How Will People, Ideas & Objects Achieve Success, Part IV

Environmental scientists have yet to determine the cause of the approximate 1.5 million Texans without power at 3:00 on Monday morning. Their commitment to return the planet to its pristine condition is unshaken even at the long term risk of people starving and freezing to death. It’s science! And yes they are blind to it. In related news Vladimir Putin has choked off gas deliverability into Europe as they experience similar “winter weather.” Sending natural gas prices in Europe to >$20.00. For those bureaucrats who may still be listening this may be called collusion. Artificially and unjustifiably holding back deliverability will never be accepted, that is collusion and not the answer. Managing inventories of products based on profitability as provided by People, Ideas & Objects Preliminary Specifications price maker strategy, our user community and service providers is just good business. The fact that our good friends the bureaucrats are unable to discern the difference between the two is only evidence of their corruption, in my opinion. At least their prayers for a cold winter have been heard.

The discussion to this point has focused on the areas that we will have somewhat under our control. The success of this initiative, once our budget has been secured will be a difficult task and we are not belittling the scale of difficulty that needs to be undertaken by our user community and service providers. We however do not in any way question their motivation, skill or desire to succeed in doing so. What appears to motivate people the most is taking the industry away from the chronic boom / bust cycle that is assumed to be a “necessary” part of the industry and why they have to sacrifice so much to work in the industry. Not everyone maintains a tolerance for risk throughout their career and over time they learn that the bad times are what define your career and management philosophy. “Muddle through” begins to make sense and becomes accepted for survival. Unnecessary but you need to survive. How is a decades long, steep, downward trajectory ever acceptable? The vision of the Preliminary Specification and the opportunities for the user community and service providers allow people to see a different vision for the industry. One where “muddle through” is not necessary and a dynamic, innovative, accountable and profitable industry needs to be rebuilt from what exists today. The need to do so is evident due to the level of damage that has been experienced and the lack of any action bureaucrats have conducted over the past dozen years of accelerating decline. This new industry vision sees people being the critical resource in making things happen in order to ensure that real profitability is achieved everywhere and always, and it is they who’ll make the difference. A complete inverse of the industry's culture as it exists today. One in which people will be able to seek out a worthwhile career, family and mortgage without the inherent risk of bad management subjecting them to the chronic waste of “muddle through.”

My concern here falls in the area regarding the producer firms. Their behavior and participation in the development of the Preliminary Specification must change as much as the people who are moving to the user community, and those who will eventually move to their service provider organizations. We know as a fact that organizations do not change, people do. Therefore the people mentioned in the first paragraph will be successful and the unsuccessful producer organizations will? More than likely continue on with the same culture. Although we should be relying on disintermediation, creative destruction, serendipity, spontaneous order and other economic principles that have renewed and refreshed the North American economy when the old just isn’t doing it anymore. Our two key difficulties in seeing any of these take effect are the capital intensive nature of the oil and gas industry, and the bankruptcy process being adopted as key to the foundation of the “muddle through” business model of the North American producers. These two attributes of the bureaucrats' toolkit have enabled them to continue through the past decade with business as usual and have never forced a day of reckoning. The exit of the investment community is well past five years and there have been no remedial actions contemplated or conducted to deal with the producers issues. What issues, bureaucrats would ask? This has become an untenable situation for everyone in the oil and gas industry. However it is much worse than that. Oil and gas is a primary industry that depends on the secondary and tertiary industries who in turn are solely dependent upon it. It is those primary industry revenues that the bureaucrats have diverted, the cash flow from the previous high levels of capital investment, into their own pockets. Destroying everything else associated with oil and gas. As long as there will be enough cash to fund the personal desires of the C suite and board needs, that’s all that matters. The culture of the industry as a result of this “muddle through” is to do nothing. 

I could have just quoted the definition of “bureaucracy” and provided just as much information. My concern is this culture that has been evident to me since the mid 1980’s. That was when the capitalization of high levels of overhead had become accepted as the status quo. This was therefore applied to the horrendously high interest payments due to the high interest rates that were present in the marketplace as at that time. I began this adventure in 1991 due to the inappropriate culture of doing nothing and the inability of producers to shut-in production to deal with the overproduction in the market. Overproduction that we’ve documented began at least as early as July 1986. How does one deal with this culture? Moving the administrative and accounting people into their own service providers will be an effective means of change. However the culture in the organizations of the producers is otherwise fixed and I am unaware how that changes without other wholesale changes in the makeup of the industry. 

I’ve proposed the reason the way things are the way they are is also a result of the adoption of computers in the 1960s. When producers began acquiring them the question was asked what can be done. Accounting was one of the first constructive attributes, tax, compliance and process management came soon after. Eventually the corporate perspective became filing the right form at the right time to the right regulator on the right colored paper and the Joint Operating Committee which is the business of the business faded into the background. The Joint Operating Committee provides the legal, financial, operational decision making, cultural, communication, innovation and strategic frameworks of the industry. The Preliminary Specification moves the compliance and governance frameworks of the hierarchy to be in alignment with the seven frameworks of the Joint Operating Committee which provides the producer firm, or however we want to describe the working interest owners, into an alignment of all of its frameworks. Generating a speed, innovativeness and profitability that we seek in the industry.

The answer to the question of how we overcome the culture may come about as a result of the Preliminary Specifications change from the corporate focus, as I call it, to the direct support and definition of the Joint Operating Committee. What I’m getting at here is that we can now look in a comprehensive way at the oil and gas industry differently. That it now consists of a decentralized pool of working interest owners involved in the direct ownership of their interest in the Joint Operating Committee. Organized, managed and provided through their use of the Preliminary Specification. Where the approach within the industry is that a property is a property, is a property. Where the accounting and administration are handled in a standard, objective manner whose costs are included in the Joint Operating Committee that is either always profitable, or shut-in creating a null operation. Where their earth science and engineering capabilities, if they desire to build that competitive advantage, are pooled with the other Joint Operating Committees working interest owners to manage the properties technical production and future development. Where the Work Order system of the Preliminary Specification ensures that the costs of these earth science and engineering efforts are charged directly to the Joint Operating Committees, and therefore reduce their corporate overhead burden, or should be seen as a second source of revenue for the producer who provides these services to their working interest partners or to other Joint Operating Committees on a consulting basis. 

What People, Ideas & Objects have objectively done is written a letter to the producer bureaucrats that would have gone as follows. “Dear Mr. Bureaucrat, you are disintermediated and redundant.” And that is rightly how they’ve interpreted the 200,000 words of the Preliminary Specification. The reason that I’ve effectively sent that letter is they’re unable and incapable of dealing with the speed of business today. They are unable in a comprehensive fashion to deal with the issues they’ve created which is causing the terminal demise of their organization and the industry itself. Solving these issues is why the Preliminary Specification has earned the push back that we’ve experienced. 

Parsing the producer down to its properties is the natural process of destruction of the culturally constrained, bureaucratic producer. Decentralization of business is an element of disintermediation. Consolidation is an element of the bureaucrats' survival. With the Preliminary Specification we have decentralized the industry down to the Joint Operating Committee of which there certainly are many of. Many contain only one well. Some would say correctly that we’ve decentralized the industry down to the individual. Which I think is valid and concur. However bureaucrats argue that the level of sophistication and organization necessary to do what is suggested in the Preliminary Specification is beyond what can be achieved. Which in the context of a bureaucracy is true, however for software it’ll be its purpose. 

To consider there is nothing of value left to reclaim in the producer firms is not what People, Ideas & Objects are asserting. What we are saying is that we can rebuild it from here without the bureaucratic culture that exists today. These organizations are cleared of their value, incapable of recovery for the reasons I’ll point out next in this post, a drag on society and through the process of repeated bankruptcy, only continue to serve the bureaucrats who are directly responsible for the destruction. Facing a steep wall of escalating rebuilding, refurbishing and reclamation costs without a plan or understanding of the issues. We don’t need and we certainly do not want to constrain ourselves with the culture, bureaucracy or organizational constraints that exist today in the process of rebuilding the industry. There is a better way which fits appropriately within the successful manner we propose and are detailing here. Oil prices are rallying as a result of the vaccines and the efforts of OPEC+. I’d caution bureaucrats to not get too excited as there are 7 mm boe / day in surplus capacity that exists within the domain of OPEC+. They had actively declared a price war on North American producers at this time last year. Any over zealous drilling response by bureaucrats may provoke a similar declaration.

