The Preliminary Specification Part CCCXXII (AV Part XVIII)

We discussed the Material Balance Report in the Partnership Accounting module a few days ago. The overall discussion regarding the Material Balance Report can be aggregated by selecting its label. What we want to discuss today is the specific attributes of the Material Balance Report in the Accounting Voucher of the Preliminary Specification.

Simply the process of closing the Accounting Voucher will need to consider not only the balancing of the debits and credits from a financial point of view. They will also need to ensure that the material, system and partnership volumes reported in the Material Balance Report are also in balance. Without these systems in balance, the Accounting Voucher will not close.

This imposes another rather strict provision on the quality of the information that is accepted into the People, Ideas & Objects Accounting Voucher module. Precluding the acceptance of a voucher due to the inability to balance a volumetric requirement holds the system up for what could be a fairly common occurrence. What if the volumetric information is unavailable in a timely fashion? What if the information is part of the normal amendment process? Then we are left with the traditional accounting methods of dealing with these types of issues. An accrual of the volumes in order to achieve the balancing necessary should be able to be processed in the current month. These accruals would then be automatically reversed in the following months Material Balance Report. What is different from existing systems is that we are enforcing the systems to balance. Not just inputting key variables, imposing the facts of what actually happened at the facility, or if the facility is subject to a comprehensive Construction, Ownership and Operation agreement, what is agreed to.

The difference may be subtle but the implication is significant. Locking the volumetric balancing, over the long term, into the Accounting Voucher itself enforces the system to follow the volumes as produced and processed. Once this is achieved a certain level of integrity is achieved and then the automation of detailed processes based on those volumes can begin.

Tomorrow we will begin with our fifth pass through the Research & Capabilities 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 (private circle, accessible by members only) and begin building the community for the development of the Preliminary Specification.

The Preliminary Specification is intended to outline our general product direction. It is intended for information purposes only, and may not be incorporated into any contract. It is not a commitment to deliver any material, code, or functionality, and should not be relied upon in making purchasing decisions. The development, release, and timing of any features or functionality described for People, Ideas & Objects products remains at the sole discretion of People, Ideas & Objects.

The Preliminary Specification Part CCCXXI (AV Part XVII)

One thing that we have not been able to discuss regarding the Accounting Voucher module of the Preliminary Specification, is the module is used for entry of all transactions for accounting purposes. Whether it is through the Material Balance Report, which is encapsulated within its own voucher, or a simple accounts payable voucher, everything that will be entered into the People, Ideas & Objects system is through an Accounting Voucher. And there will be different types of vouchers for different types of charges. Each with their own voucher series numbering. (For example all Material Balance Reports will be 200,000 series.) This also imposing somewhat of a strict Prepared By and Approved By process where everything that is entered into the system has high levels of accuracy, timeliness and authorization. This is somewhat contrary to the open and freewheeling style of data entry in Oracle Fusion Applications Financial Management Suite of modules. We will need to enhance their applications methods of accepting our view of Accounting Vouchers and the way they work.

Business is also in many cases, repetitive. The ability to reuse an Accounting Voucher as a template for subsequent months should be a feature of the People, Ideas & Objects Preliminary Specification. This could include the use of firm wide forms such as expense accounts and petty cash. What is being intimated here is that the user interface of the Accounting Voucher needs to be highly user friendly. With high levels of intelligence and multiple ways of interacting with it.

Some of the Accounting Vouchers will be open to charges from multiple producers represented in the Joint Operating Committees that your producer firm is a participant in. We have discussed this in other posts that the revenue, capital and operations of each of the Joint Operating Committees accounts are open to the direct debit and credit charges of all of the participants in the JOC. This is a result of the pooling concept that is a basic assumption of the People, Ideas & Objects Preliminary Specification.

