Our Oil and Gas White Paper, Part VIII

In addition to recognizing the Joint Operating Committee as the key organizational construct of the dynamic, innovative, accountable and profitable oil and gas producer. The Preliminary Specification contains three modules that are Marketplace modules. The Petroleum Lease, Resource and Financial Marketplace modules all establish markets in which the oil and gas industry have traditionally operated in. Each of the Marketplace modules share a Marketplace Interface that enables producers to interact and conduct the commerce that they undertake as a producer. These interactions are fully integrated within the ERP system of the Preliminary Specification allowing producers, service industry and government agencies to buy, sell, trade and assign land, products and services etc. The Joint Operating Committee and markets are what replace the bureaucracy of the corporate empire that exists today. Centralization as a theme in corporate America has waned and decentralized models are enabled through the speed and availability of the Internet. It is the contrast between our decentralized industry and producer structures that frighten the bureaucracies of the existing producers with the termination of their command and control, but let's not forget the healthy compensation they receive for losing all that investor money.

What is generally known and understood for the past number of decades is that the knowledge and skills necessary to make a pencil isn’t and can’t be contained within one individual. Whether this is the case or not is unknown, which in a way implies its validity. People, Ideas & Objects budget involves 5,000 man years of effort for the development of the Preliminary Specification based on the user communities definition and participation. These developments will be made on top of the commitments and investment that have been made by Oracle to develop their generic accounting and ERP systems that form the base of the Preliminary Specification. The number we are recruiting for our user community is approximately 3,000. A number that I believe we need in order to develop an understanding of the industry and how it fully operates. These people will have to be well versed in their knowledge and specialization of how the industry operates. Their contributions will also need to be reviewed and confirmed by other users. The end product of the software will need to be tested within the industry to ensure that if functions as it’s designed to.

These attributes need to be done carefully and thoughtfully. We are not recreating the failing systems that support the industry today. We are designing, developing and delivering software that supports the business model in the Preliminary Specification and the way in which work needs to be conducted within the industry. It will be a creative and innovative process that the users will use to solve the issues they will face during the development process, and to discover the solutions that will meet their needs. It will be the users as the principal in the service provider organization that will manage a process that they’re most familiar with. Although the process may be simple and easy to use, the scope and scale of the data that is produced across the industry will demand that they comprehend these new data related implications within their process design. Here is where their competitive advantages of quality, specialization and the division of labor, automation, innovation, integration and leadership will begin. Once our software and services are operational they will constantly iterate the process through their access to our software developers via their principals membership in the user community and their hands on understanding of what works and what doesn’t in the process that they manage.

When we consider the number of organizations that will be permanently working on the development and betterment of the software and services contained within this sub-industry, as I choose to call it, we will find that its diversity, scope and scale is designed to match the difficulties of the tasks that we are approaching. We are not taking our responsibilities lightly. However at the same time we are not conducting rocket science. We have assessed that oil and gas, both the industry and producers are failing. We feel that the difficulties of our competitors has limited their opportunities to address these oil and gas industry issues. The producers starvation diet will do that. The technologies that are employed in the industry, their level of integration and innovation in which they’ve been implemented are steeped in the software vendors legacies of the 1980’s. The maturation of the Information Technologies that People, Ideas & Objects are using in the development of the Preliminary Specification, our budget and our approach will be able to successfully achieve these tasks.

People, Ideas & Objects is more accurate and valid today than when we first proposed the use of the Joint Operating Committee in August 2003. It is far more valid since the final edited version of the Preliminary Specification was published in December 2013. Producers have and will continue to fail spectacularly so. Their future is the most comprehensively difficult that they’ve ever faced. Yet their preparation and approach is to continue to muddle along and do nothing. Essentially what they’ve done for the past four decades. A time in which they learned, through specious accounting, that “they made bags of money without even trying.” When in reality the value was slowly seeping out of the industry in what is a ponzi scheme. That the producers value as represented in their big beautiful balance sheets only goes up each and every year is validity to their argument that they are good business people. It’s just that capitalizing all the money that you spend and holding it on your balance sheet for decades makes you look that way too.

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 American 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.

