Monday, July 11, 2016

Recipe for Disaster

While I was away I noted that the news was interesting from a number of different points of view. First the U.S. now has the largest proven oil reserves in the world. Shale is prolific in terms of its deliverability and the reserves that are held. This is significant news that should put the idea of energy independence in the minds of the energy producers and politicians. Natural gas reserves have been as substantial for many years due to the initial focus on natural gas in the shale areas. There is only one way in which the industry will enable the North American continent to be energy independent. That is if it's profitable and it is efficient. The continent produces all of its own gas, the need to substantially increase our oil production will not occur from the current base of the industry's structure. The only way in which the industry will attain full energy independence is to adopt the Preliminary Specification with its decentralized production model and price maker strategy.

The second interesting piece of news is that with the moderate increase in oil prices over the past six months. Shale drillers are back drilling again. It’s what they do. They can’t, won’t and will not ever change. The need for cash when the investors and banks have cut you off is at a critical stage. And the only source of cash for the bureaucrats is production. That we have detailed that producers costs and commitments total over $200 / barrel is not the issue. Once again those are “sunk costs.” What we will see as a result of the recent increases in both oil and natural gas prices is a rush of new production that will cause prices to fall back to their lows.

The market psychology will not be favourable for the bureaucrats when that happens. They have little credibility now and if they destroy the prices again then they will have provided the ammunition for their removal from the scene. Those that can, will be looking for alternatives to remove the bureaucracy and find something that’ll work. Something like People, Ideas & Objects Preliminary Specification, our user community and service providers. Did anyone else note that the Saudi’s were keen to note that they were no longer employing their “strategy” that had the effect of “depressing prices.” I think they said that because they don’t like being accused of being the ones responsible for low oil prices. The Saudi’s have now removed themselves from the marketplace as a variable that might lead to lower prices. And that if lower prices were to occur in the future, then the only culprit would be the North American shale based producers.

Natural gas prices have also increased to almost $3.00 on the basis of higher electricity demand. It is believed that current record storage volumes will be mitigated as soon as the winter season, leaving natural gas prices to resume somewhat normal pricing dynamics. This is what passes for rational thinking in the bureaucrats minds. It’s hot outside, demand must be high, all our problems are solved. The issue of overproduction has not been addressed. A method of production discipline has not been instituted in the industry, shale deliverability and reserves continue to grow substantially, nor have any of the investors or bankers demand for cash been addressed. But yes it certainly is hot.

These new U.S. oil reserves, in combination with the natural gas reserves, will never be produced profitably in the hands of these bureaucrats. They don’t care! They are entitled and will continue to operate the industry as they see fit. No one is going to remove them from the scene. Certainly no bank is going to be able to take over the administration of an oil and gas firm because of a loans poor performance. And certainly no bank is going to be able to handle the entire industries administration on that basis. The investors may be gone but the proceeds from the sale of oil and gas will still meet payroll and really what more is there to concern one’s self with?

When we look at what society needs in terms of its energy for the next 25 years we know we will not be able to count on these people for what is required. We should best begin now to learn how to allocate and apportion the diminishing production to the various countries that it’s needed and then send out the ration coupons for the people to use. It all could’ve been so much different. Remember how when the former Soviet Union collapsed. People were all lined up at the bakery waiting for bread. No one was working because they were all hungry. It’s this kind of dismal future that always ends up at the end of an entitled bureaucracy.

The Preliminary Specification and user community provides the oil and gas producer with the most dynamic, innovative, profitable and successful 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

Monday, July 04, 2016

U.S. Independence Day

No posting today.

Please note I am taking the rest of this week off for a working vacation. Will resume posting on July 11, 2016.

Friday, July 01, 2016

Canada Day

No posting today.

Thursday, June 30, 2016

Just the Facts

The individual decisions of each oil and gas producer, based on an actual accounting of the profitability of the property, will determine if the property produces. That is how the oil and gas industry needs to deal with the low commodity price situation that it finds itself in. Shale based reserves will always overwhelm the oil and gas commodity market with flush production and deliverability that are driven by its prolific nature. Production discipline based on profitability can only be achieved through the reorganization of the industry and the producer based on the Preliminary Specifications decentralized production model. Enabling the price maker strategy that’ll return the producer and industry to profitability.