The pooling concept has been developed as a replacement to the “operator” designation that currently exists. The ability for each producer to have the just-in-time capabilities available for all the properties they manage requires, on an industry wide basis, to have unused and unusable earth science and engineering capabilities. The ability to pool these critical resources from participating producers into the Joint Operating Committee releases these unused and unusable capabilities. The pooling concept also implies that some producers will provide other resources to the property in disproportionate amounts to their working interests. All producers need to contribute the skills, knowledge, experience and ideas that they have in an innovative oil and gas industry. Therefore for each of these producers the need to have the ability to charge for these resources to the joint account in the current month for administrative ease and to unleash these capabilities is necessary. All charges are subject to the AFE or Work Orders budget requirements and cost control remains the domain of the Joint Operating Committees.

There is also the producers need to earn a return on their investment in their capabilities which is an aspect regarding the pooling concept. We have detailed the ability for a producer to offset the costs of their earth science and engineering capabilities, and their development, to the various Joint Operating Committees that they participate in. With the expected increase in the earth science and engineering effort in each barrel of oil produced. And the difficulty in increasing the supply of geologists and engineers to meet the demands of the business. The pooling concept was also developed within the People, Ideas & Objects application to deal with the supply and demand of these finite technical resources. It is within the Accounting Voucher of the Preliminary Specification that the automation of the charging for these resources to the joint account enables the producer to earn a return on their investment in their earth science and engineering capabilities.

Needless to say we will be relying heavily on the Oracle Fusion Middleware layers Business Process Management Suite to provide us with this functionality in the Accounting Voucher. The base level General Ledger, Accounts Payable and Accounts Receivable are there and we need to build these specific functions within the 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 (private circle, accessible by members only) and begin building the community for the development of the Preliminary Specification.

The Preliminary Specification is intended to outline our general product direction. It is intended for information purposes only, and may not be incorporated into any contract. It is not a commitment to deliver any material, code, or functionality, and should not be relied upon in making purchasing decisions. The development, release, and timing of any features or functionality described for People, Ideas & Objects products remains at the sole discretion of People, Ideas & Objects. 

The Preliminary Specification Part CCCXX (AV Part XVI)

The Accounting Voucher presents some difficult conceptual problems that I think I have begun to identify. The most difficult is the concept of designing transactions and what purpose it fills in the Preliminary Specification. This post will be a summary of designing transactions that will hopefully clarify what it is that we are trying to accomplish in the Accounting Voucher.

Essentially we have discussed the detailed information that the service industry providers will provide in the “Vendor / Supplier Contact Database”. This will include general contact information that everyone is familiar with however there are three important distinctions regarding this information. One is it’s maintained by the vendor / supplier themselves. Two it is located in the People, Ideas & Objects Preliminary Specification. And three it contains details which includes their banking information, their field staff and representatives and their calendars, which are able to be committed to projects of specific producers. Producers understand that having the field staff committed to their projects reflects quality, and in turn reflects additional costs for that commitment.

Now this situation provides the opportunity to define some service industry systems integration that would be complementary to the Accounting Voucher of the People, Ideas & Objects application. The service industry provider could have their people populated into the Work Order system that we discussed earlier. Or, the Purchase Order system could also be used as a means of direct communication between the producers represented in the Joint Operating Committee in the Accounting Voucher, and the service industry providers. As well as other interfaces.

Therefore, according to the research of Professor Richard Langlois the transaction costs will be an immaterial item in comparison between suppliers and producers or Joint Operating Committees. That is to say the cost of processing these transactions will be the same in all instances. And People, Ideas & Objects have asserted that they will be immaterial due to the application of Information Technologies. However the differentiating costs between suppliers and producers and JOC’s will be the costs of coordinating the market. Making the Accounting Voucher module a critical tool in the ability to offer the producer firm and JOC the most profitable means of oil and gas operations.

