OCI Operations Management, Part V
Accounting Voucher
Among the two pure accounting modules of the Preliminary Specification, the Accounting Voucher introduces several new dynamics to the petroleum industry. Introducing the Accounting Voucher as an encapsulated document that holds the information that supports transactional information captured, approved and recorded in the accounting system of the producer or Joint Operating Committee. To deal with resource constraints in the earth science & engineering disciplines People, Ideas & Objects have used a variety of methods to deal with the issue. These are listed in the Organizational Construct section of our Wiki. The predominant Organizational Construct affecting this change in the Accounting Voucher is specialization and the division of labor. Specialization and division of labor are the only proven methods to increase organizational productivity. Therefore each producer will need to contribute their highly specialized technical resources to the Joint Operating Committee to provide for the full set of necessary resources. These may be augmented through outside consultants who specialize in the lower level skills of these disciplines. Providing producers with the opportunity to specialize in their distinct competitive advantage.
Therefore what People, Ideas & Objects have done in the Accounting Voucher is provide a “role” in Oracle Cloud ERP which provides for the authorization necessary to incur costs on behalf of the producer or Joint Operating Committee. And therefore within a Joint Operating Committee there may be multiple technical resources that have authorized expenditure authority on their behalf. As a result, an Accounting Voucher in this instance is a Joint Operating Committee-based voucher with overall budgetary authorization granted through the AFE process. However multiple firms may have this secondary or tertiary authorization, within the scope of the AFE to approve specific expenditures to be purchased and payments authorized. That Accounting Voucher is therefore part of each accounting system of the Joint Operating Committee working interest owners.
The Work Order, mentioned elsewhere, is an Accounting Voucher that has been modified and enhanced to conduct processes generically. This fits the description of an Accounting Voucher's use as a Template. Essentially, it inherits Accounting Voucher capabilities as it incurs costs and allocates them in either of its two approaches. Our developers will, at our user communities' direction, build the necessary infrastructure to meet the needs. This will instill the Work Order as a permanent industry-wide Accounting Voucher Template to manage their costs.
Data, Information and Performance
We can step back for a moment and reflect on how much time and frustration are consumed by collecting data, moving it from one location to another, interpreting, and recalculating it. What can we do to stop this financial drain that no one can support the continuation of? Could we isolate the actual, factual information necessary? We could store that data in one location of the producer and have the system interpret it in the manner necessary for each of its users. Relational Database theory is designed for this purpose. Does the potential explosion of data as a result of upcoming technologies demand we look at these issues and address them? The development of the Preliminary Specification, our user community and the reorganization of administrative and accounting resources into their service provider organizations brings about this opportunity to set the foundation for realizing a more constructive basis for understanding the producer firm. And possibly the most valuable aspect of this information change for producers would be the quality of the decisions being made. These decisions are more precise, reliable and factual.
There is another critical aspect to the reorganization of data and information. This is the producer firm's performance. How does a producer accelerate their throughput performance, trajectory and velocity? As the foundation of the industry, would clean data and information be standardized and objective, if everyone knew and understood its origin and purpose?
Or is “muddle through,” and “do nothing,” appropriate for the next generation of oil & gas officers and directors? They have their model and we should understand it now. We’ve seen them embrace Artificial Intelligence, digital twins and I can guarantee the next three buzz words coming out of the Information Technology industry will be immediately heralded as “the savior of the industry that’s already providing huge gains in performance.” Yes, it is that bad. This is addressed in the Preliminary Specification.
Material Balance Report
Another implementation of the Accounting Voucher is the Material Balance Report. This is a comprehensive approach to production reporting and balancing through to its ultimate disposition. The Material Balance Report is an Accounting Voucher Template augmented to deal with Joint Operating Committee unique needs. And then saved as its own Accounting Voucher Template, to be reused each month. As changes occur and additional production, facilities or dispositions are added to the specific Accounting Voucher its Template is updated to accommodate those changes for that and subsequent months.
The key overall objective of the Material Balance Report is to reconcile oil & gas reporting volumes on the continent in an unimpeachable form. It is at that point that we have the basis to automate subsequent processes throughout their production months lifecycle. Whether that is production, accounting, administration, marketing, regulatory reporting or royalties. These are all dependent on the Material Balance Report data and information.
Undertaking this from the global perspective of an industry initiative is possible, valuable and necessary. The costs are too high for one firm and the net benefit is not continental reconciliation as the basis of automation. This may be perceived as too ambitious. However it can be done and it is far easier than it sounds. In 1994 the Alberta government introduced their Royalty Simplification system that reconciled the entire province's monthly volumetric natural gas and liquids production on this basis. To the satisfaction of where the government was confident enough to assess royalty shortfalls based on volumetric reporting anomalies. What could be done three decades later is unknown, however improvement is assumed. To not undertake this will leave the industry at the mercy of manual processes that consume human resources in redundant processes that should be deemed unnecessary. These people are needed to make the appropriate decisions as to where and what needs to be done to profit.