Looking critically at the financial statements of any producer we see a number of attributes that are systemic throughout the industry. The systemic nature of these are a result of the cultural influences that began in the late 1970s and took hold in the 1980s. We have bloated balance sheets of property, plant and equipment that achieved their lofty heights as a result of the desire to “build balance sheets” and “you have to put cash in the ground.” There was also an assumption that financial statements emulated the value of the firm. Therefore bloating began and has never diminished. These assets are contrasted to the lack of anything else on the asset side of the balance sheet. Working capital if it exists is minimal and on a downward trend that began when the investors and now bankers began withholding their support. The liability side of the balance sheet are riddled with two very negative attributes. The massive debts that are a result of excessive spending on capital assets, and the very low interest rate environment that has existed for the better part of the last two decades. People, Ideas & Objects have repeatedly suggested that property, plant and equipment should be seen predominantly as the unrecognized capital costs of past production. And therefore 65% of property, plant and equipment should be depleted in the current year to establish a more accurate pro-forma understanding of the leverage of these producers. The banks hold the title to all the properties of producers and have expressed shock and surprise at the methods of management they’ve been displaying recently. I would suggest that an end to the bankruptcy process begins with the banks just seizing the properties instead of continuing the merry go round of biennial bankruptcy proceedings. Once seized they could then sell the properties to new owners operating under the Preliminary Specification, user community and service providers. The other attribute on the right side of the balance sheet of course is the many billions of shares that have been issued across the industry. Producer bureaucrats have shown no real level of concern or accountability to those shareholders in the past five years, as none of the remedial actions that are necessary at times like this have been taken. Who will be the first to buy in to the next round of funding and provide a year's worth of excess drilling that will collapse the commodity price for .001% of the company? The point is what is there for anyone left in these companies. The value has been exhausted and the only thing left is those that have rightful claims that will stand miles in front of you in the bankruptcy process. Bankruptcy being a defacto part of the bureaucrats business model. But let's not discuss trajectory and momentum or the need to reverse these. I’m an ambitious man however I don’t find anyone encouraged by this vision other than bureaucrats who know they can reap their personal rewards.

Speaking of rightful claims. We’ve documented how the bureaucrats will be busy for the next number of years, or will it be decades, defending themselves from those bankers and shareholders litigation regarding their lack of fiduciary duty. And lets not forget that not all litigation is about money. There will be those that are entitled to their litigation for the sole purpose of ensuring that the bureaucrats finally earn some skin in the game. No one ever sues over an unsuccessful venture that's true. However, when the producer firms have upped their officers and directors liability insurance as they did last summer, less than a month after I identified their risks, people are now “finding gold in them thar hills.” That’s on top of the personal financial empires these officers and directors pledged to those they’ve betrayed. These have sometimes been known as Class Action lawsuits. In addition, subsequent to that event in the summer, I was able to document that the overproduction of oil was occurring as early as July 1986. That the Preliminary Specification that deals specifically with that issue was published in December 2013. And that absolutely no action has been taken while the bureaucrats cleaned out the safes and set the place on fire. Sounds to me like the bureaucrats feelings of guilt and culpability are rightly earned.

Changing the existing culture and performance of the industry is difficult for me to see. Then I’m biased. Sales of properties out of the banks and existing producers could be the means in which a new industry based on the Preliminary Specification comes about. Our budget for the development of the Preliminary Specification may seem like an issue in this scenario. However, I believe that the cozy retirement getaway that beckons the bureaucrats won’t come about if they don’t do their fiduciary duty. Which if they funded the budget of the Preliminary Specification they would mitigate the issue of overproduction, and implement the solution to what they’ve created and are responsible for. Therefore they can fund the budget and live happily ever after or risk their last few decades in hell. And as I’ve stated before, the “issue mitigated, nothing litigated” is catching on more and more these days.

The Preliminary Specification, our user community and service providers provide for a dynamic, innovative, accountable and profitable oil and gas industry with the most profitable means of oil and gas operations, everywhere and always. Setting the foundation for profitable North American energy independence. People, Ideas & Objects have published a white paper “Profitable, North American Energy Independence -- Through the Commercialization of Shale.” that captures the vision of the Preliminary Specification and our actions. Users are welcome to join me here. Together we can begin to meet the future demands for energy. Anyone can contact me at 713-965-6720 in Houston or 587-735-2302 in Calgary, or email me here.  

How Will People, Ideas & Objects Achieve Success, Part I

 A quick comment before we begin our post today. We see in the increasing commodity prices of this past week the commensurate increase in the value of producers shares. This is also the bureaucrats “muddle through” strategies' big payoff. Actually their only payoff. Their dividend is the reduction in any pressure to act to fix the underlying overproduction or other difficulties that should be addressed in the business. The only concern at this point, as far as the bureaucrats are concerned, is how to reclaim some of the lost executive compensation of this past decade. The traditional response has also been to chase more production by drilling as many new wells as they could. That may not be the case this time. The service industry has been degraded significantly in terms of its capacity and producers, based on their fourth quarter 2020 reports, have diminishing cash and much greater demands for that cash if and when it does show up. This boom / bust cycle has been playing out consistently over the past four decades which the bureaucrats have been able to generate their great personal compensation from. For most everyone else it became boring in the early 1990s. Therefore, strike up the band, it's time for the bureaucrats to chase that cash one more time, at least for the rest of this month. 

Alternatively how everyone can achieve success throughout the industry should be the number one question going through people’s minds as they contemplate the difficulties in oil and gas today, and the contrast People, Ideas & Objects, our user community and their service providers present with the Preliminary Specification. What we’re undertaking in the development of this industry wide ERP software as we’ve defined it to date. With the establishment of the user community and their service provider organizations is unique and hasn’t been done in any other industry anywhere before. Building a permanent ERP focused software development and user community based capability and capacity. My assessment of the Information Technologies we’ll be using is that their level of maturation is more than adequate to meet the demands of our architecture and the difficulties and complexities we’re throwing at it. Our impediment to this point has been bureaucratic resistance to change. Disintermediating oil and gas in the same style that’s been experienced in many other industries over the past few decades and what will be occurring eventually to all industries. Bureaucrats have effectively resisted the inevitable elimination of these new forms of organization. To the point where today they’ve fundamentally destroyed the industry in the process of defending their turf. 

A couple of catch phrases in there, added to the mystique and magic of IT, wrapped in an air of certainty and filled with the hope that only vaporware provides. This should stand as testament to the efforts of oil and gas bureaucrats in denying any challenge to their methods of operation. You only get what you pay for and they never supported what the industry needed, it conflicted with their personal compensation. If they looked critically in the mirror the only reasonable question they could ask themselves would be “how is it that we’re still alive.” I can honestly say that People, Ideas & Objects are ascendant to contrast their steep downward trajectory. In terms of options and opportunities to deal with their future, I am biased, and unaware of anything outside of our vaporware. That is I know that our vaporware is the only vaporware that exists. My persistence over these past thirty years is due to what has taken these issues to finally manifest themselves into the wholesale melting down of all aspects of the oil and gas industry. Specious accounting has hidden the real damage for many decades which can only raise serious questions as to the quality of that accounting. Where were the audit firms? Now that these issues are here bureaucrats have three options. Two of them are incapable of solving the issue. Those being bankruptcy and the self declared movement towards clean energy. The third is they take the responsible choice of funding the Preliminary Specification in order to mitigate their responsibility in the destruction of the industry, and provide the solution to ensure that they can claim “issue mitigated, nothing litigated.” It’s the easy way out and by far the most effective way to deal with their problems. When I say their problems I mean their personal issues that are now center stage in terms of what concerns them. 

Our Budget

Let’s explore that third alternative for the bureaucrats. Although they may blame the most viable scapegoat that comes to mind that morning. The reason for the difficulties that oil and gas producers and the industry face today is due to the C suite and board of directors primarily focusing on innovative and creative solutions of how to enhance their personal executive compensation. As far as they were concerned that is what they were there for. Nonetheless their personal fortunes now stand in contrast to the value remaining in the industry and its inability to generate any value without direct outside investment from investors or bankers. Money only ever went in as they say and never came out. Or as the bureaucrats would say “you have to put cash in the ground!” The issue’s cause is a result of a lack of production discipline and chronic overproduction. We can trace the origins of this issue back to at least July 1986 and it has been ever present in oil since that time, and in natural gas since late 2009. Shale makes overproduction a permanent and tragic consequence of the bureaucrats “muddle along” strategy and business model. This is the point in which the directors and officers should have begun seeking a solution to the overproduction issue, in late 1986. In December 2013 publication of the Preliminary Specification occured. Our product deals specifically with the overproduction issue by applying common business principles. It was at this point that the producer bureaucrats redoubled our beatings and increased their overall efforts to silence us. We therefore have the established historical points where the issue is well defined, and the only viable solution that exists for the overproduction issue has been available. Yet nothing was done by said bureaucrats but to raise superfluous claims, outright lies, blaming of others and viable scapegoats. They were too busy “putting cash in the ground” and “building balance sheets” to concern themselves with the business of the business. Besides investors and bankers were buying the producers specious financial statements the producers were issuing. “See the accounting firm signed it too,” the bureaucrat states. 

