Sunday, September 11, 2011

The Preliminary Specification Part XXII (PA Part VIII)


Last Friday we noted that the cost structures of each producer within a Joint Operating Committee could be unique and mutually exclusive to each of the other producers in the property. When we expand the geographical view of the facilities owned in the area we see that the ownership by producers can be remarkably different. This cost situation provides us with an opportunity to discuss the strategic choices that producers have within a Joint Operating Committee -- and adjoining facilities which are their own JOC’s -- and how each producer can maintain their own unique strategy.

In addition, since each JOC is autonomous to each other, a producer is able to choose unique strategies for each JOC they have an interest in. That is not to suggest that each JOC within a facility would have their own strategy. They could, however that would be unproductive. What is suggested is that a producer could have each of their major properties operated under their own unique strategies that are developed to optimize the assets unique character. To reiterate, that's each producer within a major area pursuing their own unique strategy irrespective of each others strategy.

Lastly we most recently noted that the JOC was the strategic framework of the producer and it joined the legal, financial, operational decision making, cultural, communication and innovation frameworks within the JOC. This framework alignment has been unrecognized in the existing ERP systems that operate in the oil and gas industry today. People, Ideas & Objects (PI&O) is the only system to recognize, identify and support the Joint Operating Committee’s frameworks. In addition, PI&O aligns the hierarchies compliance and governance frameworks into alignment with the seven frameworks of the JOC. This alignment provides the innovative oil and gas producer with the speed, innovativeness and accountability necessary to compete in the complex era of oil and gas exploration and production.

Application of global or generic corporate strategies are what companies did in the twentieth century. Today producers need to respond at the asset level in order to ensure the optimal value is realized. These findings are based on the extensive research that has been conducted here at People, Ideas & Objects. That although we have sworn off our focus on research we are still able to refer to it. Those posts that refer to our work in strategy would be best sourced from these labels, Strategy, Langlois, and Dosi.

For the industry to successfully provide for the consumers energy demands, it’s necessary to build the systems that identify and support the Joint Operating Committee. Building the Preliminary Specification is the focus of People, Ideas & Objects. Producers are encouraged to contact me in order to support our Revenue Model and begin their participation in these communities. Those individuals that are interested in joining People, Ideas & Objects can join me here and begin building the software necessary for the successful and innovative oil and gas industry.

Please note what Google+ provides us is the opportunity to prove that People, Ideas & Objects are committed to developing this community. That this is user developed software, not change that is driven from the top down. Join me on the People, Ideas & Objects Google+ Circle and begin building the community for the development of the Preliminary Specification. Email me here if you need an invite.

Saturday, September 10, 2011

McKinsey, Translating Innovation into U.S. Growth


There has been much discussion about the role of the United States in the global economy since S & P downgraded their debt. This McKinsey article is an interesting discussion of where the country stands in terms of their influence on global innovation. Certainly the U.S. has been the global leader in innovation. And there are many issues that can be debated as to what that role will be in the future. This article puts a few of them on the table. And although I don’t necessarily agree with the findings, it may have some value to the community.

The difficulty that I have with the document is its reliance on clean energy and the belief that these investments are what will bring about innovations that will sustain the global economy. These ideas of running your car on electricity and saving the planet are about as good as making $1,000.00 a day from your home in your spare time. Well below the esteem of a McKinsey to be recommending them.

For the industry to successfully provide for the consumers energy demands, it’s necessary to build the systems that identify and support the Joint Operating Committee. Building the Preliminary Specification is the focus of People, Ideas & Objects. Producers are encouraged to contact me in order to support our Revenue Model and begin their participation in these communities. Those individuals that are interested in joining People, Ideas & Objects can join me here and begin building the software necessary for the successful and innovative oil and gas industry.

Please note what Google+ provides us is the opportunity to prove that People, Ideas & Objects are committed to developing this community. That this is user developed software, not change that is driven from the top down. Join me on the People, Ideas & Objects Google+ Circle and begin building the community for the development of the Preliminary Specification. Email me here if you need an invite.

