User Community Developments, Part II

The primary reason for the change from the producers administrative and accounting capability to the industries administrative and accounting capability. Is to change the nature of overhead costs in the industry. Moving them from the producers fixed overhead costs to the industries variable overhead costs. Achieving the variability of overhead costs charged directly to the Joint Operating Committee. Therefore instead of a producer incurring all of their overhead each and every day. Only the properties that are producing will be incurring any overhead. This is as the service providers, who will be the production, revenue and royalty accountants etc., will be charging their process management fees to the individual Joint Operating Committees. Therefore the producer firms overhead will be X one month while they produce 100,000 boe / day, and .5X during the month that they produce 50,000 boe / day. Making them always profitable at any level of their production profile. This is the Preliminary Specifications decentralized production models price maker strategy and the key to this capability is the service providers that the user community member will own and operate.

User community membership includes the exclusive right to manage a process in the service provider sub-industry that we’re developing. Let's assume that you’ve selected a sub process in the overall process of surface rights payments. You would have that process as your domain exclusively for the North American producers. One caveat is that some processes will be broken down by region. Such as production accounting will be better managed on a regional basis by users who are located closer to the facilities etc. Service providers are not competing on the basis that anyone or everyone could establish a competitive offering to your service provider firm. The granting of the right to the service provider is exclusive to that user community member. No one else would have access to the software necessary to manage that process across the industry. Lowest cost is not the basis of competition of the user community and service providers. We are competing on the basis of the list that was presented in yesterday’s post.

The competitive advantage that we’ll be discussing today is the automation of the business process that the service provider manages and the user community participant develops with our software developers. Automation of each process will be a constant and iterative development through the user community members access to the People, Ideas & Objects software developers, and their understanding of that process through the user community members direct ownership of the service provider. As the service providers owner and manager, the user community member has a unique position in which they are situated in the industry. They are managing a process for the industry, which they will have available at anytime a software development capability in which they can make the changes and improvements to the software that they use in delivering their service to the industry and they have the power to make the changes to the underlying Intellectual Property as they require or as their process requirements change. They are the people who know and understand the makeup of that process as they are the ones that designed and developed it with the People, Ideas & Objects software developers, have the background, education and experience to service their clients, the oil and gas producers, far better than they expect.

Automation of the business process has been a topic of discussion for the past number of decades. It has been enabled through the Information Technologies offerings. However high levels of discussion is about all that has ever been achieved. The issue, I believe, is the ability to have the requisite political fortitude to deal with all of the necessary stakeholders in trying to make a change. Using software vendors then brings up an additional issue in that they are unlikely to be enthusiastic about making changes to their code. We have suggested that the current software providers are constrained by their code and customers. As they develop more code it becomes more difficult to make any changes. And as they acquire more customers, deployment of those changes takes more resources. These activities do not generate any direct revenue as they are limited to the annual percentage of their sales contract irrespective of their efforts. People, Ideas & Objects are change enabled software developers. We only earn revenue through the software developments that we make. Change is the source of our revenue and therefore we are motivated to develop and create better systems with our customers, the user community participant, and their service provider organizations.

Automation will be an area of an iterative and unending exploration of what’s possible based on the status quo. Making things faster, better and more convenient for the service providers customers, the oil and gas producer, should never end as the software defines and supports the organizations that make up the oil and gas industry. Once we stop making software developments the industry stops changing and we end up with situations such as the current environment where producers fail. Software is too important to the health of our organizations and society as a whole to leave unattended. That is why the software development capability, and control of the Intellectual Property that the user community member acquires through this environment is so crucial to all concerned.

The Preliminary Specification, our user community and service providers provide for a dynamic, innovative, accountable and profitable oil and gas industry with the most profitable means of oil and gas operations. Setting the foundation for profitable North America’s energy independence. People, Ideas & Objects Revenue Model specifies the means in which investors can participate in our future Initial Coin Offering (ICO) that will fund these user defined software developments. It is through the process of issuing our ICO that we are leading the way in which creative destruction can be implemented within the oil and gas industry. 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. 

User Community Developments, Part I

The overall objectives of the user community are very simple. They will become the state-of-the-art providers of leadership and capabilities in terms of oil and gas administration and accounting in North America. Now we face the hard work that is associated with that objective, and that of course would be building the user community. We are not just looking for quantity, we estimate that there will be a population of approximately 3,000 members. We are looking for the quality necessary to meet our objective and provide the oil and gas producers with the most profitable means of oil and gas operations. As the permanent replacement to the producer based capability for administration and accounting with an industry based administrative and accounting capability.