Those changes to the producer firm and to the industry at large are being undertaken at this time. Creative destruction has destroyed the competitive structure of the North American producer. With costs that include the legacy capital spending, and ignoring of those capital costs of the industry, now reflected in large balances of bank and bond debt, and substantial stock distributions. Feeding the legacy of these historical costs is for foolish investors with the inability to read financial statements. Banks too have changed the basis of new loans. Eliminating the hope of ever raising any new capital from any source. This is the legacy of treating investors as “sunk costs.” They too one day can treat you as a “sunk cost.”

Cash flow numbers that were stated by the producers in the good times, and in the bad, always included the amount that was raised by financing. Stating that you had “cash flow” when in fact you really only had financing are two different things. Profits are what an industry operates on and the concept is completely foreign to the bureaucrats who operate the industry. Creative destruction is removing these individuals and the products of their efforts from the marketplace as we speak. They are the walking dead.

The new oil and gas industry is what People, Ideas & Objects is promoting in our Preliminary Specification. It is how the industry adopts that old time religion of profits and begins anew. It is how the industry can grow to the size that it needs too to meet the needs of the energy consumers. It is how people can be provided with an uninterrupted career development where they can make a difference. It’s how investors can invest in the oil and gas industry with the understanding that choosing the right earth scientists and engineers will make the key difference in their return on investment. That there would not be the case for these long periods of commodity price declines that are so disruptive and destructive to the industry.

I will be taking the`next week off from writing and focusing on some things that have been developing here at People, Ideas & Objects. See you on the 11th of July.

The Preliminary Specification and user community provides the oil and gas producer with the most dynamic, innovative, profitable and successful 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

Wednesday, June 29, 2016

Bank Regulators Get Wise

Bank regulators in the United States have become concerned with the level of bad loans in the oil and gas industry. As a result they’ve issued new guidelines to banks on a new procedure of how to issue loans to oil and gas producers. What they now recommend is that the loan be granted on the basis of the producers ability to pay, as opposed to the underlying reserves. This is a fundamental shift in the way that banking is done in oil and gas. I could never understand the criteria that banks used to grant loans to oil and gas producers. They’ll never lend any money to other industries or individuals on such a liberal basis as they did in oil and gas. If they did they would have taken an individual's potential lifetime earnings and used that as the basis of the loan. I think what this shows is that the banks were hoodwinked by the SEC’s accounting methodology of essentially capitalizing everything. Enabling a bureaucrat to leverage their spending orgy with excessive levels of debt. Its taken this long for banks to learn their involvement in this fiasco. It was their money, emphasis on was.

On Monday we saw Private Equity slam the door in the face of the producers by using the Joint Operating Committee as their vehicle to invest in the oil and gas industry. Now the banks are being “asked” by way of guidelines from regulators not to loan money on the basis of the reserves of the producers. Both of these funding doors are closing quickly and bureaucrats will be hard pressed to fund any part of their organization. With either debt or equity. The lesson is that the good old days are over for the bureaucrats.

In the Preliminary Specification we have the Financial Marketplace module that sets out a different basis of funding the oil and gas industry. One that deals with using the Joint Operating Committee as the key organizational construct of the dynamic, innovative, accountable and profitable oil and gas producer. Leaving the current corporate model behind. The Joint Operating Committee is the legal, financial, operational decision making, cultural, communication, innovation and strategic framework of the industry. Using this in the Financial Marketplace module aligns the compliance and governance frameworks with the financial framework of the Joint Operating Committee. Providing a new and innovative way in which to finance and manage oil and gas properties. One without bureaucrats, and is heavily dependent on the Information Technologies that have become ever present in the past decades in banking. Review of the Financial Marketplace module will provide you with an understanding of the synergies that People, Ideas & Objects, our user community and service providers are developing with the financial aspects of oil and gas.

When reading the Financial Marketplace module you will come away with the understanding of how much larger the transaction volume will be in that module. Just as in the entire Preliminary Specification, the volume of transactions that will occur in our system vs. what would occur with the same production and activity volume today would be exponentially larger. This is for a variety of reasons that can be gleaned from a comprehensive review of the Preliminary Specification. Therefore keeping the bureaucracy is an impossibility. And who would want them anyway. The need to expand them to meet the expanded throughput of transactions would make the world an unsafe place. We have computers now, which is one of the things that we do at People, Ideas & Objects is to make sure that the computers do the work that computers are good at, and make sure the people are doing the work that they are good at. The need for paper pushing bureaucrats doesn’t exist in too many places in the world today. I say we get rid of them here too. Which is what we do and let the people do the leadership, problem solving, decision making, creativity, collaboration, research, ideas, design, planning, thinking, negotiating, innovating. And let's not forget financing.