Therefore the scene was set for today’s decline in the North American oil and gas industry. The personal fortunes of the officers and directors were untouched as they knew not to eat where they were working. I pointed out to them last summer that their officers and directors liability insurance was an issue at which point they promptly increased their coverage at that time by 75%. How much has their coverage gone up since then? And who says these people can’t act quickly? When I pointed out their liability and obligations the first thing they did was increase their coverage. Which I thought was an innovative idea. I then asked if I moved everything I owned into my house and set it on fire, would it provide me with a liquidity that I could appreciate? I still haven’t received an answer from them on that last question. We have however received a number of fourth quarter 2020 reports and they certainly support that cash continues to be put in the ground, and be firmly in place there. The SEC has allegedly launched an investigation into Exxon for the valuation of their assets in property, plant and equipment. This investigation may also extend to shale producers in general. An issue that we feel is directly attributable to the overproduction issue. When you overreport your assets, as a consequence you overreport your profits, which causes investors to pile in to chase the high profits which causes overinvestment leading to what has turned out to be chronic overproduction in North American oil and gas. What we should have all now learned from that is the middle man, our very good friends the bureaucrats, were personally benefiting financially throughout each one of those stages of creating the overproduction. Therefore why would they recognize the issue in 1986 or the solution in 2013?

Bureaucrats are supposed to be the responsible ones, they are also the culprits, they were the ones that were authorized to ensure these types of things didn’t happen, and if they did correct them. And most importantly of all, they have signed their John Hancock in order to commit themselves as personally responsible if anything should go wrong during their watch. In the process they have subjected their personal fortunes as a remedy to resolve any losses for those that they’ve betrayed by any of these (in)actions that caused damages to their stakeholders. Therefore let's discuss the third option that they have outside of bankruptcy and bailing on oil and gas for clean energy.

In order to prove they undertook their fiduciary duties towards their stakeholders. Officers and directors will need to show what it is and how it is they sought to deal with the decline in their organization. I challenge anyone to think of any activity that has been taken by any of these producers bureaucrats? We began a decade ago with the remedial action in the natural gas side of the business by “praying for a cold winter,” stating “we’re profitable,” and suggesting mythical theories of “market rebalancing,” how their accounting was irrelevant “now all of these losses are just accounting! And it deals with the sunk costs of the past!,” and a recent favorite “we can’t shut in production.” These top a very long list of excuses that were used to provide time in which bureaucrats didn’t have to do anything. Blaming everyone from OPEC+, to their own employees, the “service industry is lazy and greedy,” to the most recent, virus induced, “the government has to save us with direct support or tariffs'' or… That is their pathetic and culpable record of their fiduciary duty these past four decades. And now in order to avoid losing their personal fortunes in the process of chronic personal litigation from the producers stakeholders. Stakeholders that have claims that survive the bankruptcy process. The bankruptcy process that may deem the officers redundant just as the directors are on the street immediately upon the declaration of bankruptcy. Where they may have to fight stakeholders with their own resources if… The bankruptcy judge deems the officers and directors liability insurance coverage to be an asset of the corporation and therefore seize it. Where the officers and directors will be on the outside looking in with nothing but their personal asset exposure to protect them. Avoidance of risk should maybe be seen as the first rule to its exposure.

I thought this was about funding People, Ideas & Objects budget, and more importantly how we’re all going to achieve success as a result of the implementation of the Preliminary Specification? And you’d be correct which is why this has turned into a comprehensive series. The budget is the first aspect of our success. As ridiculous as our task is, the cost is among the most significant ERP implementations ever undertaken. Our costs stand at $3.7 billion U.S. dollars. People, Ideas & Objects are a business and businesses are profitable. We are in the Intellectual Property, research and user community business as our key competitive advantages and therefore these have costs that are associated with these attributes. As a result our entire budget comes in for the North American based oil and gas industry at $12 billion U.S. dollars. This is assessed on the basis of North American production per barrel of oil equivalent for the year 2019. This assessment stands at the one time cost of $315 / barrel. Which the bureaucrats might see as the deal of the century due to the fact that they’ve destroyed trillions of dollars in the process of raiding the industry. Personal guilt can be a great motivator. People, Ideas & Objects and I myself justify this budget on the basis of our value proposition that we present to the industry. It is determined to be $25.7 to $45.7 trillion dollars over the next 25 years as a result of making the North American sector profitable, in the real sense of profitability, everywhere and always. Bureaucrats have always scoffed at our budget as comical. I would ask what their value proposition has been?

This budget has to be secured in whole prior to any work being conducted. People will not commit to a project that will be subject to the financing whims of the bureaucrats mosquito like attention spans. Cancellation would terminate the project and nothing would ever be resurrected in its place. It would be an effective method for the bureaucracy to permanently continue. In addition those that have committed to the project would be left unemployed and most importantly tagged with a scarlet letter from the bureaucrats in terms of their career contributions in the industry. All for working to make things better. We need to begin the task of building and implementing the Preliminary Specification and finish it in uninterrupted fashion to ensure that those that participate are not subject to the consequences of their participation being an issue should bureaucrats be given any means in which to reassert control. We will not be “blind sleepwalking agents of whomever will feed us.” People, Ideas & Objects are offering an out for the bureaucrats to mitigate the personal financial risks they’ve created for themselves. Risks that have the potential to establish a miserable life for them that consists of court and legal issues. One of defending the ill gotten gains they pride themselves on today. We are offering them the opportunity to set in place the solution to their lack of fiduciary duty, manage the business in the interim while we build the alternative and then exit into their previously planned, peaceful and prosperous retirement. The best deal they’ve ever been offered. 

Since I’m in such an inquisitive mood today I thought I’d ask a few more somewhat related questions. Is it irresponsible for producers to assume that they can walk away from the oil and gas industry, allowing their production volumes to atrophy and leave the market without any production, chasing dreams of clean energy? This is in fact what they’re doing with their move to clean energy, abandoning the oil and gas industry because it’s in such disarray and so damaged by their bureaucratic destruction. Why don’t they take People, Ideas & Objects offer and leave oil and gas in the hands of new leadership? Are using the revenues from oil and gas to fuel dreams of clean energy, a radical change done in the classic stampede style mindlessness that has become the expectation in oil and gas, and without authorization from shareholders, a new low for these bureaucrats? Understanding all that is discussed on this blog, bureaucrats also need to ask themselves the following questions. Hasn’t enough damage been caused, if not how much more is in the plans? If these points identifying their personal risks don’t motivate them to act, what will? Knowing the general direction and trajectory of the industry. How many more careers need to be destroyed, money lost and how much longer will it take for bureaucrats to achieve these extra destructive attributes they need before they will be motivated to act? Asking for a friend.

The Preliminary Specification, our user community and service providers provide for a dynamic, innovative, accountable and profitable oil and gas industry with the most profitable means of oil and gas operations, everywhere and always. Setting the foundation for profitable North American energy independence. People, Ideas & Objects have published a white paper “Profitable, North American Energy Independence -- Through the Commercialization of Shale.” that captures the vision of the Preliminary Specification and our actions. Users are welcome to join me here. Together we can begin to meet the future demands for energy. Anyone can contact me at 713-965-6720 in Houston or 587-735-2302 in Calgary, or email me here.

Some Tough Love, From a Friend!

 Two quick points before we get into our actual post today. The first is I’ve made a mistake. I misstated that the SEC was allegedly investigating Exxon for their asset valuation. I should have stated that the SEC was investigating Exxon for their alleged asset valuation misleading investors. Clarified now. The second is in reference to any investors that may be looking for witnesses to testify against the officers and directors of the producer firms they lost their money in. Or anyone else that’s incurred a loss for that matter. When these litigants need witnesses for their litigation against the producer bureaucrats. A lucrative resource for their cause might be any of the accounting people that would have worked in oil and gas over the past number of decades. They could testify that bureaucrats' attitude toward accounting has been to pay the bills. At any point in time when the needs of the business were asserted it was literally “shut up and pay the bills.” There was never any opportunity to say otherwise when they would assert, as we noted in our White Paper “Profitable North American Energy Independence -- Through the Commercialization of Shale.” On page 10 “The release of reserves value through further drilling is the business and the only business as far as the culture of the industry is concerned. The nuance of recording and reporting the accurate timing and recognition of capital costs of exploration and production are not a topic of discussion when “everyone” is following the SEC’s regulated requirements and are “building their balance sheets” faster than “we” are. What we do know is overreported profits begets overinvestment, and overinvestment begets overproduction. Especially when no production discipline exists.” And on page 26 how producers “were able to miraculously and retroactively reduce their production costs by reinventing the ‘historical’ aspect of historical accounting.” 

Now onto the post.

The coronavirus may be less of an issue at some point in 2021 and as a result less impactful as a viable scapegoat to our good friends the oil and gas bureaucrats. OPEC+ will feel less obligated to deal with the demand issues and resume their focus on earning back their market share. The strength of the North American producers has been well documented through our ongoing series of blog posts “These Are Not the Earnings We’re Looking For.” The six other crises that we recently listed which producers are facing are imminent and well in play. These collectively form an existential crisis to the North American energy industry. From the producer bureaucrats we hear that all is well as far as the great science experiment is concerned. The business of the business is in shambles but that is what they need to say in order to cover off and continue the scam that they’ve been perpetuating. 