If we look at the competitive advantages that the user community member will have then we may be able to get a better understanding of what will be involved. When we add in the service provider organization that the user community member owns and operates. Understanding the work the user community member will do with the People, Ideas & Objects software developers will help the competitive advantages become clearer. I’ll list them here and then we’ll discuss them briefly over the next few days. There are of course specialization and the division of labor as the service provider will manage one administrative or accounting process and use the entire oil and gas industry as their client base. Automation of that process will be a constant and iterative development through the user community members access to the People, Ideas & Objects software developers, and their understanding of that process through the user community members direct ownership of the service provider. Innovation and technical excellence based on the administrative and accounting experience they have. Users will be able to iterate constantly and develop their process to become more efficient, but also provide better information to their clients, the oil and gas producers. It is our stated purpose to flip the current relationship that we have with computers. Instead of us working for them, we are going to have the computers working for us. Lastly quality is going to be the overall guiding principle in what we do in terms of the services for the producers. Our value proposition makes it worthwhile for the producers to use our software and services. Lower cost software and services is not the issue or the objective, quality business model development and ensuring the producers are provided with the most profitable means of oil and gas operations is more important than low cost software and service. After all the bureaucrats currently have many of the lower cost software and services today. These attributes are what make up the competitive advantages of the People, Ideas & Objects user community / service provider.

Looking at the individual components of the user communities competitive advantage we’ll review the first item on the list and the part about flipping the relationship with computers. Specialization and the division of labor is the only means in which economic development has ever been achieved. The difference between the economies size in the year 1800 and today is 100% attributable to the application of specialization and the division of labor. Therefore in order that the oil and gas industry can develop further, expand its output, grow efficiently and profitably is through the application of specialization and the division of labor. It’s here too that we can bring in the work of computers and have them do the storage and processing which is their specialty. Essentially a revised division of labor between people and computers. And people can focus on their capabilities which include leadership, problem solving, determining what’s relevant, creativity, collaboration, research, idea generation, design, planning, thinking, negotiating, compromising, innovating, financing to name just a few. These are the areas we need to be focused on and stop moving data from one system to another and other redundant computer related tasks. With each user community member and service provider focusing on one process, they are specializing at a much higher level than what is available now or is ever going to be possible within any producer firm today. Therefore the amount of work they’ll be able to do will be substantially more efficient than what it is today and will continue to provide an enhanced and developing value proposition for the oil and gas industry.

The Preliminary Specification, our user community and service providers provide for a dynamic, innovative, accountable and profitable oil and gas industry with the most profitable means of oil and gas operations. Setting the foundation for profitable North America’s energy independence. People, Ideas & Objects Revenue Model specifies the means in which investors can participate in our future Initial Coin Offering (ICO) that will fund these user defined software developments. It is through the process of issuing our ICO that we are leading the way in which creative destruction can be implemented within the oil and gas industry. 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. 

Presidents Day and Alberta Family Day

Some Comments on our User Community

I am concerned with the level of thinking that I’m seeing within the oil and gas industry these days. First people in general have been badly beat up by the downturn in the industry. Many have lost their jobs and if they still have jobs they know they’re hanging from a thread. A similar experience that we all went through in the late 1980’s and 1990’s. Everyone arrives early to work and leaves late, brings a lunch packed from home while they eat at their desk each and every day. It’s a poor existence for those who have invested so much in their careers to have to fear for them constantly. However, the level of discussion of this downturn is very cheery and is painting a rosy picture of the future for the industry. What I would call unproductive navel gazing. Looking at the fairy tale possibilities, ignoring the facts of the business, ignoring the investors and the performance of the producers. This is not going to get us where we need to be going. Although I put this down to the chronic lack of leadership within the industry, new leaders are forming now in the People, Ideas & Objects user community.

We’ll be spending more time discussing our user community and its development in the next few months. This is our priority and has been since the publication of the Preliminary Specification in December 2013. As with anything worthwhile the early years are very slow and almost negligible gains are made. We consider these past four years our investment stage. What we’ll be discussing is filling out the understanding of what the user community involves, the role that users have in our development, exploring industries opportunities and the leadership in resolving industry issues. These are the things that we’ll be depending on from our users. And how these people will be able to make the effective changes that are so necessary in the industry.