The Preliminary Specification and user community provides the oil and gas producer with the most dynamic, innovative, profitable and successful 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

Tuesday, June 28, 2016

We Are the Change

Things are happening quickly now. The faith that our existing producers will be the ones that lead us for the next 25 years doesn’t exist. Change is being forced upon them by those that were betrayed most by the bureaucrats. The oil and gas investor. I’m not soliciting sympathy for them, they wear the big boy pants and can deal with their own difficulties. What we need to concern ourselves with is the long term commercial viability of the oil and gas industry. That consumers have an abundant supply of oil and gas to ensure that we are able to achieve the highest possible levels of our standard of living. This can only happen with a prosperous and profitable oil and gas industry.

The speed in which things will happen now will be exhilarating. Change, when it starts, doesn’t wait for the unprepared. As a potential user community member I trust that you’ve been working to make the necessary changes in your life and have been working on making your application to the user community. We are looking for a large number, approximately 3,000 people, in order to make the Preliminary Specification all that it can be. And to ensure that the user community members are subsequently able to develop the service provider organizations that will provide our software and their services to this new oil and gas industry.

One area that I will stress in the application process is the understanding of the Preliminary Specification. If someone comes to me and I ask them questions about the Preliminary Specification and they are unable to answer them. This may preclude them from joining the user community. I know it's a long, boring and difficult read. It’s important that we’re all singing from the same hymn sheet. The dynamic of the changes introduced by using the Joint Operating Committee are substantial. These must be intimately understood by everyone. Although you will be working in the area where your strengths are, knowing how that fits in the larger picture is necessary.

When we move to using the Joint Operating Committee as the key organizational construct of the dynamic, innovative, accountable and profitable oil and gas producer. We see that everything in the industry is changed. That is the reason for the Preliminary Specifications scope and scale. Even I was surprised when Private Equity adopted the use of the Joint Operating Committee to facilitate the transition in ownership of the industry. Well of course it would be. It’s common sense once someone say’s it for the first time. That’s the world that we’re heading into. The full scope of the changes that we’re able to implement are not fully appreciated at this point. And that is why People, Ideas & Objects Preliminary Specification has to be user community based software developments. Having 3,000 people participate in the development will ensure that we capture many of these dynamic changes that are the common sense use of the Joint Operating Committee in the oil and gas industry. This demands that each user community member to have studied the Preliminary Specification extensively.

If you haven’t started your application for user community participation I would suggest you begin soon. Being prepared will be your best strategy as we move through this fundamental change in the industry. And understand the nature of the role the user community will be occupying in oil and gas. This will be part of the process in terms of what will be expected of you and your application to the user community.

Given where we’re at today, and where we’re headed, the journey promises to be one of the most interesting in the history of the oil and gas industry. We have a lot of things to do and there is only one outcome as a result of all of this. Thanks to our friends the bureaucrats we must succeed and do it in a timely manner.

The Preliminary Specification and user community provides the oil and gas producer with the most dynamic, innovative, profitable and successful 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

Monday, June 27, 2016

Brilliant!

I have seen the future of the oil and gas industry. And that future begins today. I’m using the Must-Read label of this blog so that users can aggregate these types of posts, this entry will be part of that. The following is the strategy and tactics that’ll be employed by the existing oil and gas producers, and the ones that will be formed to remove and replace the existing oil and gas firms and their bureaucracies. I have been working on the implementation of our technologies and the means in which we do this difficult task. These strategy and tactics clarify how we will enable the transition in ownership of the industry from the producers who are constrained by the bureaucrats, to the dynamic, innovative, accountable and profitable oil and gas producers.

The news that triggered this blog post came out in the middle of last week. It was from Ernst & Young and is entitled “Capitalizing on opportunities: Private equity investments in oil and gas.” Which state that Private Equity firms have almost $1 trillion in investment that they’re prepared to invest in oil and gas. In a derivative article from WorldOil we have “Private equity set to unleash trillion dollar warchest, EY survey finds.” It is in this article that we find the key piece of evidence in which we can base the future of the oil and gas industries tactics and strategy. They note;

Deal Structures

Due to the debt burden of many PE-backed oil and gas companies, creative capital structures are on the rise. Of the 71% of respondents exploring new capital structures, 62% cite joint ventures (JVs) and drillcos and 59% cite contingent pricing as the most popular options.
Michael Rogers, EY global deputy private equity leader, said, "As oil and gas companies try to raise capital and reduce debt amid the lower-for-longer price outlook, exploring new capital structures and strategies has become almost mandatory for investors. PE-backed companies are looking to joint ventures to help them cut costs"