The value represented in a barrel of oil is not being appreciated or considered by its consumers. In order to avoid the development of alternative sources of energy, producers have discounted the price of oil by not recognizing its total capital costs of exploration and production “to ensure that alternatives are not developed.” This capital cost discount had been financed by the producers' investors until they became wise to the bureaucrats' methods, and were at the expense of the financial health and sustainability of all the North American industries involved in its supply. Future generations will look to the fact that decades went by where oil and gas was sold substantially below the costs of exploration and production. In fact, little more than the operating costs were being captured appropriately. Unprofitability has been chronic and is now clearly represented in the financial statements of the current producers in their disproportionate and obscene bloating of their balance sheets. All oil and gas in North America should always be produced profitably to ensure that it is not wasted and a financially healthy industry is passed onto future generations. Neither of those two responsible actions have been undertaken by these bureaucrats. Consumers gain the benefit of 23,200 man hours of mechanical leverage from each barrel of oil. Which costs them substantially less than the equivalent cost of bottled water. Where is the logic and where are our priorities? It will be the most prosperous and powerful economy that consumes the most energy from all of its sources. Who will be the first to eliminate the use of fossil fuels in their life by moving to the mountains to replicate the caveman era? As that is what we’ll be faced with should the capacity and capabilities of the industry and service industry continue to erode and take on a steeper trajectory and greater momentum. These graphs from the Wall Street Journal should clarify the efficiency and effectiveness of clean energy. It appears to me that the lack of recognition of the cost of capital in the production of energy may not be just an oil and gas bureaucrats issue. 

These graphs reflect the effectiveness of energy investment in alternatives is unquestionably a farce. Making the argument that bureaucrats have been making that they must ensure that alternative energy sources do not become competitive appears to me to be self-serving and only a veiled justification for their poor management. Or as I prefer to call it, one more in a long list of viable scapegoats. It also brings into question the motivation and cause of the producers, when People, Ideas & Objects raised the point of their culpability, liability and guilt last summer. How they ignored the issue of overproduction since at least July 1986 and the solution to that in the form of the Preliminary Specification since December 2013. In which we saw their only actions to our claims were to first increase their insurance coverage of officers and directors liability and then to reconfigure their “strategies” to be “clean energy” and “zero emissions.” I would question if clean energy’s substantial demand for capital is not just a new method to fleece investors for additional investment dollars? Either way if they’ve chosen to pursue clean energy they should not be using oil and gas revenues to finance these changes? Please recall too that the “Noncarbon” sources indicated in the graph above include hydro and nuclear power. On the oil and gas side of the equation, it would only be fair and reasonable for me to point out that the North American producers have been active in identifying new drilling sites.

Back to the issue at hand, which is the comprehensive financial collapse and loss of control of any aspect of the industry in North America. Bureaucrats' only concern is what I’ve learned to appeal to, their personal financial compensation and risk, as these are the only concerns that motivate them into action. For the past four decades this motivation has been nothing other than the creative and innovative ways in which they’ve been able to feather their nests. The business of the business could only atrophy to such an extent when no one cared or was distracted while watching other things. This has been at great cost to the industry as they’ve done so at the expense of any productive action and some vigorous accounting sleight of hand. Instead of taking their life long siesta in their well compensated nests, they’re stuck in these creations of their own demise. If they leave the producer firms they’ve so destroyed, they’ll lose their ability to control the resources necessary to manage their destiny if things do spin out of control in terms of litigation from the damage they’ve done of which they’re solely responsible for. So they sit and wait for what we’ve documented in terms of the oncoming industry difficulties. As the crises multiply and “muddle along” provides less and less of a covering excuse. The next two months could see any number of triggering events that sets their personal downfall into motion. 

At this time the 2020 financial statements have been prepared by the management based on their activities. This being the first in a litany of really bad years where things only get much worse each and every day. Their audit firm, or as we like to call them Chesters, are beginning to realize they too need to recognize their role in the demise of the North American producers. Rubber stamping financial statements has been a great business for the purposes of feathering one's nest. The accounting firm's concern now is that the SEC is allegedly investigating Exxon and the shale producers for their asset valuations. The issue that we believe triggered the destruction of the North American oil and gas industry. What was Chester’s role in the enabling of the industry to pursue “building balance sheets” as the only justification of its existence? Just as it was the over capitalization issue that triggered the demise of Bernie Maddoff, Bernie Ebbers and Jeffrey Skilling. Therefore we may see these accounting firms seeking to regain their lost credibility in the form of forcing large write downs and issuing a heightened number of “going concern” comments. 

Capabilities and capacities were what I warned about and began research in how to enhance the Joint Operating Committees involvement in the broadening of those capabilities and capacities as early as January 22, 2007. That blog post discusses the work of Professors Richard N. Langlois and Nicholas J. Foss in their paper “Capabilities and Governance: the Rebirth of Production in the Theory of Economic Organization.” However, that 2007 blog post of mine did not address the security and augmentation of the bureaucrats personal executive compensation and therefore was deemed to be irrelevant. I raise the capabilities and capacities as it is one of the crises on our list. An interesting turn of events has begun in 2021 for the North American oil and gas industry. It is noted in this World Oil article that others have lost interest. Again this is not a big deal for the bureaucrats as they’ve become used to it. Back on August 26, 2020 we posted the quote from General Shinseki which I’m glady providing again today. 

It’s not for me to suggest that the North American oil and gas producers have become irrelevant. They’ll be the ones that are in the best position in order to make that determination. I only cite this as the level of deterioration in the industry has hit somewhat of a record low, I would say. I am also unaware of any other industry that was able to attain this level of irrelevance and yet produce a product that is so critical to the way of life for everyone in society. Buggy whips made a transition to this level of irrelevance but everyone could see that they did in fact lose the ability to provide value to anyone. That is not the case today. The need for oil and gas for at least the next century is a guarantee. Oil and gas may not be as resilient as coal but could be! The point of the argument is that the irrelevance is solely the responsibility, accountability and inaction of the bureaucrats. In this case the exclusive club that consists of the C-suite as they are known and the Boards of Directors who have prospered so handsomely. It’s not just their irrelevance it’s also their lack of credibility, that no one trusts them anymore and after the litany of excuses, blaming and viable scapegoats, no one believes anything either. What they’ve done is fundamentally betrayed everyone of their stakeholders through the lack of real profitability. Which is what every primary industry needs to sustain itself and those secondary and tertiary industries need in order to maintain their capabilities and capacities too. 

The Preliminary Specification, our user community and service providers provide for a dynamic, innovative, accountable and profitable oil and gas industry with the most profitable means of oil and gas operations, everywhere and always. Setting the foundation for profitable North American energy independence. People, Ideas & Objects have published a white paper “Profitable, North American Energy Independence -- Through the Commercialization of Shale.” that captures the vision of the Preliminary Specification and our actions. Users are welcome to join me here. Together we can begin to meet the future demands for energy. And don’t forget to join our network on Telegram, Parler or Gab @piobiz, anyone can contact me at 713-965-6720 in Houston or 587-735-2302 in Calgary, or email me here. 

New Cost Structures, Part IV

I just have to include this Tim Cook CEO of Apple quote in Inc. magazine. It captures for me where we are in society and why things are collapsing everywhere we look. Collapsing yes, but in a good way. Being cleared away so that we can rebuild anew. 

The path of least resistance is rarely the path of wisdom. We're here today because the path of least resistance is rarely the path of wisdom.

Tim Cook

Producer bureaucrats may have a point. The argument that People, Ideas & Objects have overstated the severity of their crisis is a possibility. Therefore let's look at the facts. Since 2015 investors have steadily withdrawn from their interests and investments in oil and gas. Bankers took a while longer and are finding the producers current difficulties leading to their loans being put at risk. The lack of any structural financial support may be a non-issue, as the producers assert, however the follow on consequences of diminishing working capital and exposure of their chronic overproduction, unprofitability and specious accounting were exposed as the cause of the industries demise. They managed to keep things quiet, except for one annoying blogger, for decades prior to this slip up. The long term effects of ignoring the need to remove the unprofitable production from the market, since at least July 1986, has been systemic and tragic throughout North America. Let's be reasonable, simply managing the oil and gas business as all other industries and businesses do, by managing the unprofitable overproduction and excess inventories would have seen OPEC’s repeated declarations of war never occur. Here’s a few questions: would OPEC’s declarations of war affect North American producers if they produced profitably everywhere and always? When bureaucrats are happy with their take of $1 to $2 per boe coming off the top, do they really care if the full price realized is $40 or $140 or where the rest of that money goes! 

The legacy of non-performance is a bureaucratic asset that provides an ease and comfort to them. To suggest that People, Ideas & Objects have a plan, a strategy, a business model and hope for the future of the industry, fails to pass as interests to those in the rarified air of the C suites and Boards. We know that oil and gas is subject to a never ending increase in the underlying cost of exploration and production. This cost increase affects not only the pursuit of new supplies in technically challenging areas but also the recovery of the remaining resources in place. The escalating costs are a result of the ever increasing technical difficulty of earth science and engineering effort involved in each incremental barrel of oil equivalent produced. Which is translated in the service industry with increased effort and time necessary to release the resource. With People, Ideas & Objects Preliminary Specification ensuring that all production is produced profitably everywhere and always. These escalating costs of oil and gas are captured and covered on a day to day basis as an inherent part of our business model. Everywhere and always. Note too that the $1 to $2 bureaucratic burden we just discussed would be removed from the equation.