The issue that the oil and gas industry faces is essentially the bureaucratic status quo. The inability to change to meet the needs of the marketplace has hampered the industry for many decades. Investors are representing a dissatisfaction with their current strike. If bureaucrats believe that talking about rosy outcomes and fairy tale opportunities. Will have the investors rushing back then they should really consider a different line of work. Investors find the topics and quality of discussion in the industry to be horrifying. Some objective critical thinking is what would be constructive at times such as this. That the industry is not undertaking any serious thought to the future shows that this form of organizational structure is tired, worn out and expired. It truly is our fault for not believing the bureaucrats when they’ve been telling us so clearly and coherently these past few decades. Change is not a nice to have, but is in high demand in order to deal with all of this as soon as possible, otherwise this unnecessary pain and suffering will continue.

Those people that are of similar mindset within the industry need to be preparing their application to our user community. That way the industry and producer changes that are required can be undertaken by them. They will be the future leadership of the industry when it comes to the changes in the underlying oil and gas business. Changes that will demand further development, or the creation of new business models for the Preliminary Specification, these will be initiated and developed by the user community. Our user community has the tools and power necessary to exercise that level of change within the industry. The user communities power is acquired through the user community vision of People, Ideas & Objects which grants the user community two unique elements that make it capable of undertaking these types of changes. First our developers are deaf, dumb and blind to everyone and everything other than the user community. We only seek and take instruction from the user community. If a producer desires certain functionality or requirements then they’ll be able to source that through communications with the user community. Secondly the user community has de facto control of the Intellectual Property that makes up the Preliminary Specification and its derivative works. Only they can make the changes to the underlying Intellectual Property, and instruct our developers on how to develop it. Therefore anyone who needs to make a change regarding the accounting and administration in oil and gas can seek out the user community in order to have their changes made. Only the user community has the means in which to do so. Which is far better than today’s situation. Ask yourself, who in the bureaucracy do you contact in order to get the changes you need today?

The Preliminary Specification, our user community and service providers provide for a dynamic, innovative, accountable and profitable oil and gas industry with the most profitable means of oil and gas operations. Setting the foundation for profitable North America’s energy independence. People, Ideas & Objects Revenue Model specifies the means in which investors can participate in our future Initial Coin Offering (ICO) that will fund these user defined software developments. It is through the process of issuing our ICO that we are leading the way in which creative destruction can be implemented within the oil and gas industry. 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. 

Structural Innovation in the Preliminary Specification

Sometime last week we had discussed the two business models contained within the Preliminary Specification. (You may want to revisit that post entitled “Two Business Models?) In that discussion we mentioned the Work Order system that is the method that is used to capture the time, activity and property that individuals within the oil and gas producers will be working on. That Work Order system has other features that I thought I would discuss today. Although the capturing of time, activity and property was developed to assist in the generation of the second business model, other aspects were also developed to enhance the innovative capabilities of the producer and industry. The Preliminary Specification provides the value proposition that we’ve discussed here many times. It also establishes the producer firm and the industry on an innovative foundation. Much of the research that was completed in this area is based on the work of both Professor Giovanni Dosi and Professor Richard Langlois. The difficulty in moving to the Joint Operating Committee as the key organizational construct of the dynamic, innovative, accountable and profitable producer is that everything and everyone is affected by that change. Nothing is the same in a system that is designed for the Joint Operating Committee in comparison to the standard corporate model. That is why such extensive research was necessary, to solve the issues of the producer and industry, and determine what, how and why the industry and producer had to operate and function when using the Joint Operating Committee.

The first use of the Work Order system is relatively straightforward. Everyone working within the producer firm, or as a consultant ensures that their time is fully captured within the Work Order system. That any and all projects have been duly authorized and have the budget to be able to have their time charged to them. Other charges may also be for overhead items that are exclusively for the producer that the individual works for. With the second business model requiring specialization and the division of labor of the earth science and engineering capabilities to be distributed across producers in the Joint Operating Committee and industry. The ability of other producers to charge to these projects as required is necessary and a feature of the Preliminary Specification. That way the on-demand capabilities from other producers or consultants can be charged to the appropriate Joint Operating Committee facilitating the ease of aggregating these necessary specialized capabilities. The Work Order system also passes on the costs of these resources to the Joint Operating Committee and recognizes the revenues for the use of the producers earth science and engineering resources as the second business model denotes.