Easter Monday

Good Friday

Our Oil and Gas White Paper, Part VII

Our solution, The Preliminary Specification, our user community and service providers

People, Ideas & Objects claim is that the oil and gas industry in North America has not been profitable for over four decades. Serious accounting issues have overlooked the lack of real profitability and the slow and steady erosion of any and all value out of the industry. This has manifest itself into a deluded population of oil and gas producers that believe they’ve been successful, however their investors have been withholding support for the past number of years. The development of shale based reservoirs has accelerated the trajectory of their decline and we see now that the cashless producers have no understanding or appreciation of the issues, People, Ideas & Objects proposed solution, or for the commercialization of shale. The question that remains unanswered in many people’s minds is will shale ever become economic? A very dire situation that we’ve called for the full force of creative destruction to be used against the existing producers in the industry. We believe in addition to being an accounting issue, it has now manifest itself into chronic organizational and cultural issues.

The Preliminary Specification is ERP software that identifies and supports a reorganization of the producer firm and industries resources. Using the Joint Operating Committee as the key organizational construct of the dynamic, innovative, accountable and profitable oil and gas producer we are able to shift the compliance and governance frameworks of the bureaucracy into alignment with the legal, financial, operational decision making, cultural, communication, innovation and strategic frameworks of the Joint Operating Committee. This alignment brings about the speed, innovativeness and accountability that we seek in our producer firms. Once People, Ideas & Objects determined that the Joint Operating Committee was the necessary organizational construct for the future oil and gas producer and industry. I set about to conduct the research into what and how the producer and industry would operate when we made these changes. This was difficult work that took over a decade to complete and we were able to publish the Preliminary Specification as a workable model for oil and gas in December 2013. It currently consists of 12 modules and approximately 200,000 words that define what is necessary to resolve the issues and realize the opportunities that are present in the industry today, and the frameworks necessary to deal with those that arise in the future.

The key structural change that is made in the Preliminary Specification is the establishment of our user community and their associated service providers. These are a reallocation of the administrative and accounting resources that are currently employed within the oil and gas producers. By determining that accounting and administration are not key competitive advantages of the producer we can offload these tasks to service providers outside of the producer organization. That provides many key opportunities that enable the Preliminary Specification to operate in ways that the industry is incapable of doing today. What we’ll be doing in this process is converting all of the producers costs to variable costs based on production. If a property doesn’t produce a profit due to its low deliverability, high cost or other reasons it can be shut-in and its prior losses will no longer dilute the profitable operations from other properties. It will incur a null operation, no profit but also no loss. This property can then be moved to the producers inventory of properties that require the producers earth science and engineering innovations to return it to profitable operations. These shut-in reserves can therefore be saved for a time in which they can be produced profitably. These reserves will not have to carry and recover the additional losses as costs that would otherwise have been incurred if it continued to produce unprofitably. And the commodity markets will find the marginal cost based on only profitable oil and gas operations being produced in the industry. What we have essentially done is moved the producers fixed cost accounting and administrative capabilities to be the variable cost accounting and administrative capabilities of the industry, variable based on production.

Producers consider this collusion as a reason not to act and are unwilling to put the effort into making this industry a viable business. In fact what this is called is the decentralized production model which in the Preliminary Specification replaces what’s in use today and is commonly known as the high throughput production model. It’s not collusion and every other industry manages their inventories in similar fashion to ensure that they do not erode their pricing power. If making independent business decisions based on actual factual accounting of the determination of profitability is collusion, then we are in a strange new world indeed. Oil and gas commodities are subject to the principles of price makers. Producers believe they are price takers and therefore any action they take to increase or decrease production has no effect on commodity prices. One look at the recent history of the industry and we can see that OPEC has successfully removed production on more than one occasion and successfully rehabilitated the oil price. It would seem that producers believe that oil and gas commodities are price takers to ensure there is no need for them to act.

People, Ideas & Objects source of our software quality is our user community. Software that is not based on user input is useless in our opinion. Our user community will consist of approximately 3,000 individuals who will contribute their understanding to the model of the Preliminary Specification. That way we'll know that we’re providing the highest possible quality of software to the oil and gas industry. Each of our user community members will also be the principal involved in one of approximately 3,000 fully independent service provider organizations. There they’ll be provided with an exclusive license to manage a single process that the user community member’s contribution during our development was determined to be a critical component. Service providers will therefore not be competing on the basis of price. No one will hold another license for that process and without access to our software no one can come in and offer a similar service at a lower price than what the licensed service provider can. Service providers compete on a fundamentally different basis which include their competitive advantages of quality, specialization, the division of labor, automation, computers working for us not the other way around, innovation, leadership and integration to name just a few. These competitive advantages are inconsistent with having their flank constantly abused by repeated price competitors. Our service providers will be provided with the exclusive license to ensure they continue to focus and achieve their full competitive advantages. Besides the service providers are a cornerstone to building our $25.7 to $45.7 trillion value proposition for the oil and gas producers.