What we know is the petroleum reserves are there. Today they are worthless as they require cash in order to be produced. They are a drain on society. They’ll need a new approach in order to build the value that will be necessary for the industry to move forward. The rest of the infrastructure has been designed and built in an era when, metaphorically, the America’s Cup was generating speeds just above the speed of the wind. We can do much better. We certainly won’t be getting to that higher performance trajectory on the “muddle through” and “do nothing” strategy of the current bureaucrats. That should be obvious. We also know the retirement of the unrecognized capital costs of past production, the reclamation costs and the costs of rebuilding and refurbishing the infrastructure need to be done nonetheless, these will not be financed by investors or banks. They’ve already paid for them, and they would be foolish to pay a second time. When an investor invests in a business it’s generally understood that their investment would generate a number of “things.” Those include dividends, reductions in debt and the funding of future capital expenditures. After they collapsed the commodity prices, these aspects of the oil and gas “business” were diverted to feed the hungry bureaucrats with their “innovative,” excessive, executive compensation. Investors would be interested in knowing how their oil and gas reserves are going to pay for the recapture of unrecognized capital costs of past production, reclamation, rebuilding and refurbishing of their infrastructure. We do not need this rebuilding process to be short changed by the bureaucrats diversion into clean energy. It is here that we can begin to see the real cost of the management failures and the absolute capitulation of responsibility with the bureaucrats viable scapegoat of moving to clean energy as a diversionary fraud. This loss of faith, trust and credibility in the bureaucrats is maybe what we should call the producers' sixth crisis. It’s not that I’m numbering these in any particular order, it's just as they’re mentioned they take the next number in the series. These crises were documented in 2020 and are summarized as follows. 

Crisis # 1,

The chronic overproduction and oversupply of oil came home to roost. Since July 1986 we’ve documented that the same issue has plagued the industry with no response or recognition from said bureaucrats. It was the financial crisis in late 2009 that saw the natural gas prices follow the same footsteps of chronic overproduction and oversupply that collapsed the North American oil prices. 

Crisis # 2

The second crisis was the effect that the virus created. Who would have thought that a pandemic would affect the most vulnerable industry? Certainly not the always unprepared bureaucrats.

Crisis # 3

The third crisis was the prediction of mine that there was going to be a looming debt crisis about to play out as soon as the October 2020 bank reviews were completed. Producers are heavily indebted. That’s based on their published financial statements. If we accept People, Ideas & Objects arguments that most of the costs in property, plant and equipment are in fact the unrecognized capital costs of past production, adjust for this with a pro-forma adjustment of 65% of property, plant and equipment to depletion. These producers are in a debt situation that will be terminal to many and action will be precipitated by the banks review. I see the consolidation trend playing out as a defensive strategy to offset the bank risk.

Crisis # 4

The bureaucrats fourth crisis is nothing other than the virus induced OPEC+ reductions in oil production of around 8 mm boe / day. This surplus capacity, with the unknown surplus capacity they had prior to their declaration of war on the North American producers is a dead weight on the price of oil for at least a decade. This of course does not consider the doubling or tripling down of the praying that has been done recently by the bureaucrats. We saw towards the end of 2020 Russia begin to assert their desire to increase their production. Strategically and tactically if they were in a war with the North American producers, their sense of timing is good.

Crisis # 5

A fifth crisis will come about when the capacities and capabilities of the industry, and what the producer once enjoyed, are no longer available. The retirement of the knowledge base of the industry has been undergoing for the past five years has been at an accelerated basis. The service industry has been cannibalizing their equipment and the people who once worked for them have found stable work in other industries. The reputation of the industry is the money is good at times, the stability however is unable to support a mortgage or family. Recently we heard the identification and utterance of a new viable scapegoat that went like. “Current employees have been poorly trained, this new generation is not as good as the old.” There is no depth to the bureaucrats capacity to point fingers.

Crisis # 6

We also identified that the risk to bureaucrats accelerated when we noted in our June 2, 2020 post the potential scenario in which their insurance providers may trigger the future withholding of coverage of the directors and officers liability policies. We then noted in a Reuters article that this knowledge was taken as fact by bureaucrats and they immediately increased their coverage by 70%. Implying a guilt and culpability in the bureaucrats documented actions. Triggering what I believe to be a systemic and complete lack of faith, trust and credibility in management by their investors. If the overproduction issue has been documented to be in existence since at least July 1986. And the Preliminary Specification has been available since December 2013. Why have the bureaucrats not undertaken their fiduciary duties?

Crisis # 7

Joe Biden. This will become the producer bureaucrats new, favorite viable scapegoat for the next four years. Nothing will be able to be done due to the bureaucratic nightmare they're being exposed to. There is nothing more that a bureaucracy loves than facing a government bureaucracy. If the industry is unable to progress in the next four years. I suggest we develop some software and organize ourselves as proposed in the Preliminary Specification for the desperately needed work that will follow Joe Biden. 

It was recently announced that 26 Republican Senators wrote a letter to ask for a meeting about the White House's Executive Orders regarding oil and gas. Seventy five percent of the deplorables believe that the presidential election was stolen. Evidence exists of severe Chinese government influence in the Biden family. The Democratic party is seeking to silence any opposition and deprogram these "white supremacists." And Republican Senators sent a letter!

When you don’t tend to your garden the weeds tend to steal the nutrients from what you expect to eat. The culling of the weeds in the industry would be the prompt removal of the bureaucrats. In light of these current and looming crises. A weed infested garden is an excellent analogy of the situation. The capital costs that investors have already paid for and are essentially resisting the bureaucrats request that they fund for a second time. Assets should generate a return that would have the capacity to maintain them in commercial condition. Secondly there are the reclamation of the assets that have been in service for their entire useful life. These costs are accelerating and are being monitored closely by the governments, environmentalists and John Q. Public. They will be hard for the producers to ignore. It will also be difficult to convince any investor or banker that producers will have any capacity to generate a return that will support further investment into their organization after reclamation costs are considered. And lastly those rebuilding and refurbishment costs will be done on someone else’s dime, not the investors and bankers. With new issues such as aging of the assets, rebuilding capacity increases and new technologies the producer bureaucrats can also view the landscape of devastation they’ve caused throughout the greater oil and gas economic structure. Bringing industry giants like Schlumberger and Baker Hughes back will be a task that will not happen serendipitously no matter how much praying is done. Bringing in new talent and training them over the long term…

Oh wait a bureaucratic just called, (facetiously of course) they’ve found even more drilling locations!

The Preliminary Specification seeks these funds from the price of the commodity. The consumer is the only source of funds large enough to approach these needs as we’ve identified them. Our value proposition is broken down into two components. The first is the demand for future capital, reclamation, rebuilding and refurbishment costs and are estimated to be in the range of $20 to $40 trillion. The second component is the $5.7 trillion in pure, incremental, and real profit, the kind that you can take to the bank. These funds can only come about with a mechanism that allows for a fair and reasonable method of production allocation across the continent. That is our decentralized production models price maker strategy. If these costs don’t get passed on to the consumer the industry will continue to operate as a charity with no donors. That’s opposed to what they’ve been these past four decades, a charity with fraudulently deceived donors. 

It’s alway good to look on the bright side and there’ll be plenty of work for everyone. Even the bureaucrats. They’ll be busy defending themselves in litigation from those that they deceived, aka as their prior investors. But as we noted last summer, there could also be a new class of litigation for them. Their insurance providers may have felt deceived when the industry began increasing their coverage by 70% after I had detailed the issue was present since July 1986 and our solution, the Preliminary Specification has been available since December 2013. Insurance companies may want to know why producers increased their coverage in July 2020 after I pointed out their lack of fiduciary duty and risk on June 2, 2020?

As for the rest of us it may seem like an impossible job, but that’s the fun part. Instead of walking around in the mindless sludge of “muddle through” for another bad year in an endless string of bad years in oil and gas. We’ll be focused on performance in order to provide the rebuilding of the industry to what we all know oil and gas could and should be. A bit of a different vision. Negative prices in April 2020 will be last year's news and we can all laugh at how bureaucrats had their satellite based Rube Goldberg machines analyzing shadows of floating tanks and crunching out paper that predicted absolutely nothing. Such an elaborate system, employing how many, that could not foresee negative $40 oil! Very effective. Bureaucrats will never take responsibility, they’ll never act in anyone’s interest but their own. They’re conflicted and compromised as all bureaucrats are focused on themselves. We should not expect anything from them other than the few words they’ll get in edgewise when we toss them out. We’d be fools not to and they certainly don’t deserve any more chances.