This is how I see the industry operating and the deployment of the People, Ideas & Objects Preliminary Specification, user community and service providers. For the bureaucrats in the existing producers who have permanent uncompetitive costs and capital structures. In the interim you will be called upon to manage these “Joint Ventures.” For our purpose here, we will subsequently call these Joint Operating Committees to bring clarity to the concept. Bureaucrats will manage the Joint Operating Committee as they do in the normal course of business. Private Equity will be a non-operated working interest participant and bureaucrats will operate these properties on their behalf. This relieves Private Equity of the immediate need and responsibility to manage the day to day. Under the current environment bureaucrats will charge the Joint Operating Committees with the Petroleum Accounting Societies overhead allowances. Private Equity’s investment in Joint Operating Committees on this basis can therefore begin today. These investments and operations will continue for the remaining time in which the Preliminary Specification is not operational.

Additionally Private Equity will be able to immediately and directly participate in the purchase of working interests based on properties that are sold from the existing producers. These will form the basis of the Private Equity holdings and will augmented by the new drilling and completions that are done through the Joint Operating Committees that they establish with other producers. It should be noted that during this initial phase of the transition the Preliminary Specifications price maker strategy will not be implemented or operational. Which is a temporary strategic advantage to Private Equity. Their past investments in oil and gas are currently “sunk costs.” Buying properties at top dollar is not in Private Equities interest. Without the price maker strategy, commodities will remain low until People, Ideas & Objects price maker strategies are operational. Facilitating a time in which the “ownership” of the industry is transferred to Private Equity at “reasonable” prices. It is assumed here that the Joint Operating Committees and the purchased properties of Private Equity will be held 100% in terms of the interest in the properties that Private Equity will have title to. There will be no dilution of Private Equities interest by other equity interest holders or debt from this trillion dollar investment in the first phase of the industry transition. Earning 100% of the unencumbered properties title is contrary to what would happen if Private Equity invested in the existing producers.

People, Ideas & Objects budget will be funded by Private Equity. It will be their best investment in terms of our ability to deliver our value proposition to them. It will also provide them with the administrative and accounting capabilities, which will be industry based in the Preliminary Specification, to be conducted for them. There will be no need for them to spend the time and effort necessary to develop the capabilities to administer and conduct any accounting. The existing producers will do that for them in the beginning phase, and People, Ideas & Objects, our user community and service providers will step in with our industry wide administrative and accounting capabilities when we are operational.

People, Ideas & Objects, our user community and service providers are committed to providing oil and gas producers with the most profitable means of oil and gas operations. I was laughed at for years for stating this. Laughed at by the bureaucrats. Their inability to understand that an industry needs to produce profits, real profits is a necessity, which has lead to their downfall and now they are being transitioned out. They’ve only proven that they’re not committed to anything but their own self interests.

One final note about the earth science and engineering resources of the existing producers. Your future is with Private Equity. The competitive advantages of the dynamic, innovative, accountable and profitable oil and gas producer are their earth science and engineering capabilities, and their land and asset base. You are the current custodians of those capabilities and assets and are assumed to be keeping them safe and will do what is necessary to ensure the industries deliverability is all that it can be. The future of your current employer is limited in its viability and Private Equity will be here for the foreseeable future. Govern yourself accordingly.

The Preliminary Specification and user community provides the oil and gas producer with the most dynamic, innovative, profitable and successful 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

Friday, June 24, 2016

Absolutely Uncompetitive

Bureaucrats should be proud of their accomplishment in destroying the oil and gas industry. Has anyone seen any of them leave the industry in shame with their heads bowed? They don’t care! As long as the money keeps coming in twice a month their lives are fine. Embarrassed? No, proud and feeling quite rejuvenated now that they’ve established that there is nothing that anyone can do about them. They’re permanent, there are no threats to their administration anywhere and at anytime. For the past thirteen years I have fought them and they’ve done nothing to mitigate the issues that are ever present. They knew what was going to happen. The fact that they did nothing about it, and continue to do nothing about it proves that they knew all along.

Commodity prices will only rise from this point forward. That is the only conclusion that the bureaucrats can be operating from. They feel giddy and are set to continue with their personal goals based on the steady uninterrupted cash flow from their jobs. I guess shale too has been eliminated from the scene as it was the precursor to the price declines. They may feel as if they have the upper hand at this time, however, nothing has been resolved and the same old issues are ever present.

