of a few dials, in order to adjust their activities to changes of which they may never know more than is reflected in the price movement. pp. 526 - 527.

An obvious question follows from Hayek’s discussion of the price system. What would have happened had North American oil & gas producers adopted our Synallagi price maker strategy over the past several decades?

Surprisingly, the impact on consumers would likely have been relatively modest. The greatest difference would have been experienced by producers, their investors, the service industry, and the broader economy.

People, Ideas & Objects have documented more than $5.0 trillion in lost natural gas revenues during the 21st century. These losses represent value that was never realized by North American producers because commodity prices failed to reflect the full economic value of the resource. This value destruction is measurable and well documented, yet it has produced remarkably little structural change. Rather than addressing the underlying market mechanisms responsible for these losses, the industry has largely continued operating under the same assumptions that created them.

This observation is consistent with Friedrich Hayek’s explanation of the price system. Hayek argued that prices communicate dispersed knowledge throughout an economy. No individual needs to understand every variable affecting supply and demand because the price itself communicates the information necessary for rational decision-making.

The Synallagi price maker strategy extends this principle. A profitable commodity price becomes the signal that communicates everything the producer needs to know. It reflects operating costs, capital recovery, transportation constraints, consumer demand, global supply, infrastructure limitations, investment requirements, and competitive conditions. Rather than attempting to manage each of these variables independently, producers need only respond to the information embodied in a profitable market price.

Profitability therefore becomes the coordinating mechanism that transforms dispersed knowledge into disciplined economic behaviour. This discipline extends beyond the producer.

Oil and gas is a primary industry, but its capabilities depend almost entirely upon its secondary and tertiary industries. Drilling contractors, engineering firms, equipment manufacturers, construction companies, software providers, and countless specialized service organizations collectively provide the industry’s productive capacity. Without this service industry, there would be no practical oil & gas industry.

For more than six decades, however, producers have relied upon what has become known as capital discipline. During periods of depressed commodity prices, capital expenditures are reduced in an effort to preserve corporate cash. While understandable from the perspective of an individual producer, the broader consequences are substantial.

Capital discipline is a blunt instrument. It often requires years before meaningful adjustments occur. More importantly, it systematically reduces the productive capacity and technical capabilities of the industry itself. And the burden of the downturn is transferred directly to the service industry.

When producers cancel capital programs, demand for drilling, completions, engineering, construction, and field services contracts immediately. The service industry experience dramatic declines in revenue, often compounded by demands for significant price concessions in order to retain work. Equipment is retired, experienced personnel leave the industry, innovation slows, and specialized capabilities are lost. The bust portion of the industry’s boom-and-bust cycle is effectively transferred from producers to the service sector.

The documented loss of more than $5.0 trillion in natural gas revenues illustrates an even broader economic principle. Somewhere between the point of production and the final consumer, someone will recognize the full market value of the commodity. Someone will recover the costs, earn a profit, and supply consumers at a price they are willing to pay.

If producers fail to capture that value, others inevitably will.

The value may be realized by downstream processors, exporters, marketers, utilities, industrial consumers, or other participants further along the value chain. Alternatively, consumers themselves may benefit through commodity prices that remain below their long-term economic value. Regardless of who ultimately captures the benefit, the value does not disappear. It simply leaves the upstream producer and the industries that depend upon it to be captured by others.

People, Ideas & Objects attribute much of this value destruction to the industry’s failure to transition from a business model based upon resource scarcity to one capable of managing the abundance created by shale. Abundance requires a fundamentally different production strategy. Rather than maximizing production volumes, producers must maximize the profitable value realized from each unit of production. Synallagi provides the accounting, operational, and marketplace framework necessary to support that transition and long term management.

Had producers consistently accounted for the full economic cost of production and limited production to profitable production, substantially more of this value would have remained within the industry. Investors would have realized stronger returns. The service industry would have maintained their technical capacities and capabilities. Innovation would have been continuously funded. Productive capacity would have been preserved instead of repeatedly dismantled and rebuilt during successive downturns.

The central lesson is straightforward. Commodity prices should communicate profitability, and profitability should govern production. When prices fail to support profitable production, the appropriate response is not to increase production in the hope that markets will eventually rebalance. The appropriate response is to preserve the resource, preserve capital, and produce only when production creates genuine economic value.

Only profitable production should be produced—everywhere and always. Synallagi lists the benefits to a producer firm of our price maker strategy as follows.