Friday, September 09, 2011

The Preliminary Specification Part XXI (PA Part VII)


Just a quick note about currencies to finish off our first pass through the Partnership Accounting module. As we peel this onion, the Preliminary Specification, we’ll return to this module and dig a bit deeper into the details of how we account for a Joint Operating Committee’s activities.

In a globalized oil and gas industry we have to deal with currency conversions in the modern era. And these are not your regular currency issues. The example I have used in the past is that a producer based in Texas (U.S. Dollar) with partners in Britain (British Pound) and Canada (Canadian Dollar) share an interest in facilities and production in Turkey (Lira). Transactions through the joint account will be in the Turkish Lira and recorded in the producers native currencies based on the exchange rate at the time.

Another aspect of this problem is the currency conversions have different treatments for asset & liabilities then they do for revenues & costs. Revenues & costs are converted at the time they occur and require no further action. Whereas asset & liability accounts maintain a balance over a longer period of time and may need further specific treatment to ensure they are recognized and recorded correctly. If, for example, a producer has finished inventory in a country with a volatile currency, what subsequent value should be assigned to the inventory? This may possibly be answered by the ability to record the finished inventory in US$. But the operational costs may be valued in the domestic currency. And what about items that are of a capital nature? These currency issues are predominately producer related as they are cleared out of the Joint Operating Committees accounts each month. Therefore the accounting for each producer is unique.

Accounting systems should provide advanced tools to deal with these currency issues. And although we have stated that we are not considering any technology in the Preliminary Specification. Use of Oracle Fusion Applications in the Detailed Specifications should be considered as part of the research in currencies for the Preliminary Specification. To preclude the review of Oracle’s product would be duplicating what has already been built.

I would however caution users in the community that the oil and gas industries use of the Joint Operating Committee is unique, and these currency issues are not something that are realized in other industries. And although I believe it is a fair assumption that the Oracle Fusion Applications management of currencies would be state of the art. That state of the art would be for other industries like retail and other industries that would not have the scenario that is noted in this post. That because of the oil and gas industries use of the Joint Operating Committee, currencies are an area that can be built upon substantially from the point of view of what and how the community could contribute to. In terms of peeling the onion we are only beginning to scratch the surface of the currency issues that are experienced daily in the oil and gas industry. These issues are what this community is after in terms of engineering solutions that identify and support innovative oil and gas producers.

For the industry to successfully provide for the consumers energy demands, it’s necessary to build the systems that identify and support the Joint Operating Committee. Building the Preliminary Specification is the focus of People, Ideas & Objects. Producers are encouraged to contact me in order to support our Revenue Model and begin their participation in these communities. Those individuals that are interested in joining People, Ideas & Objects can join me here and begin building the software necessary for the successful and innovative oil and gas industry.

Please note what Google+ provides us is the opportunity to prove that People, Ideas & Objects are committed to developing this community. That this is user developed software, not change that is driven from the top down. Join me on the People, Ideas & Objects Google+ Circle and begin building the community for the development of the Preliminary Specification. Email me here if you need an invite.

Thursday, September 08, 2011

The Preliminary Specification Part XX (PA Part VI)


In Canada at least, there is the accounting month and production month to deal with the delay in reporting of production volumes. The logistics of reporting volumetric information creates a lag of one month in the data so that July’s production data will be reported in the August accounting month. And I’m sure that everyone is familiar with the much loved amendment process for that volumetric data. The adjustment process never seems to end, I wonder if we’ll ever find a solution to it.

I think we have an interesting solution in People, Ideas & Objects. We talked about the material balance report the other day. While we noted the need to balance each report, and each input and output with the input and output of other material balance reports. And that each material balance report essentially represented a Joint Operating Committee. We also noted that we were deferring some of the discussion of our solution to the Accounting Voucher module, which we are still doing. However, today we should note that there are some problems that need to be addressed in the Partnership Accounting module that are a result of the adjustments to the material balance reports. That is that these material balance reports do shift and amend volumes of products around as time goes by and things are found to be incorrect. When the physical world is found to be inconsistent with the reporting, the reporting must change.