We need to remember that these bureaucrats exist in the private business environment. They are not government bureaucrats who are established for life. They are subjected to the forces of the market. Although the bureaucrats may think they have the upper hand, that can only be maintained if they are the lowest cost producer. Which maybe they are? And if so they will remain established for as long as they feel the need and are comfortable. We should all aspire to be oil and gas bureaucrats. Do nothing and get paid well for it.

Creative destruction is going to wipe these people from their perches very quickly. At $200 / barrel in terms of the current producers cost of production. These values are obtained when we add in the cost of capital to produce with the cost of operations, royalties and overhead we come in at around $100 / barrel. Then we need to include, not so much a cost but a commitment to the past legacy of spending and ignoring that spending like it didn’t matter. These costs which are represented in the large balances of bank and bond debt obligations. And also in terms of the huge number of outstanding shares. Add up to make the producer firm very distasteful to any prospective banker or investor. Bureaucrats can’t hide their financial statements from prospective investors.

As we indicated yesterday our good friends the bureaucrats will try to live with a somewhat quasi informal administration by their banks. Bank’s will keep a tight reign on the producer ensuring that all surplus cash is put against any of their outstanding loans. The key though is that the payroll will be paid, and that is the only concern to the fat and happy bureaucrats. When your revenue is $50 and your costs are $200 you're not viable but that’s the bank's problem. Bureaucrats get paid first!

What’s that saying about the best laid plans of mice and men? The false narrative has been that the producers are profitable at $48 / barrel. We are closing out the second quarter with the financial reports due out in the next two months. We’ll see who can stick by those claims. Anyone heard of any financing lately? I wonder why the investors aren’t biting? Maybe it’s like I said all along. You can’t go on for decades kidding yourself that your investors investment is a sunk cost. And expect the investors and bankers not to notice. What generally happens, eventually, is that the investors and bankers see the bureaucrats as a sunk cost.

The Preliminary Specification and user community provides the oil and gas producer with the most dynamic, innovative, profitable and successful 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

Thursday, June 23, 2016

The Go It Alone Strategy

Making payroll is the key to the survivability of the North American oil and gas producer. These are the aspirations of the bureaucrats who are in charge and providing us with their strong leadership. If they stick their head in the sand, everything is ok. No bank, or should I say “the banks” won’t take over the industry if everyone is in such a mess. They’ll have to leave it to the current management to operate. Anything and everything that is surplus to payroll, based on the oil and gas price, will be taken by the banks and that is how the industry will operate. Sounds like a plan to me. Seems to be the one in place at the present time. Let's call this their “go it alone strategy.” No support from the investors or banks, but then no accountability either.

Eventually oil and gas prices will reflect the shortages created by the willful destruction of the asset base. And then consumers will be forced to pay the piper. The key to this strategy will be to ensure that the bureaucrats stock options are reinstated on the basis of any dilution that might occur. This will become the number one issue in oil and gas. This could also be an opportunity to establish a greater percentage of the producer that the bureaucrats will undoubtedly have earned as a result of turning around the company. “Rebalancing the markets” finest hour.

What else could be going on. People, Ideas & Objects haven’t heard anything directly from any of the producers. Its as if the worst possible industry news has been distributed to everyone of concern and there’s no more bad news that could ever be issued. And the bureaucrats were never challenged! They cruised through! Not a peep about their efforts to turn the market around other than their narrative which they collectively stuck too. The worst case scenario of the industry's failure has occurred, they survived and are still in control.

No one will be able to touch the bureaucrats now. They are invincible! Who’s going to be able to do anything about the situation? “That blogger that doesn’t like bureaucrats? What’s he up to, all talk and no action.” This attitude would be counting the number of chickens one has, prior to the hatching of any eggs. Users need to stay tuned and committed for a while longer. It certainly seems to be the darkest hours for the development of the Preliminary Specification. And this strategy of the bureaucrats does seem to be successful in getting the upper hand. But with all things, time and ideas don’t necessarily operate in the best interest of the bureaucrats. And those are the two commodities that we have in abundance.