■ Maximized Profitability: Producers maximize profits when losses from unprofitable wells or properties no longer dilute the gains from profitable ones. It’s common sense to limit one's losses.

■ Strategic Reserve Management: Holding reserves until they can be produced profitably means avoiding the incremental costs associated with losses from unprofitable production. Reserves are not obligations to produce at any price. They are assets to be managed prudently.

■ Cost Reduction: Keeping oil & gas as reserves reduces production, transportation, processing, storage and administrative costs tied to excess, unprofitable output.

■ Variable Overhead Costs: Overhead costs are fully covered when profitably produced. That cash incurred is therefore returned within 60 days to the producers. Any shut-in production will not incur overhead as all Joint Operating Committee costs are turned variable in Synallagi. 

■ Synnefa.ai Our Cloud Administration & Accounting for Oil & Gas: Shared administrative and accounting infrastructure costs of software and services based on the Cloud distribution model are tangibly lower.

■ Market Stability: Removing unprofitable production allows commodity markets to find the marginal cost, establishing fair prices for all production. Eliminating industries' boom / bust cycle. Markets provide one thing, and only one thing, a price.

■ Reserves Valuations: Market prices accurately reflect the value of producers petroleum reserves. Higher commodity prices expand the volumes of proven recoverable reserves and fulfill officers and directors fiduciary duty to safeguard assets.

■ Innovation Opportunities: While unprofitable properties are shut in, producers can innovatively explore ways to increase production volumes, reduce costs, or expand reserves. To return the well or property to profitable production.

■ Replacement Value: The realized market price of oil & gas must reflect the current market’s costs of exploration and development. That is the cost of a replacement volume of energy produced today. 

■ Production Discipline: Using profitability as the criterion for production decisions is the only fair and reasonable method of instilling production discipline. Producers that continue to produce unprofitably will continue to incur losses and have difficulty competing in North American capital markets.

■ Alleged Capital Discipline: Producers claim by cutting spending on drilling and completions is their method of resolving low prices. Capital discipline is at best a dull, blunt instrument. As we see today, it is the willing destruction of productive capacity. What it also does is shift the bust of the boom / bust cycle to the service industry to suffer exclusively. 

■ Innovation as a Foundation: Higher commodity prices finance greater innovative activity.

■ Effectively Eliminating the Boom / Bust Cycle: Dynamic changes to the producers production profile ensure they remain profitable and are aware when industry overbuilding has begun.

■ Commodity Values Realization: Each barrel of oil equivalent (boe) delivers the equivalent of 10,000 to 25,000 man-hours of labor to the consumer. This represents an irreplaceable value proposition, priced in January 2026 as high as $0.006 per labor hour, yet sourced from a finite supply. It is our responsibility to future generations to ensure this vital resource is not squandered. We must demonstrate that all production was profitable and that we passed on a robust, prosperous, profitable and viable industry to future generations. Price makers only bring on new production when it is profitable. 

■ Consumers will use the Products Price to Make Decisions: Consumer decisions based on profitable prices will stabilize the demand side of the market.

■ Independent Decisions: Our price maker strategy is built on making independent business decisions, using actual, factual financial information at the property level. This is sound business practice, not collusion, which renders any such allegations moot.

■ Profitable Operations: Conceptually, profitable operations would provide a producer with all the financial resources they need to conduct their business. Providing leadership with the independence to set their own direction. End the systemic dilution of their shareholders interests to fund capital expenditures and build value.

■ Achieves North American Swing Producer Status: Oil & gas are now both global commodities subject to the supply / demand dynamics of these markets. Shale and heavy oil are unquestionably the most costly produced anywhere in the world. The role of swing producer is to add or remove production as required to stabilize prices adequate for its markets to provide for profitable operations.

Artificial Intelligence creates an opportunity to rethink long-held assumptions about how industries organize, compete, and innovate. It encourages us to move beyond established patterns of thinking and to reconsider whether existing organizational structures continue to serve their intended purpose.

North American oil & gas has long embraced a collegial culture. Cooperation, consensus, and professional relationships are viewed as virtues, reflecting an industry that seeks to distinguish itself from the crude notion of individuals competing over scarce resources. This philosophy has shaped not only oil & gas but many North American institutions.

The question, however, is whether this collegiality has gradually evolved into something less constructive. Has it become a closed culture in which opportunities are implicitly reserved for a select few? Has competition itself become viewed with suspicion? More importantly, has the pursuit of competitive advantage through superior knowledge become socially discouraged rather than celebrated?