In this first example of the Work Order system we showed the manner in which charges could be made for an AFE or lease code of an existing property. What we learned through our research was that the industry needed to undertake substantially more studies and general research than what is found today. The problem with these is that they’re an administrative nightmare due to the nature of the contributions. Some producers pay cash, others supply people, others bring other resources and the ideas that are generated are extremely valuable for all of those producers. Except the accounting nightmare continues for what seems decades. The Preliminary Specifications Work Order system therefore has the capability in which to deal with ad-hoc organizational groupings such as a one off research or study. Each producer is able to contribute to the Work Order their agreed contribution and net take away. This is done in the manner that is similar to the clearing that is done in the AFE and lease, however there is no established legal agreement or lease that has established the mechanism to clear these accounts. Only the agreement of the participants in the research or study. The interface to the Work Order system is how the agreement is captured in the system and can be tested to ensure it meets the understanding of what the producers expect. If it doesn’t meet the expectations, changes can be made through the interface until such time as it is approved by the participants, and as a result, they’ll know that the follow on charges will be handled appropriately based on the agreement as captured in the interface.

In order for the industry to become truly innovative, several magnitudes of increase need to be made in the number of these research studies. They will become a foundational aspect of the industry from an innovation point of view. When a producer removes a property from active production due to a lack of profitability. That is when they should actively look at innovative actions to increase the reserves, reduce the costs or expand the revenues. And return the property as quickly as possible to the producers inventory of profitable production. That’s what it means to be a dynamic, innovative, accountable and profitable oil and gas producer.

The Preliminary Specification, our user community and service providers provide for a dynamic, innovative, accountable and profitable oil and gas industry with the most profitable means of oil and gas operations. Setting the foundation for North America’s energy independence. People, Ideas & Objects Revenue Model specifies the means in which investors can participate in our future Initial Coin Offering (ICO) that will fund these user defined software developments. It is through the process of issuing our ICO that we are leading the way in which creative destruction can be implemented within the oil and gas industry. 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. 

Failure is Not an Option

Remember back during the financial crisis how Chrysler and GM had inventories that swelled well past the usable parking space of the world. Caught by the classic pincer movement of customers vehicles being recalled for non-payment and no new customers to purchase any new vehicles because the banks were spooked by their foolish behaviour in the past number of decades. Seems bureaucrats always take decades to let things get to a crisis before they act. Car companies were unable to run fast enough to hit the switch to shut-down their production lines. Interesting why they were never charged with collusion for stopping production? There is a similar situation in oil and gas today. Now by keeping everything in full production and watching the inventories grow one might draw the conclusion to the same kind of issues that GM and Chrysler experienced in 2008. However in oil and gas, bureaucrats can divert the proceeds of the oil production back into their pockets and motivate themselves to keep the circus operating for one more month. This is the fundamental difference between an industry that is labor intensive and needs a government bailout, and an industry that is capital intensive and is left to its own devices.

And who knows maybe all the oil and gas in storage will be needed as a result of the booming economy. That is the thing with the bureaucrats, they can always think of something down the road that would be better than today. Never manage the business for the situation at hand. There never has been any need to change, no one is going to act against them. Only the blogger with the ugliest websites on the Internet have caught on to their act. Which leads me to believe this downturn in commodity prices will be particularly dire for all concerned. There’s nothing in the producers cupboards anymore. They’ve been squeezing every nickel until it screams and there isn’t much left to fight the good fight with.

Everyone within the industry knows the extent of the damage from low oil and gas prices. Damage that is and has been incurred unnecessarily. Why are we accepting this level of performance? A rebuilding of the industry is what the Preliminary Specification contemplates, based on profitability, brick by brick and stick by stick. This requires everyone in the industry to get involved in this change and do some very hard work. The bureaucrats will need to bow out gracefully, the user community needs to form and define specifically what it is they need in the details of the Preliminary Specification. They’ll also need to establish their service provider operations. There is no need to list everything, without the focus of everyone on building the Preliminary Specification we will not be able to generate our value proposition. We’ll all need to think and act.

This should start with a plan and a budget for each individual that is looking to participate. These can form part of your application for user community participation. Our budget sets our task at 5,000 man years when we combine our developers, the user community participation and Oracle hours together. Coincidentally, 4,117 man years is a the amount of labor that one barrel of oil offsets. Therefore it would take as little as 1.2 barrels of oil to complete the Preliminary Specification if it was strictly a labor operation that we could mechanically automate.