... while transaction cost consideration undoubtedly explain why firms come into existence, once most production is carried out within firms and most transactions are firm-firm transactions and not factor-factor transactions, the level of transaction costs will be greatly reduced and the dominant factor determining the institutional structure of production will in general no longer be transaction costs but the relative costs of different firms in organizing particular activities. p 19

and

Here again, I think the problem is one of conceptual imprecision. It is perfectly common, and often unobjectionable, to contrast a market and an organization, that is, to contrast the institution called a market and the institution called an organization (such as, notably, a firm). But the opposite of “organization” in the abstract sense is not “market” but disorganization. More helpfully, the opposite of conscious organization is unplanned or spontaneous coordination. In this sense the market-organization spectrum (and similar spectra one could imagine) are arguably orthogonal to the planned-spontaneous spectrum. One could well wonder, as I have (Langlois 1995), whether large organizations do not in fact grow far more as the unplanned consequence of many individual decisions than as the result of the conscious planning of any individual or small group of individuals. And it is certainly the case that, as Alfred Marshall understood, both firms and markets “are structures for promoting the growth of knowledge, and both require conscious organization” (Loasby 1990, p. 120).

In this day and age, with such large distances, geographic, size, language and other, between vendors and producers leaving the coordination of the markets to “spontaneous order” is asking too much of human ingenuity. Particularly with the focus of the industry to a further division of labor and specialization, where the risk and reward of oil and gas operations are so great, market coordination or transaction design will be a critical and necessary task to be carried out. Each operation may be the result of more people being involved. Once again it is not from an operations point of view that we are attempting to influence the operation, it is from the business point of view. How will the transactions and business be captured in such a manner that the firm and Joint Operating Committee are incurring the lowest possible costs of the most efficient methods of these business transactions. That is what is intended when we talk about “transaction design” in the Accounting Voucher.

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 (private circle, accessible by members only) and begin building the community for the development of the Preliminary Specification.

The Preliminary Specification is intended to outline our general product direction. It is intended for information purposes only, and may not be incorporated into any contract. It is not a commitment to deliver any material, code, or functionality, and should not be relied upon in making purchasing decisions. The development, release, and timing of any features or functionality described for People, Ideas & Objects products remains at the sole discretion of People, Ideas & Objects.

The Preliminary Specification Part CCCXIX (PA Part XXXIX)

One of the key differences in the use of the Joint Operating Committee is the ability to use the “Decentralized Production” model and discard the “High Throughput Production” model that has been traditionally used throughout the industry. When the partnership represented in the Joint Operating Committee is able to agree, and subsequently decides to implement the plans to scale back production due to commodity price declines. Having the production and overhead costs associated with that production to also decline is a necessary part of the innovative oil and gas producers capabilities. People, Ideas & Objects Preliminary Specification provides this opportunity to remove the marginal production from the market until market prices recover. Allowing the producer to limit their losses and indirectly control the prices that the markets attain.

Managing price declines through reductions in capital expenditures is a very blunt instrument. The impact of reducing your spending plans on the natural gas prices might make changes years from now, however, the need to change the natural gas prices in the current market is sometimes necessary. Having the ability to agree and curtail production through the Joint Operating Committee is something that is possible today, yet it is not done due to the bureaucratic ways within the “operator”. Who is going to make the decision. Let me be clear that the need to reduce capital expenditures in a market that is similar to the current natural gas marketplace is sometimes necessary. What is also required is the need to have the ability to curtail the production. And to have this done on an industry wide basis.

Through the specialization and division of labor that we discussed yesterday. The costs associated with the production and royalty accounting service providers, as with all the service providers, is dependent on there being production. Without any production the overhead costs of production and royalty accounting costs are not incurred. Leaving the costs of capital as the only cost that is incurred during times of shut-in production for the innovative oil and gas producer. And if it can be found that there are ways in which the Joint Operating Committee can apply new capabilities through the Knowledge & Learning module, to reduce the overall costs of production, then the shut-in production might be able to return to production sooner due to having the lower costs of production.