What we know is that we face great difficulties in this industry. We are standing on financially unstable ground. Our capabilities and capacities are diminished and the leadership of the industry hasn’t been seen in over four decades. The three costs that we’ve identified, the recovery of the unrecognized capital costs of past production, reclamation, rebuilding and refurbishment costs will swamp the demand for capital for productive operations. Productive operations being new business. What should be clear in this series is that our solution provides the resources necessary to cover all of these costs from the only source large enough to provide that scale of financial resources, the consumer. By invoking our decentralized production models price maker strategy the industry can insure that all production is produced profitably everywhere and always based on a standardized, actual, factual accounting. That these costs will be returned to the producer firm in the form of cash to be redeployed again and again. Bureaucrats believe investors will provide the capital for these costs and their unauthorized use of oil and gas revenues to fund their diversions into clean energy. People, Ideas & Objects ensure there is no longer any need, and certainly no ability, for the investment community to expand, or is it “build the balance sheets” or “put cash in the ground” totaling $20 to $40 trillion dollars and wait for the day when… 

The Preliminary Specification, our user community and service providers provide for a dynamic, innovative, accountable and profitable oil and gas industry with the most profitable means of oil and gas operations, everywhere and always. Setting the foundation for profitable North American energy independence. People, Ideas & Objects have published a white paper “Profitable, North American Energy Independence -- Through the Commercialization of Shale.” that captures the vision of the Preliminary Specification and our actions. Users are welcome to join me here. Together we can begin to meet the future demands for energy. Anyone can contact me at 713-965-6720 in Houston or 587-735-2302 in Calgary, or email me here. 

New Cost Structures, Part III

 When reviewing the Preliminary Specification some producers claim they have all those noted aspects of our software in operation within their organizations. And I’m sure that they do. Just as they use landlines to conduct all of their communications. That revolutionary communications with new forms that are superior and more effective exist in the market doesn’t matter, they have it all covered. With new methods in the form of email and smartphones, producers are essentially claiming they have corporate communications covered with their switchboard operators. This is to go along with their manual and spreadsheet based accounting processes. What we know that producers do not have in 2021 is they don’t have any money, they don’t earn any money, they don’t know how to make money and no one will give them any money. A viable business model doesn’t exist. Other than the Preliminary Specification they have no prospects of making any money. The bureaucrats, the C suite and directors, are fine however and they thank you for asking.

In addition to our business model finally recognizing the unrecognized capital costs of prior production and reclamation costs, there is also the rebuilding and refurbishing costs that will need to be done across the North American continent. As with much of the infrastructure that will be retiring which is leading to the reclamation costs, there are many facilities and assets that will be falling into the category of requiring significant capital investments in order to be upgraded, repaired and refurbished. Facilities and production that will remain operational for a decade or more, but must be brought up to code, to standard and to deal with the reality of the configuration of the oil and gas industry as it presents itself in the very near future. The area of electrical and electronic equipment upgrades has been a constant in the industry. These costs will take on a new urgency as the possibilities of the Internet of Things and other IT initiatives become viable, profitable additions to the asset mix. 

This will not be done on the basis of the spending frenzy that has driven the industry for the past four decades. Long term profitability will be the objective and that will invoke new dynamics, such as innovation. Today is the end of the working month of January, a time which also saw the start of the America’s Cup Challenger Selection Series in New Zealand. This year they’ll be racing the new AC75 specification which is truly an innovation that must be seen. Capable of exceeding the speed of the wind by up to four times, these yachts are impressive for their technology and their application. A key to this year's America’s Cup specification is the somewhat loosening of the regulations in terms of what teams were able to bring to their boats. On the one hand the Preliminary Specification provides the oil and gas industry with the capacity to produce oil and gas profitably everywhere and always. To my way of thinking it also provides the ability to metaphorically move the industry from sailing at a little over the speed of the wind to today’s innovative four fold performance. Providing assurance to the consumer that innovation in the earth science, engineering and elsewhere are the core of the producer organizations and industry at large. Innovations that provide for a secure, profitable, domestic supply and innovations that ensure consumers energy consumption is achieved at the lowest consumer prices. Innovation is not a happenstance occurrence. In racing, innovation is the source of winning. What People, Ideas & Objects learned in our research into the Preliminary Specification was that innovation was as much about the structure of organizations and industries as it was about anything else. The application of the necessary ingredients to facilitate innovation within the producer organizations and throughout the industry was purpose built into the 12 modules of the Preliminary Specification. It is these organizational constructs that will enable producers to innovate on the scientific basis of the oil and gas business and expand the performance and productive capacity of their organizations and the industry. Then again however, People, Ideas & Objects are the pariahs of the industry for thinking of profits and innovations.

Much of this innovation, as it always has, will be conducted outside of the producer firms themselves. Producer bureaucrats spin stories of how they’ve innovated. Yet we have strong evidence that their ability to get up off the couch and do something regarding an existential threat to their organization is not a motivating force even after decades and decades. The innovations will come from the service industry once it’s purposely rebuilt with the financial resources that producers will have generated and provided for the rebuilding of the service industries capacities and capabilities, which are currently atrophying at remarkable rates. In addition to proving to the rest of the world that oil and gas is now responsible for its own business and can take care of itself, by itself, they’ll be able to show solid profitability on top of the rebuilding exercise. Therefore the rebuilding and refurbishment of the industry doesn’t take into account just the physical infrastructure involved in the production process. It also involves the rebuilding of the service industry and the credibility within its own domain of operation. Such as geology and engineering, field operations and head office staff. Recognizing the scope and scale of the issues that have been caused and the fallout consequences of the bureaucrats' greed and ignorance, I’ll stop describing them there, it is going to take much effort for those that have this rebuilding and refurbishing process to undertake. 

And therefore that’s the opportunity. Using the assets and revenues that exist today we can turn them profitable by building and implementing the Preliminary Specification, generate the cash that is necessary to undertake these noted tasks with the previously invested “cash that had to be put in the ground” to “build bureaucrats balance sheets” and realize these capital costs for what they are, the unrecognized capital costs of past production. Use this cash for the purpose of rebuilding and refurbishing the industry infrastructure, the service industry and everything else that has been thoroughly damaged and to do so in a way that provides real value to all concerned. 

But that’s not all. The service industry are the real innovators who have brought the technologies to the field. We’ll need them to also bring with them the application of Information Technology to what it is they do and build out the Internet of Things as it applies to oil and gas. People, Ideas & Objects uses specialization and the division of labor at high levels to move the performance trajectory of the industry to a higher level. This can also be brought to the forefront of the service industry with their addition of IT. We are bringing about the means to innovate and set in place the foundation in which automation of the business processes in oil and gas can be conducted. These will also be done with the service industry as we’ve spelled out predominantly in the Resource Marketplace module of the Preliminary Specification but also in the Research & Capabilities and Knowledge & Learning modules. 

Doing this in the next quarter is not the plan. People, Ideas & Objects looks at the long term horizon of 25 years in which we can realize the full potential of our value proposition of $25.7 to $45.7 trillion. There isn’t much argument these days about these numbers. They’re easily calculated today when one sees just the current devastation that has occurred in natural gas this past decade. If it's not clear today, wait a year or two and it will be. All one has to do is extrapolate the bureaucrats business model out 25 years vs. what the Preliminary Specification provides. Today I feel it contrasts the dearth of the bureaucrats' understanding of the business that they’re in, but also their lack of a basic understanding of business. 

It’s easy for me to sit and cherry pick the advantages of our model over the business model of the bureaucrats. So let me elaborate. It was on July 26, 1986 The Calgary Herald had two articles entitled “OPEC Minister Can See Economic Destruction” and “Return to Glory Days Unlikely” were published. (Paywall, newspapers.com) They document the difficulties in the industry at the time. They show that what ailed the industry then is the exact same as what has ailed the industry for every day since. That which has fundamentally destroyed both oil and gas. It has been 35 years of pious bureaucratic mismanagement that has refused to accept reality due to it being against their own personal vested interests. Not to add further insult to injury though, it was over seven years ago in December 2013 the Preliminary Specification was published in its final form. There have been some additions here and there, but nothing material, nothing has changed with respect to the subject matter of dealing with the issue that was present since at least July 1986. I did point out the facts regarding these two dates to the bureaucrats last summer at which point they jumped into action by increasing the value of their officers and directors liability insurance coverage by 70%. Implying a guilt and culpability in their actions, and for anyone thinking that they were incapable of action, we see in this that they are as long as it involves them. 

What is and should be abundantly clear is the oil and gas business has fallen on hard times as a result of the self serving and misguided adventures of the producer bureaucrats. They have lost control and are unable to see the situation in a clear context or what is necessary to remediate the issues causing their difficulties. They’re in over their heads and they’ve been exposed in terms of the scam and the fraud that they’ve perpetrated for the past four decades. Moving away from the industry into the “clean energy” and “zero emissions” industry is a continuation of the scam for their personal benefit. Unaccountable and irresponsible in oil and gas they’ll capitulate there to move to an industry that has not performed at any point in its existence. Even with abundant government subsidy and support. That won’t be their concern as they’ll have the oil and gas revenues to fall back on and prop up the failing businesses they’re pursuing and to continue to leech off the shareholders that provided their funds for oil and gas in good faith. This is unacceptable and without a whisper of authorization these decisions were made in the dark of night without the shareholders knowledge or approval. Bureaucrats may feign that they’re operating on the basis of the demands of the shareholders that expect this transition to clean energy. Generating fake news to support their claims, however, never before has such a hijack of an industries prosperity, as reflected in its revenue stream, been diverted at the whim of a CEO who feels the quarterly report needs to have some distraction to cover for the abysmal financial performance and scam these bureaucrats have orchestrated. 