We have seen the attention spans of the producers swing 180 degrees many times over the past decade. What we know for certain is that their attention is transient and brief. We may capture it in this current downturn in pricing. We know that would only be temporary. What we can not have is these short attention spans cutting off our funding if we were to proceed on a pay-as-you-go basis. If we stopped development for a short period of time we would never be able to restart the initiative. Therefore we need to have the total of our financial resource requirements upfront in order to secure the commitments of the producers, the people who are committing to the user community and anyone else that needs to be involved. If we went through on a pay-as-you-go basis I wouldn’t trust that the bureaucrats were not just setting us up for failure by subsequently “temporarily” pausing the initiative. Our job is not something that can be fooled with, our focus must be complete and uncompromised by the day to day of where our next meal will be coming from.

The Preliminary Specification, our user community and service providers provide for a dynamic, innovative, accountable and profitable oil and gas industry with the most profitable means of oil and gas operations. Setting the foundation for North America’s energy independence. People, Ideas & Objects Revenue Model specifies the means in which investors can participate in our future Initial Coin Offering (ICO) that will fund these user defined software developments. It is through the process of issuing our ICO that we are leading the way in which creative destruction can be implemented within the oil and gas industry. 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. 

Collusion, Collusion, Collusion

Collusion is the word on the street in oil and gas and may have been the most effective argument in defeating support for People, Ideas & Objects Preliminary Specification. The problem is that collusion is now being seen in every aspect of the oil and gas industry and the forces of political correctness seem to have found a new talking point. Collusion here, collusion there it doesn’t seem to stop! Even arguing that producers working together on a property is collusion. For People, Ideas & Objects our price maker strategy converts the producers of today into dynamic, innovative, accountable and profitable producers. We do this by ensuring that none of their oil and gas is produced unprofitably. That is not collusion, it’s business, which is what every business in the world does. Manage their inventory levels by controlling their production. A price maker will only bring on new production if it is profitable. Otherwise why would you dilute your profits with unprofitable production? Collusion is the current excuse to do nothing and only reflects the extent of knowledge and understanding that is present in the industry is not just poor, but abysmal.

We have further evidence of the lack of any business thought or understanding being applied in the industry as we see the commodity prices receding once again as a result of chronic overproduction. How many producers stated unequivocally when OPEC implemented their production sharing agreement that “this time was different” and “this time we have discipline.” I’ve argued that there is a systemic, deep, unaddressed and unresolved problem in the industry that is being ignored, primarily because the bureaucrats get away with it. The Preliminary Specifications decentralized production models price maker strategy is designed to solve the problem, however as with all new technological implementations it disintermediates the marketplace and trashes the useless bureaucracy to the scrap heap of history. The bureaucracy fight back with everything they can and what they are mouthing today is not “market rebalancing” but “collusion” as an effective deterrent to action.

Meanwhile back at the ranch. OPEC et al take one million and a half barrels per day off the market which has proven very effective in dealing with low oil prices. North American producers, who are starved of cash, find that flush oil production from new wells is too much to give up in terms of cash. Particularly when you don’t have to pay anyone for eighteen months. Therefore we see the rapid increase in U.S. oil production which hit 10.251 million barrels per day last week. Up from 8.692 million barrels per day in November 2016 when OPEC implemented their production sharing agreement. That’s a difference of 1.559 million barrels per day. I don’t think OPEC has been truly appreciated here. They’ve done two things that I can see. Conceded market share to North American producers. And provided a lesson in inventory management of commodities that are subject to the economic principles of price makers. What I don’t see is OPEC’s market discipline continuing.

At the same time the active rig count has moved from 580 in November 2016 to 975 last week. An increase of 29 rigs over the prior week. We can see how this time is not so different and that the producers once again have no discipline, as they claimed they did not so long ago. Does anyone see a pattern here? If you do, see if you can match it to the pattern that was evident between 1986 and 2002? I can assure you it’s the same. There is no control of oneself. There is no business sense. There is nothing but deployment or curtailment of the spending machine that is otherwise known as the oil and gas producer. Purely based on the trajectory of the commodity price. If it’s an upward trajectory, spend, etc. Nothing more. It is the same thinking that considers anything else collusion. Needless to say with the decline of oil below $60 and natural gas below $2.60 we’ll see an eventual decline in the rig count. I would suggest it will be a significant amount of time before we see this level of commodity price or drilling activity again. Since the rig count has almost doubled over the past 15 months. Does that mean the increase in production will be twice as much as it was before the OPEC production sharing agreement was implemented, or 3 million barrels per day? The time it takes to bring production on is not coincidental with the price increase. It lags the price changes by almost a year. And if the market was overwhelmed by shale oil production in November 2016, which prompted the OPEC production sharing agreement, what will the increase in North American production be like for the next 12 months, and what will the price be at this time next year?