The Partnership Accounting module has a role in this process. First to determine if the production has become nominal and should be a candidate to be shut-in until market prices return to a higher level. Operational decisions of this nature are made at the Joint Operating Committee and each partner will be receiving the same bad news regarding their property from their statements in the Partnership Accounting module. Included in the monthly reporting for each Joint Operating Committee is a complete set of financial statements of the property. These include Balance Sheet, Income Statement and Statement of Changes. Recall that banking may be represented as a claim against a specific property. And please note that because the royalties are unique to each producer only the partners share of these reports are calculated. These financial statements will include the detailed overhead charges and other accounts that were once charged as overhead items. In all, the Joint Operating Committee looks more like a stand alone enterprise, which is what it truly is.

When these reports show that the property is marginal the decision can be made through the “Marginal Production Threshold Interface” of the Petroleum Lease Marketplace module. There the partners in the Joint Operating Committee can make the decision to curtail the production. The subsequent reports through the Partnership Accounting module would show what would be required in terms of commodity prices and volumes of production to make the property profitable again. Looking at this situation in terms of what new capabilities were available through the various working interest partners, as represented in the Knowledge & Learning module of the Preliminary Specification, could trigger some additional work be done in the Joint Operating Committee to enhance its profitability and return it to production sooner.

Tomorrow we will start our fifth pass through the Accounting Voucher 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 (private circle, accessible by members only) and begin building the community for the development of the Preliminary Specification.

The Preliminary Specification is intended to outline our general product direction. It is intended for information purposes only, and may not be incorporated into any contract. It is not a commitment to deliver any material, code, or functionality, and should not be relied upon in making purchasing decisions. The development, release, and timing of any features or functionality described for People, Ideas & Objects products remains at the sole discretion of People, Ideas & Objects. 

The Preliminary Specification Part CCCXVIII (PA Part XXXVIII)

Today’s topic of discussion is about one of our favorite tools, specialization and the division of labor. We have used these to carve up the traditional oil and gas producer to a slimmed down earth science and engineering focused team. It is here in the Partnership Accounting module that the implications of many of these changes are managed and dealt with. It is also here where we have the Oracle Financial Management Suite of modules open to providing accounting service providers access to the producers and Joint Operating Committees systems to process their data.

The reason we are using specialization and the division of labor so extensively in the Preliminary Specification is that it is the one proven method of expanding the economic output of a given resource base. By reorganizing the accounting, land, production and exploration administration functions. And by enabling the producer to specialize on their earth science and engineering capabilities, more can be done from the same resources. And we are not talking about small changes, we are talking about very large volumes of increases that are possible as a result of relying on these tools.

We have discussed the need to have a variety of accounting service providers who replace the traditional accounting department in the oil and gas concern. Having all of the capabilities, from an accounting point of view, necessary to meet the needs of the producer is difficult to do. Possibly Exxon can achieve this scale. The rest of the industry needs to make do with what they have and in the complex accounting regulatory environment that exists, that may be an unwise strategy. The ability to hire accounting service providers who specialize in certain domains to undertake the specific tasks of the producers is the manner that specialization and the division of labor suggests that we approach the problem. The two examples we have used are the production accounting service provider who is located at the gas plant, and the royalty accounting service provider who has specialized in Texas state royalty administration. Other examples could include tax administration, accounts payable processing, accounts receivable collection, SEC regulations and many more. The volume in the number of service providers generally offsetting the need to source these services within the firm at some point. Assuming healthy markets for these service providers, a reasonable assumption given that producers are no longer directly employing accountants, an abundance of service providers would be available to meet the demands of the producer.

There is another assumption that is made in the People, Ideas & Objects Preliminary Specification regarding specialization and the division of labor. And that is the division of labor between computers and humans. I suggest we cease operating in large part, from an accounting point of view, as quasi computers and let the computers handle the work that computers do best. Storage and process management are their domain and the sooner we leave these tasks to computers I think the better off we will be. The things that we are better at are the decisions, the ideas, the innovations, the change management, the planning, the creative process among many other things. These are the elements of our work that we should be focusing on and leave the computers to do the work that they do best.