As I said I don’t want to get into into the solution today, other then noting that containing the problem within the domain of a Joint Operating Committee helps significantly. I want to add to the discussion of the material balance report by detailing the scope of the engineering problem that we have to solve. The first area of concern is that there are both daily and monthly volumes defining a period of time. Some of these volumes are “spec” vs. raw, products and by-products. Volumes are processed and gathered based on ownership and non-ownership of the processing facilities. There are in North America two, units of measures vs. metric reporting standards. How gas is nominated (daily) and marketed (annually). Finally the royalty holders and the ownership of the properties expect to earn something for their efforts. And each of these variables could generate their own amendment processes.

The myriad combinations of possibilities that happen within oil and gas have to be captured and handled within the systems that are used in oil and gas. That has not happened as of this date. The first aspect of solving this problem is to engineer the solution. Many have tried and have found their budgets to be to small for the job. Approaching this from the one producer perspective may seem like adequate funding, however, no one today is declaring success. If, as we have proposed in People, Ideas & Objects, aggregate the resources of the industry towards engineering the solution, this scope can be scaled, the costs to each producer will be incidental, and the results that each producer will realize will reflect the full scale of that software development effort.

The second aspect of the solution of this issue is to limit the scope of it. That is what we have done in People, Ideas & Objects. First by using the Joint Operating Committee as the key organizational construct of the innovative oil and gas producer. What we are doing is adopting the material balance report as a function of the Joint Operating Committee. Which in reality it is. If however we separate it from other Joint Operating Committee’s from an accounting perspective then we can begin to deal within just that JOC as its own autonomous legal entity, which it is. This discussion may initially not make sense until we get into the Accounting Voucher module, and we get into the final aspect of this solution which is where we encapsulate all of this reporting within the accounting system itself.

For the industry to successfully provide for the consumers energy demands, it’s necessary to build the systems that identify and support the Joint Operating Committee. Building the Preliminary Specification is the focus of People, Ideas & Objects. Producers are encouraged to contact me in order to support our Revenue Model and begin their participation in these communities. Those individuals that are interested in joining People, Ideas & Objects can join me here and begin building the software necessary for the successful and innovative oil and gas industry.

Please note what Google+ provides us is the opportunity to prove that People, Ideas & Objects are committed to developing this community. That this is user developed software, not change that is driven from the top down. Join me on the People, Ideas & Objects Google+ Circle and begin building the community for the development of the Preliminary Specification. Email me here if you need an invite.

Wednesday, September 07, 2011

The Preliminary Specification Part XIX (PA Part V)



I can see some of the accountants are starting to glaze over as we haven’t been paying them enough specific attention. So this post is to keep them enthused about the system and in attendance for a while longer. After all it is called the Partnership Accounting module. The topic that this post will cover off is accounting cut-offs, good, I see they’ve perked up all ready!

Producers have used a variety of mechanisms to determine a point in time when the working interest distribution of the Joint Operating Committee would change based on the financial performance or activity level of the property. These triggers have been used extensively in the past and I would suggest with the dependence on using Joint Ventures more in the oil and gas industry, these mechanisms will expand in their use and type. What is therefore needed is a reliable means in order to calculate and invoke the necessary changes to the working distribution at the time of the change. With People, Ideas & Objects we have the user community to define the level of control that producers want to build into the Preliminary Specification for these types of accounting cut-offs.