The only solution to this clearly evident pattern. A pattern in which the alleged “good” years in oil from 2009 to 2014 were diluted by the disastrous natural gas collapse. Therefore since 1986 oil and gas have been able to count 2003 to 2008 as the “good” years. Five years in these past thirty two years, what more do the investors, society or anyone expect? We also know that those “good” years were very prosperous for the bureaucrats. In fact more prosperous than for anyone else. Options and bonuses took up pretty much all of those “good” years spoils. The only solution is the People, Ideas & Objects Preliminary Specification. Evidence of this is the treatment that we’ve received at the hands of these bureaucrats since 2003. We are the only threat to their franchise. They see no issue in the market today. They see no issue in their performance over the past 32 years. All they have to do is keep coming up with a good excuse every once in a while, like collusion is going to be for 2018, and that seems to do the trick.

The Preliminary Specification, our user community and service providers provide for a dynamic, innovative, accountable and profitable oil and gas industry with the most profitable means of oil and gas operations. Setting the foundation for North America’s energy independence. People, Ideas & Objects Revenue Model specifies the means in which investors can participate in our future Initial Coin Offering (ICO) that will fund these user defined software developments. It is through the process of issuing our ICO that we are leading the way in which creative destruction can be implemented within the oil and gas industry. 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. 

Another Problem!

The markets are sending signals that the days of government intervention may be over. Zero interest rate policies can not continue in an environment where inflation is not only possible and probable, but likely. Not only the Fed but other institutions will have to act, the markets are signalling that interest rates are on the move. We discussed the effect of higher interest rates on the producers last Monday. Repricing of risk will take the froth off of the stock prices and the higher interest rates on overextended producers will be issues the bureaucrats will not be able to deal with. As we noted the producers are not overextended on their “well defended” balance sheets. Until you realize their property, plant and equipment is substantially overstated by the unrecognized costs of past production. Therefore what appears as a reasonable debt load is in fact, excessive.

It’s been almost a generation of people who’ve never experienced the joys of a high interest rate environment. The period up until now has been very deceptive as the higher the level of inactivity and passivity that is applied within the organization, the greater the rewards seemed to have been. If you did nothing, it didn’t matter, as in time the issue was overwhelmed by the higher value of the overall assets. Buying and holding was the only strategy and from that everyone learned it was the key to success. Buy on the dips and hold through the ups and downs. That has become the way in which business has been managed since 2003, the time that the U.S. government 10 year bond dipped and remained well below 5%.

What I think we can now look forward to is a return of a competitive market environment. One in which the producer firms in the oil and gas industry will have to live by their wits and perform or get left behind. An environment where I don’t think many recall and few have the background in which to understand. The point of the matter is that as an investor, if I can purchase a U.S. government bond that guarantees me 5% why would I invest in anything that doesn’t provide that or better on a competitive basis with equal risk? An oil and gas producer is going to have to provide, if they’re to succeed, a return to the investor of 10% in order to compete and maintain their stock price. If they can’t they’ll be quickly forgotten and investors will move on. During this zero interest rate period disgruntled shareholders have been offered U.S. government bond rates that averaged 2%, no reason to sell the producers. With the speed and ruthlessness of these new types of markets shareholders will be unable to consider any point of view other than the fact that the 10% was not reached. Tell me of an oil and gas producer that is able to meet those demands in the current industry. If you find one then I’ll ask you to recalculate their earnings on the basis of a more reasonable capitalization and depletion methodology. One that would at least generate cash and seeks to compete in the capital markets of 2018.

Coincidental with this era in which the buy and hold strategy has been so successful. I’ve been pounding the pavement trying to get a decision to proceed with the development of the Preliminary Specification or its earlier versions. As I said indecision and inaction have been the most successful tactics in this market and considering the decline in the commodity prices we should have seen many producers having difficulties hanging on as far back as the 2008 financial crisis. It’s only been since 2016 when the investors became wise to the game of backfilling the cash demands of the producers for the past four decades did they stop investing. Even this investor strike has not caused any of the producers to face their demise or make any decisions to rectify the situation. I am suggesting this easy business environment is moving along as we speak. Only to be replaced by a somewhat normal environment where only the strong will survive and prosper.