Access privileges regarding these service providers is therefore a must have in order to make this situation productive and worthwhile for the producer and the service provider. The Security & Access Control module considers these remote access considerations and the user community should be involved in making certain that this need becomes reality. Don’t come to me after the Preliminary Specification and say the security system is not strong enough, this is your system and you have to make it what you need for it to be. The access requirements of the service provider would be limited to their domain of specialization. For example if the royalty accounting service provider was working only in Texas then they could be limited to those accounts and Joint Operating Committees that are pertinent to their domain. The CFO of the producer firm, in the process of hiring the service providers, would enable the access to the service provider. This contract could then be managed on the basis of a service level agreement and provide both parties with a clear understanding of what is required.

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 (private circle, accessible by members only) and begin building the community for the development of the Preliminary Specification.

The Preliminary Specification is intended to outline our general product direction. It is intended for information purposes only, and may not be incorporated into any contract. It is not a commitment to deliver any material, code, or functionality, and should not be relied upon in making purchasing decisions. The development, release, and timing of any features or functionality described for People, Ideas & Objects products remains at the sole discretion of People, Ideas & Objects. 

The Preliminary Specification Part CCCXVII (PA Part XXXVII)

Our discussion turns to the Work Order system contained within the Partnership Accounting module of the Preliminary Specification. We have different elements of the Work Order system working within the Partnership Accounting module. One is to ensure that no work is being done within the producer firm or Joint Operating Committee that is not authorized by a Work Order. And the other is the ability to form working groups with other producers, who may or may not be partners, to study and research areas of interest. Both of these elements contain similar objectives of cost control and reporting, however have differing stakeholders.

With respect to the internal reporting you want to make sure that all of your staff are charging their time to an authorized Work Order. A Work Order can source its budget from either an internal departmental account or an AFE and be for any purpose that the originator desires. Each employee needs to ensure that their time is being charged to a Work Order at all times.

The other element of the Work Order system involves multiple producers working together in a project or working group. These are formed to study or research items of interest in the geological or engineering disciplines and are critical to an innovative oil and gas industry. The difficulty in these working groups is the complexity and cumbersome administration in dealing with the accounting for them. This has led to the situation where few working groups are being participating in. The industry needs an abundance of these working groups to increase the knowledge and understanding of the underlying sciences and therefore we need to remove the bureaucracy from impeding their being formed.

People, Ideas & Objects will develop an interface that enables the producers, who may have had no working relationship, to form and contribute any manner of consideration towards a working group. As long as the producer has a budget in which they can allocate resources to the working group the interface will enable the producer to commit to the other producers these resources and the working group can form. The key to the working groups formation is to have the system capture the “what and how” of the agreement when it is formed, and not try to recreate it two months down the road.

What we will use to develop the Work Order system will be the Oracle Fusion Middleware Business Process Management Suite. It will provide us with the ability to work with the user groups to detail all the permutations and combinations of what these working groups might look like. From there we will be able to develop the application to meet the needs of the user groups and make sure that the user interface provides the working group with the ability to capture the deal as it is conceived. This will also involve the use of the Oracle Fusion Applications Financial Management Suite General Ledger, Accounts Payable, and Accounts Receivable which are already part of the Preliminary Specification.

Whether it is an internal or external study, the innovative oil and gas producer needs to participate in increasing their knowledge and understanding of the underlying sciences. We learned that “knowledge begets capability, and capability begets action”. How these working groups are formed is the easy part. It's the bureaucracy that gets in the way. We need to eliminate that bureaucracy with these systems and have the sciences expand.

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 (private circle, accessible by members only) and begin building the community for the development of the Preliminary Specification.