Friedrich Hayek raised precisely this concern in The Use of Knowledge in Society (1945):

It is a curious fact that this sort of knowledge should today be generally regarded with a kind of contempt, and that anyone who by such knowledge gains an advantage over somebody better equipped with theoretical or technical knowledge is thought to have acted almost disreputably. To gain an advantage from better knowledge of facilities of communication or transport is sometimes regarded as almost dishonest, although it is quite as important that society make use of the best opportunities in this respect as in using the latest scientific discoveries. This prejudice has in a considerable measure affected the attitude toward commerce in general compared with that toward production. Even economists who regard themselves as definitely above the crude materialist fallacies of the past constantly commit the same mistake where activities directed toward the acquisition of such practical knowledge are concerned—apparently because in their scheme of things all such knowledge is supposed to be ‘given.’ The common idea now seems to be that all such knowledge should as a matter of course be readily at the command of everybody, and the reproach of irrationality leveled against the existing economic order is frequently based on the fact that it is not so available. This view disregards the fact that the method by which such knowledge can be made as widely available as possible is precisely the problem to which we have to find an answer. (p. 522)

Hayek’s observation remains remarkably relevant. The competitive advantage of an organization is rarely determined solely by superior scientific or technical knowledge. More often, it arises from possessing better operational, commercial, organizational, and financial knowledge—and, more importantly, from organizing that knowledge so it can be acted upon quickly and effectively.

Artificial Intelligence substantially expands that opportunity. Rather than replacing human expertise, it enables organizations to discover relationships, identify opportunities, and coordinate information at a scale previously unattainable. The challenge is no longer acquiring knowledge alone. The challenge is constructing organizations capable of making that knowledge available to the people responsible for making decisions.

That challenge in terms of delivery of the financial knowledge lies at the heart of Synallagi. And knowledge is provided through the price system. 

Vision without action is merely a dream. Action without vision just passes the time. Vision with action can change the world.

Joel A. Barker

From Friedrich Hayek’s The Use of Knowledge in Society (1945): 

It is, perhaps, worth stressing that economic problems arise always and only as a consequence of change. So long as things continue as before, or at least as they were expected to, there arise no new problems requiring a decision, no need to form a new plan. The belief that changes, or at least day-to-day adjustments, have become less important in modern times implies the contention that economic problems also have become less important. This belief in the decreasing importance of change is, for that reason, usually held by the same people who argue that the importance of economic considerations has been driven into the background by the growing importance of technological knowledge.

Is it true that, with the elaborate apparatus of modern production, economic decisions are required only at long intervals, as when a new factory is to be erected or a new process to be introduced? Is it true that, once a plant has been built, the rest is all more or less mechanical, determined by the character of the plant, and leaving little to be changed in adapting to the ever-changing circumstances of the moment? 

Hayek’s central concern was not simply the existence of knowledge, but how dispersed, practical knowledge could be organized, communicated, and made useful for economic decision-making. That challenge remains largely unresolved within North American oil & gas. Engineers and geologists possess extraordinary scientific and technical expertise, yet they are rarely supported by actual, factual, standardized, and objective accounting information that enables them to evaluate the financial consequences of their operational decisions.

Synallagi addresses this deficiency by integrating standardized financial information directly into operational decision-making. Engineers and geologists would have immediate access to consistent financial statements prepared according to industry-wide standards, enabling them to analyze the economic performance of their properties from both scientific and business perspectives. Rather than relying upon fragmented information distributed across multiple organizational silos, they would possess a unified operational and financial view of every property under their responsibility.

Supported by our user community and their service provider organizations, they would be able to investigate cost structures, evaluate alternatives, optimize operational performance, and continually improve resource preservation, performance, and profitability. Synallagi Business Operations Management module provides the operational framework for these decisions, while the Marketplace Interface enables participants to engage the broader marketplace, deploying both organizational and market capabilities to achieve profitable outcomes.

Viewed from this perspective, Synallagi is not merely an Enterprise Resource Planning system. It is an organizational architecture for making Hayek’s dispersed knowledge actionable. It transforms information into coordinated decision-making by placing objective accounting information alongside engineering and geological expertise, thereby allowing both forms of knowledge to contribute simultaneously to operational success. Organizational knowledge and speed will be two of the primary elements of an oil & gas investments success.