Which brings up the question who will that be? I say it won’t be this bunch. You can start a business off and pursue two generally different strategies. Establish profitability immediately or build the business and then shift to profitability. The current producers chose to do the build then shift to profitability model. The problem with the companies who chose to pursue the building of the business and then shift to profitability approach is that the profitability never comes. You can’t change the stripes on a tiger and you can’t make an unprofitable company profitable. Some have tried but they’ll all eventually fail. Profitability is not the same thing as spending money. Spending money is the easy part. Making a business profitable is the difficult part. Currently we have an industry of spenders who were “building the business” for the past four decades with cheap and easy money acquired through the publication of specious accounting reports. The last 15 years have been in this zero interest rate, anything goes environment. Are these the producers that are going to be able to get the industry moving forward again? You have my answer.

The Preliminary Specification, our user community and service providers provide for a dynamic, innovative, accountable and profitable oil and gas industry with the most profitable means of oil and gas operations. Setting the foundation for North America’s energy independence. People, Ideas & Objects Revenue Model specifies the means in which investors can participate in our future Initial Coin Offering (ICO) that will fund these user defined software developments. It is through the process of issuing our ICO that we are leading the way in which creative destruction can be implemented within the oil and gas industry. 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. 

"These Are Not the Prices We're Looking For"

With all due respect to Obi-Wan-Kenobi. It appears based on the early fourth quarter reports of the oil and gas producers that the rise in oil prices over the past year have been inadequate to deal with their shortfall in profitability. Although many are reporting full year profitability on the basis of tax benefits, the underlying businesses are still losing money. In some cases it's hard to tell the difference between 2017 and 2016. The latter being the worst year in oil and gas history. We should thank the Saudis and OPEC for their work in raising the price of oil in 2017. We should also thank them for the lesson that oil and gas commodities are subject to the principles of price makers and not price takers, which is what the North American producers assume them to be. The increase in North American shale production shows that the lessons may have been taught, but the producers were in the back of the class watching YouTube videos instead of taking notes. What I guess we’ve all learned is that none of the bureaucrats running the oil and gas producers care about what’s going on.

I am impressed with the attention being paid by the investors in this oil and gas crisis. I was told recently that producers now understand fully that they can no longer dilute their investors. The investor strike appears to be continuing and therefore does not show any signs of abating. We’ve also learned that the cash flow remains strong enough to support enough field activity to continue to overwhelm the commodities inventories. The only thing that producers can do now is implement the Preliminary Specification and have the price maker strategy operational. Which would enable legitimately profitable production to capture the costs of past production, that has been so accurately captured and recorded in property, plant and equipment. Use that cash flow to fund whatever capital expenditures are needed, pay down the bank loans and return the capital to the shareholders. Doesn’t sound as exciting as doing what you want for four decades with endless free money, but to everyone, there is an end.

Our calculations show that producers require $131 in order to obtain that real, legitimate profitability. That would dictate a natural gas price of approximately $22 on a six to one basis. I don’t make the rules and I’m certainly not the one that spent all of that money. By recognizing that these costs of past production are being accounted for the producers would have a flush of cash provided for the foreseeable future. A characteristic of a mature industry. Until then producers can run around and say that it costs $15 to produce from the Permian. Which either shows they don’t understand their business or their lying.

Its difficult to see and understand the issue that the Preliminary Specification is designed to resolve. Our solutions roots are in the 1986 to 2002 period where producers continued to lose money, did nothing about it, and relied on investors to backfill their cash shortfall. Sixteen years where only the bureaucrats made out like bandits. As then we will always pass between these phases of price increases and decreases. Never attaining a price necessary to cover the cost of oil and gas exploration and production. When prices increase, greed overtakes the fear that built up when the prices declined. It is a vicious cycle that will not end until such time as the Preliminary Specification is implemented. It will never stop now that shale exists. It doesn’t matter what the producers do or don’t do. Until each producer recognizes individually that the issue lays with their unprofitable overproduction and oversupply we are stuck here. It’s not just the other producers fault. We’ve been in this situation for ten years so far with natural gas. Three years in oil and no material change in the outlook. And no action other than to wait for “markets to rebalance” which never rebalance, ever. It is not something that they do and outside of oil and gas the term doesn’t even exist. Markets do one thing and only one thing. They provide information in the form of price. If you can produce profitably at that price you produce, otherwise for whatever reason would you produce?