The Preliminary Specification is intended to outline our general product direction. It is intended for information purposes only, and may not be incorporated into any contract. It is not a commitment to deliver any material, code, or functionality, and should not be relied upon in making purchasing decisions. The development, release, and timing of any features or functionality described for People, Ideas & Objects products remains at the sole discretion of People, Ideas & Objects.

The Preliminary Specification Part CCCXVI (PA Part XXXVI)

It has been the tradition in the oil and gas industry that people who work in the field are charged directly to the Joint Operating Committee or joint account. When people are located in the head offices, such as the geologists and engineers, they are covered by the overhead allowances that the operator is able to charge to the joint account. What is different in the People, Ideas & Objects Preliminary Specification is that we have addressed the long term shortage of the technical resources of the engineers and geologists. We have done this through what we call the pooling of these resources by the participants in the Joint Operating Committee. Requiring that we charge these resources directly to the Joint Operating Committee irrespective of which producer firm the resource originated from. This enables the costs of the operation to be accurately captured, the producer to recover their costs and the resources needed for the property to be sourced from any of the producer firms that has the appropriate geologists or engineers for the task.

In the Partnership Accounting module we will have the ability of any producer within a Joint Operating Committee to charge a resource for the hours they have spent on a task. We have also developed the means in which the Joint Operating Committee can manage these resources once they have been made available. It is here when the Military Command & Control Metaphor (MCCM) comes into play that these resources are adopted when and where they are required. There has to be someone who is designated in command of the work that is being done and the resource can be put to good use immediately. Otherwise some producers would just charge their staff out all the time. Review of the Security & Access Control module will show the extensive use of the Oracle Identity and other products that are used there. These are the base in which we will build the MCCM.

In addition to the Oracle Fusion Application Financial Management Suite General Ledger, Accounts Payable and Accounts Receivable modules we will be using the Oracle Fusion Application Human Capital Management Global H & R Payroll module. There the costs of the resources can be billed out to the joint account at their actual costs. Technically it will need to be worked out how each producer is able to charge the joint account for these costs. However, that does not present too difficult a task when we have the control being handled through the Joint Operating Committee and the MCCM.

The ability of each producer to have the just-in-time capabilities to deal with all of their earth science and engineering demands in-house is diminishing. Building individual silos of capabilities was possible when there was an abundance of these resources. Now with a diminishing supply the ability for each producer to maintain their own silo creates unused and unusable industry wide capacity that needs to be unleashed. This is also creating overall shortages of these key resources. With this proposed solution, and with each producer pooling their resources, this unused capacity is freed up and used enabling the overall industry capacity to increase from the same resource base. The impediment to this happening is the ability for the costs to follow the producers commitments, and command & control of the Joint Operating Committee. By using these technologies, in this manner, the innovative oil and gas producers and Joint Operating Committees are able to pool their technical resources and increase the volume of work conducted within 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 (private circle, accessible by members only) and begin building the community for the development of the Preliminary Specification.

The Preliminary Specification is intended to outline our general product direction. It is intended for information purposes only, and may not be incorporated into any contract. It is not a commitment to deliver any material, code, or functionality, and should not be relied upon in making purchasing decisions. The development, release, and timing of any features or functionality described for People, Ideas & Objects products remains at the sole discretion of People, Ideas & Objects. 

The Preliminary Specification Part CCCXV (PA Part XXXV)

Let's turn now to the comprehensive nature of the accounting that is done in the Partnership Accounting module of the Preliminary Specification. What ever kind of accounting that is done in the Preliminary Specification, whether it be for the producer firm or the Joint Operating Committee, the Partnership Accounting and Accounting Voucher are the two modules that capture everything the accountant user will need. From the General Ledger to the Financial Statements of the producer and Joint Operating Committees everything a user needs, from management accounting to financial accounting will be here.

To provide for this we will be using the Oracle Fusion Application Financial Management Suite of modules as the base of the Preliminary Specification. Included within that are the General Ledger, Accounts Payable and Accounts Receivable modules that will be used extensively. It will be here in the Partnership Accounting module that the People, Ideas & Objects user community will determine the need for the other Oracle Financial Management Suite modules of Payments & Collections, Asset Management and Cash & Expense Management.