Production
There is an abundance of opportunities for combining, comparing and reconciling the three sources of data and information that producers and Joint Operating Committees depend upon. Financial, technical and operational sources that are unimpeachable in quality are lofty objectives, however necessary to base future decisions. To be consumed with data in the future may be the operative word for unprepared producers. If we do not spend the time to organize and ensure that the data and information we are using and preparing is of this high quality, it's a simple manner that’s well known by most of “garbage in, garbage out.” Decisions need to be made at a scale that is logarithmic to what’s done today. These are the areas people will spend their time. If we are in an endless paper chase looking for the source of the actual data, that will be the eventual outcome of the current officers and directors' obstinance. These may be the two possible scenarios in the future of oil & gas. An endless paper chase, or leaving processing and storage to computers. We'll make decisions based on the understanding that everyone in the industry participated in building the Preliminary Specification. We'll also understand the data sources and disposition. Until this is completed there is no use in discussing Machine Learning or Artificial Intelligence. They depend on the data and information they have access to and as noted garbage in, garbage out.
Production data is the most interesting challenge and we have set out to engineer the appropriate solution in the form of the Material Balance Report of the Preliminary Specification. For the upstream oil & gas business, the Joint Operating Committee can balance volumetric activity, gathering, processing facilities, pipeline, tank car or truck deliveries, etc on the basis of our Material Balance Report. It is well beyond the scope of what one producer can undertake as the cost would be horrendous and the value would be quite limited. On an industrial scale however it makes sense and is the foundation of critical value generation. This is a result of the specialization and division of labor between people and computers. Instead of feeding differing systems with the same data and occupying our time reconciling these we can engineer the appropriate solution and establish the appropriate roles for people to pursue. Roles such as enabling automation, innovation, leadership, integration, negotiating, financing, observing, reasoning, judgment, thinking, planning, ideas, researching, collaborating, creativity, issue identification and resolution to name just a few.
Field Data Capture
Could this be the area of focus in terms of the implementation of the Internet of Things and the rebuilding of oil & gas through implementation of the Preliminary Specification? SCADA systems have worked well for large, integrated producers and independents. In my opinion, their costs are excessive and the technology is nearing its end of life. Field Data Capture is critical to capturing production data. It is the foundation of securing production data in an unimpeachable form. However, how do they survive in a world of Swarm networks and the Internet of Things?
It will be a matter of perception whether I’ve opened Pandora’s box or the world of opportunity. The reality is with much of the acceptance of the Preliminary Specification. We stand at a crossroads where bureaucracy rules and their domain crumbles. They’ll continue to fight for the last few pennies of value they can extract at whatever cost to others. However, we have to move forward. It is this vision, as incomplete as stated here, and more broadly articulated in the Preliminary Specification itself that needs to be undertaken.
Resource Management
In the Operations Management module, People, Ideas & Objects proposes that producers' engineering and geological resources be deployed toward their strategic and tactical goals. Whether it be in any one of the three main subsections of this module, Producer / Joint Operating Committee Operations, Performance Management or Resource Management, how and where these people are deployed and their activities can be managed, monitored and controlled through this module. This is the purpose of the Operations Management module of the Preliminary Specification. We are not replacing what exists in the marketplace, we are rebuilding the oil & gas industry for profitability and performance. Therefore what is done today should be seen as redundant. It has failed and we are rebuilding the industry in this vision.
The Operations Management module is a senior management console enabling producers and Joint Operating Committees to manage their operations. Our system will collect, store, and make available financial, operational, and technical data and information of the producer and its Joint Operating Committees. Although much is discussed in the marketplace about data and information and their respective values. Not much is discussed about the disparity of sources within these organizations, the quality of the data or how it’s used. It's also not discussed if it's managed appropriately. The Preliminary Specification, overall, should be seen as an opportunity to begin the process of objectively standardizing, organizing and implementing the data and information of these organizations. Only then could value be discerned from these sources. After all, who knows? Officers and directors may have made excellent decisions, but they used flawed data.
The tools People, Ideas & Objects, our user community and service provider organizations have included and developed in the Operations Management module of the Preliminary Specification. These tools include Work Orders, AFE, Job Orders and others. Become available to invoke authority and fulfill management's responsibilities. These form the basis of the Operations Management sub-modules. To consolidate the interface of information and tools necessary to effectively operate their domain of responsibility. This is to document these and ensure compliance and reporting to regulatory authorities is handled.
It’s pertinent to reiterate two distinct types of information: the producer's domain and the Joint Operating Committee. As we’ve noted elsewhere in the Preliminary Specification, producer data and information is predominately proprietary and confidential to everyone inside of the producer firm. It is tightly controlled within the firm. The Joint Operating Committee contains information that is predominantly public and any proprietary information is shared between the producer participants of that property. The use of Oracle Cloud ERP provides assurance that the architecture of how all this information and data is stored and shared meets these requirements. It also meets North American regulatory requirements. Security levels are among the highest in terms of Oracle’s capabilities and capacities for its Oracle Autonomous Database. Their Java security model establishes it as the most secure development environment since nothing can be run outside the Java Virtual Machine. Part of our user community tasks is to define a hierarchy of roles and responsibilities that define access privileges to data. Producers can assign the appropriate roles to appropriately authorized individuals to read / write those data elements. Compared to other vendors these security features may seem redundant and more trouble than they’re worth, however they provide comprehensive coverage. Oracle’s commitment to security continues as their firm uses Oracle products internally in a practice known as “eating their own dog food.” Please review the Security & Access Control module of the Preliminary Specification and the unique attributes we introduce and resolve there.