Whether it be an activity level trigger like a Before or After Casing Point Election where the lease holder has the opportunity to join the other working interest owners. The Partnership Accounting module will not necessarily provide any information to enable the decision makers any better decisions. However, it is still important to ensure that whatever decision is made, that the costs are allocated correctly before and after the decision point in the accounts. This is more of an accounting determination in current systems and if the community wants to automate this level of trigger by including the casing point election from the agreement from the Petroleum Lease Marketplace module. Then that is a possibility that can be easily accommodated in a community or user based systems development such as People, Ideas & Objects.

In some accounting cut off situations the point at which the change in working interest distribution is a result of a payout or penalty situation. These require the calculation and determination of when the property has achieved a prescribed financial performance. And then at that point the distribution would reflect the revised working interest. These calculations, determinations and revised distributions are to be automated in the People, Ideas & Objects application modules.

Since these impute performance based calculations. Expanding the performance reporting of the property is an area where I think the user community may have significant influence in building valuable and innovative reporting. Traditional reporting of Statement of Expenditures and Statement of Operations are standard requirements, and included in this systems development. However I’m sure the community of users that are built around the development of the Preliminary Specification are able to expand on this reporting and provide real value for the innovative producer. Recall that we have the Performance Evaluation and Analytics & Statistics modules to help in these areas.

For the industry to successfully provide for the consumers energy demands, it’s necessary to build the systems that identify and support the Joint Operating Committee. Building the Preliminary Specification is the focus of People, Ideas & Objects. Producers are encouraged to contact me in order to support our Revenue Model and begin their participation in these communities. Those individuals that are interested in joining People, Ideas & Objects can join me here and begin building the software necessary for the successful and innovative oil and gas industry.

Please note what Google+ provides us is the opportunity to prove that People, Ideas & Objects are committed to developing this community. That this is user developed software, not change that is driven from the top down. Join me on the People, Ideas & Objects Google+ Circle and begin building the community for the development of the Preliminary Specification. Email me here if you need an invite.

Tuesday, September 06, 2011

The Preliminary Specification Part XVIII (PA Part IV)


In yesterday’s post we discussed how the Joint Operating Committee was able to manage who was available to work for the property. The ability to pool the earth science and engineering resources from the partnership is something that is asserted as being a necessity in the future of the oil and gas industry. It should be stated here as well that the Military Command & Control Metaphor would not be limited to just the earth science and engineering disciplines, but would include everyone that is employed within the producer firms. So yesterday’s post would help us to deal with the who, now we need a mechanism to deal with what it is they will be doing.

The next part of the Partnership Accounting module deals with the operational side of how the field work within the Joint Operating Committee gets completed. Partnerships have always had AFE’s and operations budgets to deal with how much will be spent on an annual basis at a facility etc. And those continue in their traditional ways in the People, Ideas & Objects application. This post deals with how the Military Command Control & Metaphor can deploy the resources and authorize the spending of budgets in a manner that provides for the governance of the Joint Operating Committee. Simply we are talking about the Collaborative Work Order System that is part of the Partnership Accounting and other modules. (Compliance & Governance, Petroleum Lease Marketplace, Resource Marketplace modules).

Deployment of the people within the Joint Operating Committee, with the budgets that are agreed to are not enough to satisfy any interpretation of adequate governance. Proper authorization and responsibility needs to be assigned to ensure that plans and budgets are executed successfully. Without a work order system within the People, Ideas & Objects application the governance of the property would not be possible. The ways and means of successfully controlling costs and deploying the resources in a manner to complete the tasks at hand are what the work order system is designed to complete.

The manner in which the work order system will be deployed will be as follows. If someone asks you to work on a project, your first question should be is “what’s your work order number.” Then you immediately start charging your time to the code. It doesn’t matter if your an employee of the producer where the request came from, a partner in a Joint Operating Committee or a vendor or supplier. If they don’t have a work order number you hang up the phone. If they have a number, you key the work order number into your device or keyboard and continue talking. The work order system will aggregate and bill your time while working on that project. The details, chain of command, tasks and deliverables are all delivered within the work order system that was provided when you keyed the number.