No one is going to aspire to the bureaucrats vision of the same. It’s future is limited and unproductive. We have a job to do in the industry and need to start working towards that today. What happens in the next 25 years is in the hands of the user community that is being organized here at People, Ideas & Objects. The bureaucrats have now proven that they will not being doing anything. It is therefore up to us to do it then. And that begins with you. Your participation in the user community is the beginning of our efforts to build the software that is needed in the industry. We’ll implement that software within the industry. Build the service providers that provide the administrative, accounting and software delivery to the oil and gas producers. And then operate the industry from an administrative and accounting point of view with these service providers. The replacement and elimination of these bureaucrats.

This bureaucratic malaise is the issue that the Preliminary Specification solves. The current oil and gas industries administration is the problem, and to I’m sure everyone’s surprise, they will not do anything to resolve it. They sat for almost two decades like this in the 1980’s and 1990’s. This is nirvana for the oil and gas bureaucrat. With $25.7 to $45.7 trillion in damages to the industry about to be occur in the next 25 years. These damages being in addition to what has already happened in the past few years. Our budget is the deal of the millennium. But more than that these bureaucrats can’t, won’t and will not ever do anything. Today you have more proof of that than you did last year. And next year you’ll have more proof if that is what is required. The future is in our hands. We need to take it, and make it ours. That is what we need to do. Otherwise we will waste away in this bureaucratic malaise that is only going to continue until we put it out of its misery.

The Preliminary Specification and user community provides the oil and gas producer with the most dynamic, innovative, profitable and successful 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

Wednesday, June 22, 2016

"It's Just a Flesh Wound"

Was one of the Black Night’s arguments in Monty Python’s Holy Grail. This comes to mind as we listen to the narrative of the bureaucrats in oil and gas. Natural gas storage has crossed the 3 tcf level as of June 10, 2016. Something that doesn’t usually occur until late August or early September. Three months early! Last year we came very close to filling the natural gas storage facilities but did not cross that point. Natural gas prices reacted poorly to the situation nonetheless. We are 633 bcf ahead of last years storage levels at this point of the year. The probability that we do fill the storage is close to being a given. The natural gas prices will react poorly at that time. However, for some reason these prices have increased almost 50% from their lows of a few months ago. This is on the anticipation of a hot summer with high demand for electricity. This summer price increase has not been evident in any of the prior years, I question why it would be this year with the storage being so high.

Natural gas is in its sixth year of market rebalancing. The EIA reports that production is fairly constant at 72.9 bcf / day. This number is becoming a constant in the universe. Those that are buying the “market rebalancing” fairly tale should look to the natural gas market to see how truly effective it is. There is no production discipline in the bureaucrats. They may be deliberately letting their assets atrophy under the guise of “market rebalancing.” There are however just as many other producers who are finding new properties to put on the market to offset those assets that are atrophying. This is what passes for intelligence in oil and gas. Why not, as People, Ideas & Objects our user community and service providers suggest that producers only produce profitably? Then nothing is deliberately wasted and everything of a limited resource builds value.

The fact of the matter is there is nothing that’ll stop these bureaucrats from destroying the industry. They don’t care. If they did this wouldn’t be happening. Where is the sense of urgency that something’s wrong? Who’s got an idea on how to fix this? Where do we go from here? Don’t ask a bureaucrat because just like the Black Night everything is fine. There has been a train wreck. A ship wreck. A natural disaster in their industries financial and operational performance. And these people have continued on as if nothing mattered or anything has affected them. It’s utterly amazing.

It’s evident to me now that the narrative of “market rebalancing.” And the myth that producers are profitable at $48 oil prices. Is designed to convince the bureaucrats themselves that all is well. They need to hear these comforting words. They were never meant for public distribution, they are intended to keep the people within the industry from being concerned about their situation. My interactions in downtown Calgary couldn’t be more relaxing and entertaining. It’s like an old folks home. No one hurrying to do anything. No one talking about business. It’s just a passive existence with a paycheck I guess. As long as the oil and gas prices are high enough to meet payroll there really is nothing to worry about.

We see a larger war waging in the western world at this time. The Brits are tired of the decree coming down from the European Union. They will probably vote to leave tomorrow. They are describing it in terms of their 1776. Donald Trump is representing the concern that people have with the size and uncontrolled nature of government today. Uber, an app that everyone loves, still battles the bureaucracy everywhere there are people. And I have been punished for 12 years for standing up to the bureaucracy in oil and gas. It’s the 21st century and Information Technology eliminates the bureaucracies through far more effective and efficient means of organization and processes. It’s only a matter of time until the bureaucrats are eliminated from the scene. But they will never accept that, not until everything is destroyed first.

The Preliminary Specification and user community provides the oil and gas producer with the most dynamic, innovative, profitable and successful 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