It is important to stress the users involvement in determining the input, process management, function and output of this module. As with all of the modules within the Preliminary Specification this is your opportunity to define what it is that you need and want in terms of Information Technology in your firm. This should be looked upon as a once in a lifetime opportunity and there will be little opportunity to join the community once the Preliminary Specification begins. The time to participate is now, if you can see value in the development of the People, Ideas & Objects systems then you should begin the process and start to participate as soon as possible.

Outside of the core Oracle modules we will be doing a significant amount of development that will be key to the oil and gas industry. This will require us to drop down into the Oracle Fusion Middleware layer and access what is a very elaborate Java EE server. This will be used to provide the revenue and royalties systems that will build off of the Material Balance Report. Recall that the Material Balance Report is also being crafted at this layer. Management of the firm and Joint Operating Committees capital and operating costs. And of course the revenues, royalties, capital and operating will all have the capacity to be reported in gross and net values. Users may have extensive ideas as to how they want their data to be displayed, and they may want the traditional formats like the Statement of Operations and Statement of Expenditures. We have also talked about the royalty systems during the discussion in the Petroleum Lease Marketplace module and that discussion would apply to the Partnership Accounting module as well. It would be the determination of the user community if those calculations are done here or there. And the Gas Cost Allowances and how they are potentially unique for each owner in the Joint Operating Committee, and as such make the royalties unique for each producer.

As we will see in the Compliance & Governance module there are extensive capabilities in the Oracle Fusion Applications that enable the Balance Sheet, Income Statement and Statement of Changes in Financial Position automate the process of compliance. Updates to the regulations are done through Oracle and affect the Financial Statements that are submitted to the regulators. Such is the nature of dealing with automated systems. All in all providing the producer an automated system from field data capture to financial statement is a broad scope, and one that should motivate everyone to participate in this worthwhile endeavor.

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 (private circle, accessible by members only) and begin building the community for the development of the Preliminary Specification. 

The Preliminary Specification is intended to outline our general product direction. It is intended for information purposes only, and may not be incorporated into any contract. It is not a commitment to deliver any material, code, or functionality, and should not be relied upon in making purchasing decisions. The development, release, and timing of any features or functionality described for People, Ideas & Objects products remains at the sole discretion of People, Ideas & Objects. 

The Preliminary Specification Part CCCXIV (PA Part XXXIV)

Staying on the topic of the Material Balance Report and the technical risk that is associated with that element of the Partnership Accounting module of the Preliminary Specification. We find that the access privileges to give the right people, the right information at the right time would be nightmarish in their scope. I agree, particularly from the point of view of having the participating producers who are members of the Joint Operating Committee reviewing the information contained in the Material Balance Reports. In addition with our zeal to have the industry operate more efficiently we have opened these interfaces to the production and royalty accounting service providers who need access to the Material Balance Report to do their job on behalf of the producers in the Joint Operating Committee. Why can’t we just print out a Statement of Operations for each producer and be done with it?

In answer to that last question, its automation. With so much of the production process subject to amendment, much time and effort is expended in making the corresponding changes in the subsystems that rely on the processes in the Material Balance Report. If the Material Balance Report reflect fact, although it would still be subject to multiple amendments, then the subsystems that operate off of the Material Balance Report could use its information to compile their data. Royalty volumes might change, and the royalty calculations would change as a result. All without user involvement, etc. As long as the Material Balance Report remained in system, partnership and material balance, everything that depends on that data can be relied upon from a volumetric point of view. Any of the volumetric amendments would be populated through the system immediately.