Note that one of the benefits of this system is that no work gets done without a work order. Assigning budgets from either an AFE or from internally sourced overhead accounts will be a matter of selecting from budget accounts or from pre-approved allocations. The ability to approve a work order would therefore be at an appropriate level within the chain of command of the Joint Operating Committee designated through the Military Command & Control Metaphor (involving multiple producers). If a work order were to exceed its budget it is reasonable to assume that it was exceeding its AFE or account budget(s if it involved multiple producers) as well, which could trigger action from the Compliance & Governance module of the People, Ideas & Objects application, if that is what management desired or deemed necessary and established in that module.

For the industry to successfully provide for the consumers energy demands, it’s necessary to build the systems that identify and support the Joint Operating Committee. Building the Preliminary Specification is the focus of People, Ideas & Objects. Producers are encouraged to contact me in order to support our Revenue Model and begin their participation in these communities. Those individuals that are interested in joining People, Ideas & Objects can join me here and begin building the software necessary for the successful and innovative oil and gas industry.

Please note what Google+ provides us is the opportunity to prove that People, Ideas & Objects are committed to developing this community. That this is user developed software, not change that is driven from the top down. Join me on the People, Ideas & Objects Google+ Circle and begin building the community for the development of the Preliminary Specification. Email me here if you need an invite.

Monday, September 05, 2011

The Preliminary Specification Part XVII (PA Part III)


Picking up from our Friday discussion on the use of the material balance report in the Partnership Accounting module. We discussed the geographical and operational scope of the module and you may recall that it included the entire upstream oil and gas operations infrastructure. I want to highlight the importance of this discussion about the material balance report and note that it is to be continued on in a number of future posts in the Accounting Voucher module. I wanted to introduce the scope of the oil and gas operations that we are dealing with in the Partnership Accounting module, and deal with some of the partner accounting issues first before we get into the Accounting Voucher module which is the next module we will be reviewing.

The first Partnership Accounting issue is related to the fact that the earth science and engineering resources that are of such value in the industry are of a finite number. It is asserted here in People, Ideas & Objects (PI&O) that the “operator” classification may become a thing of the past as firms will find it difficult to staff the engineering and earth science capabilities necessary to meet all of the needs of their firm. PI&O enables producers in a Joint Operating Committee to pool their human resources to ensure they have the required technical needs. The pooling wont be a convenience or nice to have at the Joint Operating Committee level. It will be a necessity for the partners within a property to ensure that adequate staffing of the technical resources are secured. That it will become commonplace that each of the partners are contributing technical resources to the property.

If partners are contributing human resources to the Joint Operating Committee then the systems that the partners use should be able to cost these resources, charge them to the joint account, and have their costs recovered by the firm providing the resource. This also brings up the point that if the operator classification has ceased to be valid, the charges for operator overhead, where the recovery of these costs are realized today, the operator overhead charges should also cease to be valid. If three different producers are providing engineers and geologists to the Joint Operating Committee each should be able to recover the direct or standard costs of these individuals for the time they spent working on the property.

What has been included in the Draft Specification and will be discussed here later in the Preliminary Specification is the Military Command & Control Metaphor (MCCM). The MCCM provides a means in which the resources within the producer companies represented within the Joint Operating Committee, can organize a chain of command through the pooled resources to deal with the governance of the property. This governance along with the ability to cost these resources enables producers to allocate the finite earth science and engineering resources more efficiently. This also assumes that during the building of the Preliminary Specification, that the community is able to determine a somewhat standard chain of command for all members of the industry, standard rates for the people in the industry, and detailed job descriptions for the work that each role within that chain of command are responsible for.

For the industry to successfully provide for the consumers energy demands, it’s necessary to build the systems that identify and support the Joint Operating Committee. Building the Preliminary Specification is the focus of People, Ideas & Objects. Producers are encouraged to contact me in order to support our Revenue Model and begin their participation in these communities. Those individuals that are interested in joining People, Ideas & Objects can join me here and begin building the software necessary for the successful and innovative oil and gas industry.