We’ve now documented three key expenditures that are massive in scale which contain the implication that they’re unable to support a future return on investment of the producer firm. In fact they’ll have to, in the case of the bloated property, plant and equipment, be required to perform in order to pay past shareholders what they are entitled to. In other words they’ll be a drain on the producers profitability in the future to pay for past promises. These three costs will rob them of the cash that they’ll be required to use to build out the industry in the vision of Preliminary Specification, therefore making their plans in clean energy untenable. In other words the cupboards are bare and they’ll be bare for the next decade. Any cash that does show up will be needed for seven different reasons just in the oil and gas business. My only recommendation is to cut the high costs of overhead immediately by disposing of these bureaucrats who have proven they have no wherewithal to deal with the issues they’ve caused. Issues that were well quantified in July 1986 and have been present every day since. And the solution as represented in the Preliminary Specification as it has stood for the past seven years. When we lose these bureaucrats, we gain the ability to begin rebuilding the business, stop the diversion of monies to industries that are of no interest to oil and gas and cease the leakage of cash out the back door. 

The Preliminary Specification, our user community and service providers provide for a dynamic, innovative, accountable and profitable oil and gas industry with the most profitable means of oil and gas operations, everywhere and always. Setting the foundation for profitable North American energy independence. People, Ideas & Objects have published a white paper “Profitable, North American Energy Independence -- Through the Commercialization of Shale.” that captures the vision of the Preliminary Specification and our actions. Users are welcome to join me here. Together we can begin to meet the future demands for energy. Anyone can contact me at 713-965-6720 in Houston or 587-735-2302 in Calgary, or email me here. 

New Cost Structures, Part I

 First, I want to comment that my arguments and accusations directed to the producer bureaucrats in 2020 became rather sharp. Some may think with a new year I’d revisit my approach and amend my ways. Which I’ve done. I can’t hold any respect for these producer bureaucrats. The damage and destruction has been epic as I’ve discussed throughout the past fifteen years. I have difficulty holding any respect for these producer bureaucrats, those being the C suite and directors, it is they who are responsible for all the damage, it is they who should be accountable and it is they who have had the authority and power to do something about it. Let us not forget it is they who have profited from their administration at the expense of everyone else. And we have seen, as I enter my thirtieth year of attempting to resolve these issues that they continue to play their Mr. Magoo, Sgt Schultz, and Bernie Madoff routine for their own personal financial benefit. They must be shown the door. On a lighter note I’ve awarded all these bureaucrats 2020 participation ribbons to go with their prior “awards.”

I want to begin the new year with the identification of three new cost categories oil and gas producers will need to deal with for the next few decades. The material nature of these costs will put an exclamation mark on their chronic non-performance and make investors want to run the other way, even faster. This is due to the nature of these costs and their inability to ever generate a return on investment at any point in the bureaucrats current business model. These are the types of costs that will haunt the industry in whatever configuration it takes and it is these costs that can be clearly identified today due to the lack of the producer bureaucrats ability to pay attention to the business of the business. For them it is all about earth science and engineering. It is only the Preliminary Specification and the business models that are inherent in our offering that provide the industry with a methodology that deals with these costs. It is these costs that we identified much earlier and which materially inflate our value proposition to the $25.7 to $45.7 trillion dollar range. We have seen some unsuccessful methods used in the industry to try and deal with these costs, which we’ll discuss. None have been effective and the methods used have only served to provide further financial losses and an inability to command the necessary higher commodity prices in order to capture and recover these costs. We’ll be discussing in detail each one of these cost categories over this and the next two posts and then provide an overall summary as the fourth. The overall question that we’ll answer in this series is how will producers pay for these costs and where will the money come from?

The first category of costs will be familiar as a result of the discussion we’ve had over the past number of years. We’ll be reviewing these points once again with a few new attributes added to the discussion. Although the first category of cost we’re discussing will be looked down upon by the bureaucrats as financial or accounting losses. These are real, tangible losses over the course of the organization's life cycle. Our first category of costs is the fully discussed issue of bloated property, plant and equipment as recorded on the highly distorted financial statements of the producers. To suggest that these financial statements are generic and oddly similar throughout the industry would be an understatement. The size of the producer is the only difference between them. All of them have massively bloated property, plant and equipment offset by essentially very high levels of debt. The working capital is miniscule if it exists, with most reporting a strong trend toward diminishing working capital on a quarterly basis. This trend has left most of the producers with negative working capital. Shareholders equity in many producers no longer exists as the retained losses now exceed the capital that was raised during its lifetime. In most producers the losses have materially diminished or extinguished the retained earnings of the producers, and in many cases shareholders equity. If as we suggest property, plant and equipment is overstated, and these are what support the very high levels of debt, then the leverage is far in excess of the criteria that are claimed and these producers are seriously overleveraged. It is however sunshine and rainbows as far as the bureaucrats are concerned.

People, Ideas & Objects have asserted that the “assets” in property, plant and equipment are nothing of the sort. They are the unrecognized capital costs of past production. This is how we perceive the distorted nature that producers have interpreted the SEC requirement for Full Cost accounting and associated Ceiling Test. These accounting regulations suggest that the capitalization of the firm should not exceed the reserves value of the organization. Since the late 1970’s when the SEC implemented these regulations producer bureaucrats have interpreted the reserves value as the target of their spending in property, plant and equipment. This has, as a result, taken on cultural distortions that reflect that any and all costs are capitalized in order to achieve their "target." This includes the receptionists time, phone service and Post-it-Notes as capital costs. Nothing is immune from their capitalizations justification, as the SEC has pursued litigation in the industry for the capitalization of operating costs. These distortions are not readily apparent when the industry is recapitalized each and every year by investors that are duped by the increasing assets of the producer, its subsequent profitability and bloated cash flow. 

We’ve argued consistently that consumers have paid the operating costs while investors were paying the capital and overhead costs of exploration and production. Therefore these costs in property, plant and equipment were the consumers capital cost subsidy financed by investors. I stated earlier in this post that these three costs that I’m identifying in this series were unable to provide a return on investment. I could be wrong, but then I’m somewhat immune to the charm of producer bureaucrats, maybe they could have these capital costs in property, plant and equipment provide a return on investment for their future prospective investors? That’s an idea, have investors pay for the same cost twice, what do you have to lose Mr. Bureaucrat! For that is what they are now asking by seeking investors to support their dilapidated failures. This gravy train only stopped in 2015 when investors realized the ponzi scheme of money only went in, was spent and never came out. Some producers declared dividends certainly, however those were financed by next year's investors or friendly bankers. The steady withdrawal of the financial investment into the industry has created the crisis that is today’s oil and gas industry. Banks in 2020 began to catch on to the game and are now beginning to withhold their support. 

The danger that producers face as a result of the bloated balance sheets from property, plant and equipment. And assuming we are correct that these are nothing more than the unrecognized capital costs of past production. These producers are not only obscenely leveraged, their actual losses subject to a reasonable accounting, would leave their financial statements in the most dire condition imaginable. We have asserted that analysis of the producers should include a pro forma adjustment that would move 65% of property, plant and equipment to depletion. Better reflecting the financial condition of the producer firms. This would then show a unanimous consensus that the bureaucrats must be removed. 

Throughout this time the value that had been established in the industry was eroded away and now the industry has no ability to support itself. The business requires a constant stream of new money just to maintain its current status quo of chronic decay. It is an industry that is a drain on society in other words. This drain has been perpetrated by the bureaucrats, the C suite and directors, who have prospered handsomely as a result of their past decades of inaction. Also known as their “muddle along” and “do nothing” strategy and operating procedure. Oil and gas being a capital intensive industry will always generate high levels of cash flow as a result. This cash flow has been used and abused to compensate bureaucrats in new and highly innovative ways. And those are just what's publicly known. This cash flow is due to the return of the high level of prior investments in the form of cash. The issue today is that the damage and destruction that has been experienced in the industry through all the take and no giving bureaucrats, has diminished the value of the assets, and therefore the relative size of the cash flow. These cash flows were and are overstated on the financial statements as a result of reporting everything as capital costs initially, then realized over the course of decades in the form of depletion deferring the recognition of the real cost of exploration and production. When G&A is capitalized to the tune of 85% in the industry, that is the average, no one refutes my number, those overhead costs are not deducted from the fake profits that are reported to determine cash flow and therefore overstates cash flow. This is reflected in the fact that each month these overhead and other expenses are incurred, capitalized and deferred over the course of decades. Leaving the producer unable to recapture those costs in the current price of the commodity, and as such, on the hunt for the necessary cash to fund next month's overhead. This occurs in each and every producer, each and every month. There is no float of cash that is used to pay the overhead costs that should have been returned the following month in the price of the commodity to replenish these overhead costs. This was not an issue when the investors were easily duped to reinvest each year by the bureaucrats' specious accounting. This is currently one of the primary ways in which working capital continues to diminish at remarkable rates across the industry. Producers in reality never made any money and were wholly dependent on chronic dilution of their investors through annual issuances to new investors. Bernie Madoff sends his congratulations and admiration. 