The Preliminary Specification, our user community and service providers provide for a dynamic, innovative, accountable and profitable oil and gas industry with the most profitable means of oil and gas operations. Setting the foundation for North America’s energy independence. People, Ideas & Objects Revenue Model specifies the means in which investors can participate in our future Initial Coin Offering (ICO) that will fund these user defined software developments. It is through the process of issuing our ICO that we are leading the way in which creative destruction can be implemented within the oil and gas industry. 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. 

Two Business Models?

In yesterday’s post I noted that there were two business models contained within the Preliminary Specification. The first model is the decentralized production model that we’ve discussed here frequently. It includes the price maker strategy and relies on the reorganization of the oil and gas industry and producers to include the user community and service providers. The second business model of the producer is a second source of revenue that the producer generates based on their engineering and earth science capabilities and resources. Both of these business models are critical to the future profitability of the oil and gas producers. And both require substantial changes to the mindset of those people who work within the industry.

Briefly the decentralized production model enables producers to shut-in any unprofitable production and therefore increase their profitability by only producing profitable properties. No longer will their profitable properties be diluted by their unprofitable ones. We do this by reallocating the accounting and administrative resources of the producers into service providers who specialize on one process and use the entire oil and gas industry as their client base. Specialization and the division of labors finest hour. That way when a property is shut-in no information is generated or transferred through our task and transfer system to the service provider to process. Therefore no activities will be invoked by the service providers and no invoice will be presented to that Joint Operating Committee while it’s shut-in. Creating a null operation, no profit but also no loss. Enabling the producer to maximize their profitability, save their reserves for a time when they can be produced profitably, not have to carry the additional costs of subsequent years losses on those reserves and remove the marginal production from the commodity markets, raising commodity prices to the level necessary to cover the total cost of oil and gas exploration and production on a reasonable accounting basis.

The industry is currently configured to have operators and non-operators of Joint Operating Committees. This requires the producer to have the capabilities and capacities necessary to deal with any and all contingencies across their asset base. Therefore, within the producer, there is a surplus capacity built-in to deal with these contingencies. Creating an unused and unusable surplus capacity across the industry. As the sciences continue to expand the demands to increase specialization and expand the division of labor will be necessary. Particularly if the industry is going to expand its production throughput to attain energy independence on the continent. At some point, in the very near future, the diversity and depth of these demands on producers capabilities will further erode their profitability. No producer will be able to afford the full cost of the highly specialized earth science and engineering capability. Therefore we believe, each producer will need to specialize in specific areas and rely on other producers to fill in, either through the Joint Operating Committee, or as another producer, to augment the capabilities that are demanded by the property. The Preliminary Specification facilitates this specialization between producers throughout the industry. These features are captured in the Resource Marketplace, Partnership Accounting, Accounting Voucher, Research & Capabilities and Knowledge & Learning modules.

Therefore within the Preliminary Specification we have developed a Work Order system that captures the time and place that the producers resources are deployed to. The Work Order will collect and aggregate the time that was spent for the property and provide the appropriate billing to the appropriate Joint Operating Committee each month. Therefore these resources are generating a source of revenue that is not being captured currently. As the industry begins trading on these individual producers capabilities they can become highly specialized and divide the labor between the producer firms. This will save the industry from further profit erosion and recapture much of the profit that is lost today when each and every producer is building unused and unusable capabilities and capacities within their organizations.

There is one further consideration that must be taken into account. That is the brain trust that is alleged to be retiring from the industry in the next decade. This may create a shortfall in the critical engineering and earth science areas. These shortfalls may be aggravated by the current downturn as few people are entering the earth science and engineering faculties in the universities. This alone may become a critical issue as it will be many years of demand and high wages to generate the demand that initiates people to make the investment of their time in these professions. It is therefore highly probable that the industry does not have the level of these critical competitive resources available to them in the very near future. The bureaucrats may want to leave this until it becomes a critical issue, after all it would be in their best interests, People, Ideas & Objects tend to see things and act differently.

The Preliminary Specification, our user community and service providers provide for a dynamic, innovative, accountable and profitable oil and gas industry with the most profitable means of oil and gas operations. Setting the foundation for North America’s energy independence. People, Ideas & Objects Revenue Model specifies the means in which investors can participate in our future Initial Coin Offering (ICO) that will fund these user defined software developments. It is through the process of issuing our ICO that we are leading the way in which creative destruction can be implemented within the oil and gas industry. 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.