Please note what Google+ provides us is the opportunity to prove that People, Ideas & Objects are committed to developing this community. That this is user developed software, not change that is driven from the top down. Join me on the People, Ideas & Objects Google+ Circle and begin building the community for the development of the Preliminary Specification. Email me here if you need an invite.

Sunday, September 04, 2011

McKinsey, On Getting IT Spending Right


How do we know when we’re spending the right amount of money on Information Technology. McKinsey have an answer to this difficult question in an article entitled “Getting IT Spending Right This Time”. Written in May 2003 I think this article has a few points that have stood the test of time and are pertinent today.

People, Ideas & Objects unquestionably are a technology company. However we are focused on bringing business solutions to market. Solutions like using the Joint Operating Committee as the key organizational construct of the innovative oil and gas producer. We are not selling technology for technology sake. We are selling innovative business solutions. And maybe most importantly, we are solution providers, not change agents. We feel there is a big difference and it appears McKinsey feels the same.

Compounding the challenge is the tendency to view technology, first, as a panacea and, then, after the hype proves unrealistic, as anathema. The experience of the leaders shows that new technology alone won’t boost productivity. Productivity gains come from managerial innovation: fundamental changes in the way companies deliver products or services. Companies generate innovations, in fat years or lean, by deploying new technology along with improved processes and capabilities.

This next quote from McKinsey brings up an important consideration. That the investment in IT in itself will not provide the solution to the problem. There are other investments in the underlying business that need to be considered in order to align the business with the IT investments. What we feel we are doing with the developments at People, Ideas & Objects are aligning the IT developments with the oil and gas business. The Joint Operating Committee is systemic throughout the global oil and gas industry. It is the legal, financial, operational decision making, cultural, communication, innovation and strategic framework of the oil and gas industry. We are identifying, supporting and aligning these frameworks with the compliance and governance frameworks of the hierarchy to achieve a speed, innovation and accountability for the innovative oil and gas producer. We are moving the systems towards the way the industry operates. Not attempting to move the industry towards some theoretical Information Technological model.

For companies competing on the basis of IT-enabled advances, knowing when to jump onto the innovation racetrack can be as important as how. Timing and sequencing, at their simplest, ensure that all prerequisite investments are in place before new IT initiatives are launched. Particularly in the retail sector, our research highlighted the importance of multiple tiers of investment, each laying the foundation for the next. In general merchandising, for example, before companies can implement sophisticated planning applications, a certain level of competence in warehouse- and transport-management systems is needed to get goods to customers.

So yes we should make these investments in preparation for the implementation of People, Ideas & Objects systems. But those should be to ensure that the community first of all captures the correct ways and means of industry operations in the Preliminary Specification. And that we continue to ensure that the industries needs are met by the technology, not the technologies needs are met by the industry.

For the industry to successfully provide for the consumers energy demands, it’s necessary to build the systems that identify and support the Joint Operating Committee. Building the Preliminary Specification is the focus of People, Ideas & Objects. Producers are encouraged to contact me in order to support our Revenue Model and begin their participation in these communities. Those individuals that are interested in joining People, Ideas & Objects can join me here and begin building the software necessary for the successful and innovative oil and gas industry.

Please note what Google+ provides us is the opportunity to prove that People, Ideas & Objects are committed to developing this community. That this is user developed software, not change that is driven from the top down. Join me on the People, Ideas & Objects Google+ Circle and begin building the community for the development of the Preliminary Specification. Email me here if you need an invite.

Saturday, September 03, 2011

McKinsey on Productivity


Its the weekend and we have two McKinsey articles to fill in the time with some topical discussion. This first article is on productivity and how we need to accelerate, through innovation, our productivity to ensure job growth continues.