Producers therefore have organizations that stand with no structural capital support from investors or banks. They have an organization that is incapable of funding itself on a day to day basis without making drastic measures to raise the required cash to continue to operate. Their cash balances are continuing to evaporate as a result of low oil and natural gas prices. Liquidity is claimed to be healthy, when they include the amount remaining on their lines of credit. How much it actually costs to produce is unknown as the financial statements are distorted to the point where the ability to know the truth is not possible. And they never made any money. The industry, as are the producers, is valueless at best. Consolidation is the current trend, bigger bureaucracies will certainly be the answer to all of these questions! Really, trust them. That Chesapeake failed far quicker at that strategy is their exception that proves the rule. The accounting trickery has been expanded to the point where the fact that cash balances continue to “miraculously diminish in unexplained and unexplainable way’s” where nothing is done or said about it. 

When I discuss accounting trickery I mean accounting trickery in the underlying fraud and abuse that the bureaucrats have exorcised against their investors. Again I focus on the investors but look to the larger oil and gas economic structure. Without having the clear, honest accounting that the investors should have received, they were deceived, profitability was falsified. When investors are deceived they leave, sending the only message bureaucrats need to hear. You have failed! Without profits in the greater oil and gas economy, there is nothing for the rest of the people that are involved in oil and gas and we fall into the economic super depression that we’ll soon find ourselves in. 

One of the most overt accounting tricks that was perpetrated was the serial claim by all producers that they would be profitable at the new, lower prices the commodity markets were providing from chronic overproduction. This was due to their cost control, diligence and innovativeness they’d claim. The lower price was lower than their prior threshold they claimed to still be profitable at, such as we can make money at $50, then they could make money at $40 etc. These claims are specious and fraudulent. They’re based on the costs that current operations could prospectively be conducted in the field by squeezing the service industry and not based on the actual accounting facts as they are represented to be. How, without any write downs as a result of the ceiling test, would they then begin to reduce their costs from $80 to $50 to generate the continuous alleged profit? Would they have to have been innovative as they claimed? Or would they just need to be innovative in terms of new ways of approaching historical accounting? The majority of those $80 costs are capital in what is generally agreed to be a capital intensive industry. The costs of 97% of their wells and facilities are fixed in the past and not subject to change. Certainly future operations may be conducted less expensively, but that is not what the blanket statement that they can then be profitable at $40 means. This is deliberate, deceptive and designed to keep the lining of bureaucratic pockets filled and filling. Only one of the many ways in which deception has been perpetrated. In response producers will assert they have more reserves in which to allocate their capital costs towards. Which is true however, do those reserves need to be restated as a result of the price drop from $90 to $40 due to their subsequent inability to be produced profitably? In fact what has happened is the reserves volume decreases as a result of large portions are no longer commercially producible when the price drops $50. Quoted prices were determined from the following WSJ graph.

What about shale? The method used to account for capital costs is to allocate the total spending to each of the boe in the known reserves. This practice has continued and People, Ideas & Objects believes there needs to be a reclassification of costs to better reflect the activities in areas of shale based reserves. We know a number of characteristics of shale that make it a significant and valuable resource for the profitable North American energy independence industry needs to provide. Shale reveals substantial reserves, its production is prolific and its decline curve is steep. Allocating the substantial capital costs of drilling and completion of shale wells to the tremendous shale reserves that are exposed reduces the capital costs to a reasonable variable on a boe basis. However, the work necessary to maintain the production profile over the long term is also substantial in terms of cost. These costs are added to property, plant and equipment as capital costs, as are any incremental increase in the known reserves. Does anyone else see the mouse catching the cheese? We suggest the costs of the incremental work be classified as operations and have them retired immediately. Otherwise the objective of bloating the balance sheet by the bureaucrats will continue. We believe that the cash consumed in the capital intensive nature of oil and gas needs to be recaptured and reused on a high frequency basis in order to a) realize the actual costs of oil and gas exploration and production and b) enable producers to internally fund the enormous capital costs they claim are necessary in the near future. 

Today we are seeing the majority of the producers which include BP, Shell, Exxon and Chevron instituting large writedowns of their property, plant and equipment due to the SEC required ceiling test. All these write downs are displaying clearly and unequivocally that the past spending efforts of the producers have failed to generate the value of their spending. And indeed the value of the producers reserves are less than the value of what they’ve spent. These writedowns now account for the waste that has been conducted by these bureaucrats over the past decades and is effectively the destruction of that value being cast to the wind. I also assert the write downs are only beginning. The bureaucrats will claim, as they have always claimed regarding the ceiling test, that these are accounting charges and no one is concerned about them, they are in the past and no one cares. Their capacity to ignore their responsibility and accountability for the money they spent is evident in these fraudulent lies they've uttered over those decades. This chronic lack of accountability and responsibility for the truth has now led to a lack of faith and trust in the bureaucrats themselves and that is why the investors and bankers are and will continue to withdraw until the bureaucrats are gone. Trust and faith has been breached, when you have no credibility, it has gone for good. 

It is these costs in property, plant and equipment, what People, Ideas & Objects call the “unrecognized capital costs of past production” that we assessed as the only remaining residual value in the North American oil and gas industry. They are of value as they could be used in the Preliminary Specifications decentralized production models price maker strategy as capital costs in future oil and gas prices passed on to consumers and recovered in the form of cash to recapitalize the industry. These rebuilt cash balances would then be used and reused to cycle repeatedly and frequently through as capital expenditures once again, and then recognized so as to be returned to the producer as cash on a basis that was consistent with the industry's cash needs. As these writedowns now occur this future opportunity is lost and the only value that we were able to identify in the industry is being frittered and wasted by the chronic “muddling along” of the producer bureaucrats. The Preliminary Specification has been available to them in final form since December 2013, and in development for a decade before that. Yet nothing has been done but abuse People, Ideas & Objects for the threat we represent to the bureaucrats personal cash flows. Disintermediation challenges all industries with new and more effective ways to organize and manage their operations. For further reference on the effects of disintermediation call up your local record store manager. The Preliminary Specification disintermediates these bureaucrats.

People, Ideas & Objects Preliminary Specification ensures that oil and gas is produced profitably everywhere and always. We ensure that the total cost of production is always accounted for on a standardized, objective, reasonable and compliant basis. Ensuring the financial resources that were committed, in a capital intensive industry, are also reflected in the costs of the commodities prices. If the industry is a capital intensive industry it would stand to reason that the commodity prices would contain costs that were capital intensive as well? Instead bureaucrats collect and savor their out of control spending in property, plant and equipment as assets so they can strut down mainstreet in a competition to see who will dominate as the greatest fool. Our perspective looks at this foolishness and provides a better way where the cash consumed in the industry is returned to the producer in the prices that are necessary for profitability, and that is real profitability based on actual, factual accounting of the capital, operations and overhead costs. 

The other key aspect that has to be mentioned here that differentiates us from what is done in the industry is our method of production allocation. There is no fair and reasonable method of production allocation other than the Preliminary Specifications decentralized production models price maker strategy. Government mandates, OPEC limits or any other style of production allocation will always have half the industry unhappy with their allocation of what can be produced. Political influence becomes the means in which to produce more. Our choice of profitability is the only fair and reasonable method. If the property can be shown to produce profitably based on the Preliminary Specifications standardized, objective methods of accounting facts then it will produce. The myriad of excuses of the bureaucrats as to why our method can’t be used have all expired as a result of their arguments being as specious as their financial statements. 

Investors sent their signal to producer bureaucrats half a decade ago. What’s been done as a result. All that I can see is the lies, excuses, blaming and viable scapegoats that have come and gone. The list exceeds 20 items and is well known by all. These all began with natural gas ten years ago or more with bureaucrats “waiting for a cold winter.” How many cold winters have we had in the last decade? I’ve also seen first hand the abuse that I’ve had to take, which has motivated my new attitude this year. If it’s their choice not to do anything and just reap their bounty nonetheless then it leaves not much in the form of questions to ask of them. When I raised the point of their culpability and guilt last summer they, on a wholesale basis, increased their officers and directors liability insurance. Which is a form of action to be sure. There is not much to litigate in the producer firms themselves. No one sues over a failure. The bureaucrats however were responsible, accountable and authorized to do something. That is all that is needed to launch personal litigation against them for any of the shareholders losses that were incurred. It’s too bad that the insurance proceeds cover their liability first, it should seek to liquidate the bureaucrats personal property first and any overage in terms of claims handled by the insurance. But I don’t always get everything I want. 

The Preliminary Specification, our user community and service providers provide for a dynamic, innovative, accountable and profitable oil and gas industry with the most profitable means of oil and gas operations, everywhere and always. Setting the foundation for profitable North American energy independence. People, Ideas & Objects have published a white paper “Profitable, North American Energy Independence -- Through the Commercialization of Shale.” that captures the vision of the Preliminary Specification and our actions. Users are welcome to join me here. Together we can begin to meet the future demands for energy. And don’t forget to join our network on Parler or Gab @piobiz, anyone can contact me at 713-965-6720 in Houston or 587-735-2302 in Calgary, or email me here.