To address the access privileges issue we should turn to the People, Ideas & Objects Technical Vision. There are four technologies that make up the Technical Vision and they include Java, IPv6, Asynchronous Process Management and Wireless Networks. What these technologies provide, specifically Java and IPv6, is unlimited addressing of unique named spaces. So although the number of variables in terms of Joint Operating Committees and the number of people that will have access to them will grow to a tremendous size, all of the systems will be capable of handling the unique nature of each individual requirement. In other words the base capacity of the technologies can handle the demands.

What we have also learned is that the information contained within a Joint Operating Committee is not of the confidential nature to any one producer. The reserves, accounting, strategy formulation and internal discussions of the producer firm are held within the firm and are not party to the Joint Operating Committee. The only information that is held in the Joint Operating Committee is of a semi-private nature that is shared amongst the partnership. Information such as production, costs, well file and other data that is usually available from public sources as well. Therefore, having the producer firms, and the service providers accessing the Material Balance Report does not expose any one of the producers to any material risk of any highly confidential information.

Turning to the Oracle Fusion Middleware stack we look at the Business Process Management Suite to help us understand how the Material Balance Report can be built. How we can take a unit of production through the various gathering and functional units on to the ultimate point of sale. Having the balancing of each functional unit consider that unit of production and the activities associated with it. Noting for the producer or the owner of the gas plant the costs and revenues of processing and gathering, and the disposition of the product to the contract it is sold under. Each of these processes and activities triggering actions within the General Ledger and creating an invoice and sales records for both the producer, the plant owners and the holder of the gas contract. Automation of the process based on reliable volumetric facts.

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 (private circle, accessible by members only) and begin building the community for the development of the Preliminary Specification.

The Preliminary Specification is intended to outline our general product direction. It is intended for information purposes only, and may not be incorporated into any contract. It is not a commitment to deliver any material, code, or functionality, and should not be relied upon in making purchasing decisions. The development, release, and timing of any features or functionality described for People, Ideas & Objects products remains at the sole discretion of People, Ideas & Objects. 

The Preliminary Specification Part CCCXIII (PA Part XXXIII)

Yesterday we discussed how the Material Balance Report would be built using the Oracle Fusion Middleware layer of the Oracle stack of technologies. The Material Balance Report in the Partnership Accounting module ties together so many of the internal processes of the producer firm and Joint Operating Committee. The production and royalty accounting, sales contracts, nominations, to name just a few, all of which have to match the throughput of the facility or the point of production, and all have to match to other systems within the firm or Joint Operating Committee. Any change in one system will have to be dealt with by designating some other action to bring the system back into balance. The Material Balance Report is a key part of how the production and operations of the oil and gas industry manages their production and product delivery. And to achieve this, it assumes that the industry is willing to actively participate in the development of People, Ideas & Objects Preliminary Specification.

Technically this is one of the more difficult areas of the Preliminary Specification in terms of risk. It would also be one of the areas where value would be gained by having the production properly accounted for in an automated fashion. Should this be done? That depends on the user community and their determination through the remaining part of the Preliminary Specification. A large part of that community is the producer community itself. If the producers see value in this then they will have to be the ones that push through and make the Preliminary Specification real. I can only write about what is possible. And the Material Balance Report as I have expressed here is technically possible.

The next twenty years in the oil and gas industry will be the most dramatic we have ever seen. The demand for energy will ensure that prices remain high. And with so many people joining the middle class, should we really be debating who will fund and drive People, Ideas & Objects forward? The financial recession has us locked in a perception that is backward looking and we can’t see the opportunities that will soon be upon us. Does that future involve an Information Technology perspective that is just a cost, or should it be a vision such as the Preliminary Specification as it stands today.

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 (private circle, accessible by members only) and begin building the community for the development of the Preliminary Specification.

The Preliminary Specification is intended to outline our general product direction. It is intended for information purposes only, and may not be incorporated into any contract. It is not a commitment to deliver any material, code, or functionality, and should not be relied upon in making purchasing decisions. The development, release, and timing of any features or functionality described for People, Ideas & Objects products remains at the sole discretion of People, Ideas & Objects.