For the industry to successfully provide for the consumers energy demands, it’s necessary to build the systems that identify and support the Joint Operating Committee. Building the Preliminary Specification is the focus of People, Ideas & Objects. Producers are encouraged to contact me in order to support our Revenue Model and begin their participation in these communities. Those individuals that are interested in joining People, Ideas & Objects can join me here and begin building the software necessary for the successful and innovative oil and gas industry.

Please note what Google+ provides us is the opportunity to prove that People, Ideas & Objects are committed to developing this community. That this is user developed software, not change that is driven from the top down. Join me on the People, Ideas & Objects Google+ Circle and begin building the community for the development of the Preliminary Specification. Email me here if you need an invite.

Friday, September 02, 2011

The Preliminary Specification Part XVI (PA Part II)


One of the difficulties in discussing the Partnership Accounting module in the manner that I am is that the discussion is limited to the understanding of one person. Although I have a good understanding of how oil and gas operates it is limited to one persons view. The purpose in these developments is to have the community develop the Preliminary Specification and therefore have the full perspective of all aspects of how the industry operates. This limitation, although obvious in the other modules, is most evident in the Partnership Accounting module.

When we talk about the scope of operations that would be managed under the Partnership Accounting module I would say that it includes just everything. Simply the cut-off would be the inlet or outlet to any refinery. Therefore the total scope of any upstream oil and gas operation. Let me be more specific about that from the point of view of geography and type of operation managed by the People, Ideas & Objects application.

If we look at the North American oil and gas infrastructure we see a variety of oil and gas installations designed to serve both producers and consumers of oil and gas. Wells, gathering systems, gas plants, pipelines, storage facilities etc. At each point along these systems there may be additional deliveries of product, or sales of product or products inventoried. What seems to be an obvious and simple business becomes incredibly complex when it realized that each asset may be owned by a Joint Operating Committee itself and hold product on behalf of owners of other Joint Operating Committee’s. This summary glosses over the incredible complexity of this business when the volume of transactions that occur in these businesses make it an important part of the oil and gas operation.

Critical to controlling the business is the material balance report that is part of the Preliminary Specification. It is the central document that so much of the subsequent activity is based upon. If someone is to be charged for storage of butane for example, or if someone is to be charged a marketing fee for delivery of product to a customer. Or simply if a sale of a raw gas stream is deemed to have occurred at the well head. The material balance report captures these transactions and initiates the flow of documents that need to be generated. It is these documents that also need to be captured and generated in the People, Ideas & Objects Preliminary and Other Specifications. To name them all would require some understanding and consensus amongst the community which would include the producers.

To state as simply as this that the scope of the Partnership Accounting module captures all of these activities for all of these facilities is its purpose. Each material balance report must balance. And each reports inputs and outputs balance to other material balance reports. (This will be an important consideration in the upcoming Accounting Voucher.) Many of these reports are from one company to another.

As we explore the Partnership Accounting module further we see the reasons why we are taking such a broad scope of operations into considerations. It would be an understatement to state that this area has been poorly served by IT. To approach it from a global perspective that includes production operations, accounting and the other areas that depend on this information would be “ideal”, however, the complexity of the business has always been in the way. The engineering of software has never been available to approach the type of problem that this area presents. I think it exists now. And I think that the Partnership Accounting and Accounting Voucher modules of People, Ideas & Objects provides the vision of how this engineering solution solves this problem.

For the industry to successfully provide for the consumers energy demands, it’s necessary to build the systems that identify and support the Joint Operating Committee. Building the Preliminary Specification is the focus of People, Ideas & Objects. Producers are encouraged to contact me in order to support our Revenue Model and begin their participation in these communities. Those individuals that are interested in joining People, Ideas & Objects can join me here and begin building the software necessary for the successful and innovative oil and gas industry.

Please note what Google+ provides us is the opportunity to prove that People, Ideas & Objects are committed to developing this community. That this is user developed software, not change that is driven from the top down. Join me on the People, Ideas & Objects Google+ Circle and begin building the community for the development of the Preliminary Specification. Email me here if you need an invite.