Today's Lesson is Production Discipline
Who would of thought that both the oil and gas businesses would enter a period where both commodities would be performing poorly from a financial point of view? In an age of abundance maybe that is a stupid question. And maybe we need to eliminate that question from the mindset of the oil and gas producer. And replace it with the understanding that they need to have control over the commodity prices through the ability to allocate production, on both the oil and gas side of the business, based on profitability. If the property can produce a profit, it produces. Period. Nothing more or less. Not that the producer has some properties that are profitable and others that are marginal. Only properties that are profitable are produced. That way the industry can deal with the resource abundance that it finds itself in today and probably for the next 20 to 30 years.
The Saudi’s can punish the shale oil producers for many years. We saw them punish the other OPEC members for many years in the 1980’s. The oil and gas producers in North America are not structured to deal with production allocation in any way. They are only structured to produce at capacity. And the bureaucracy within a producer firm is therefore fixed. It is the same bureaucracy that exists at 100,000 bpd as it is at 60,000 bpd. And they are expensive. It is also the same bureaucracy that has been determined not to consider our decentralized production model. Which has been discussed in this blog since 2007, and the draft of the Preliminary Specification was completed in June 2012. Plenty of time for the bureaucracy to jump on board and start pushing. But as we know they never will because it eliminates them from the scene and for some reason they don't like that fact.
How the Preliminary Specifications decentralized production model will provide the oil and gas producer with the much needed production discipline for both their oil and gas production is through a reorganization of the producer firm and the industry. We strip the dynamic, innovative and profitable producer down to the C class executives, the earth science and engineering resources, some land and legal, and support staff. The remaining administrative and accounting resources are reallocated to service providers who are focused on an individual process or subprocess and use the entire industry as their client base. By making these changes we are moving from a producer based administrative and accounting capability to an industry based administrative and accounting capability. The costs of having each individual producer develop the capabilities to administer and account for all of their activities are one of the reasons for the lack of profitability in the industry. Another reason is that those capabilities are not shareable between producers.
The real magic comes in to play when the producer shuts-in an unprofitable property. When the property is shut-in the service providers receive no information, activity or action in the People, Ideas & Objects task or transfer network. And as a result there is no action taken by the service providers and no billing is generated by them and no Joint Operating Committee incurs any costs for any of the administrative or accounting at that property. Therefore the property records no profit but also no loss. The reserves are therefore kept for a time when they can be produced profitably. And the commodities markets find a floor on their prices as the industries production volumes are reduced by the marginal production.
It is the Preliminary Specifications use of the Joint Operating Committee as the key organizational construct of the dynamic, innovative and profitable oil and gas producer that makes this all work and enables the production discipline in this age of abundance. And this is what the Saudi’s are trying to teach us, that if we all want to produce at capacity, they can do it too.
The Preliminary Specification and user community provides the oil and gas producer with the most dynamic, innovative and profitable means of oil and gas operations. People, Ideas & Objects Revenue Model specifies the means in which investors can participate in these user defined software developments. 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 Twitter @piobiz anyone can contact me at 403-200-2302 or email here.