The mechanism in the Preliminary Specification that creates the null operation at a property is as follows. If the property is shut-in it will produce no data that goes into what we call our task and transfer network. If nothing goes through, the service providers will not receive anything in which they will act upon, process or generate their billing from. Therefore the cost of calculating and recording the butane sales for the property will be reported as zero and none of the service providers will have done any work that month for that property. Therefore the null operation is created, no profit but also no loss because all of the producers costs are variable. The service providers have the entire oil and gas industry inventory of properties as their client base. At anytime it may be that 15% of these properties are shut-in. If that is the case, and the service providers will have budgeted and planned for the possibility of that scenario, then they can accommodate this temporary 15% drop in their revenues. Enabling for the first time the situation where producers overhead costs are variable and indirectly controllable.

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 American 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.

Our Oil and Gas White Paper, Part VI

What we do know about oil and gas is it can be percolated down to its two attributes of temperature and pressure. The Information Technologies that are developed and scheduled for deployment in the next two years will have a dramatic effect on the operational control of the industry. 5G and the common discussion around the Internet of Things will become a reality where the ability to remotely monitor and control any and all aspects of the oil and gas operation will begin to become more of a reality than it is today. It will be available for far less cost, be more robust than what is done today and these operations, with the Preliminary Specification, will follow on through to the financial statements of the producer through advanced automation of administrative and accounting processes. To undertake the scope and scale of the issues in oil and gas many producers are converting themselves into software developers. This is an extension of what has gone on for many decades. Each CIO within the producer has a budget that fuels their empire and develops their own unique solution. Cobbling together hundreds of disparate applications in order to provide for their organization, they criticise People, Ideas & Objects or anyone for that matter, that we would be unable to undertake such a large scope and scale for the entire industry. Yet when we compare our budget to the budget in which they’ve cobbled together their solution, we begin to understand the reasons that each and every producer is and will continue to fail. Aggregating these individual producer budgets into one ERP solution would have been efficient and effective and far less costly than what is incurred today. If I am unable to complete our tasks with our budgeted resources, that remains a possibility. What we do know is that the producers current approach has failed. Our approach is to standardize the administrative and accounting processes within the industry so that each individual producer does not have to incur the time, energy and money necessary to develop these non-competitive attributes of their organizations. Each producer building the same unshared and unshareable administrative and accounting capabilities, which includes IT, are consuming the industries profitability.

So far we’ve talked very little about the technologies. It’s not about any specific technology anymore it’s about the business and more specifically how the business and industry will be structured in order to be profitable. As many people as there are in the world without software we wouldn’t be able to function without it. We stand on the shoulders of many giants. And yet, at the same time it is estimated that the impact of Information Technologies on the productivity in the economy has been minimal. Which may be the case. However what we also know is that for the past few hundred years the only manner in which productivity has expanded is through the further specialization and division of labor. These are the principles that we’ve used to solve many of the issues in oil and gas. Specifically the service providers are derived from our user community members and focus on one administrative or accounting process and use the entire industry as their client base. Eliminating the need for each producer to build their individual unshared and unshareable administrative and accounting capabilities which are exactly the same as each and every other producer. This requires the full stack of Information Technologies that exist in the marketplace today, and will need to be done in innovative ways. Then we will begin to see the real productivity gains in terms of the application of Information Technology through higher profitability of the oil and gas industry, lower administrative and accounting costs and better and more timely information.

We note that People, Ideas & Objects Intellectual Property consists of the following categories. The research that was conducted in determining the Joint Operating Committee as the key organizational construct of the dynamic, innovative, accountable and profitable oil and gas producer. The Preliminary Specification and its derivative works. The work of the user community, how this is acquired is discussed in the user community vision. The software code that is developed and of course the binaries that are used within the producer firms, the service providers and elsewhere. The licensing of the user community, service providers and the granting of the exclusive rights of access to the binaries on behalf of the producer firms by our coin holders. Yet you will notice I have not stated that we’re a software development firm. We have dropped that aspect of our organization as a result of the logistical difficulties and what we feel would be the unnecessary time consumed in developing a capability that we have budgeted for 600 developers. For us to grow from nothing to having all of the developers singing from the same hymn sheet, then mold them into the state of the art team that would be needed for this task would be too long in terms of the timeline that the industry has. Each year the value proposition of our software and services can be in the high triple digit billions of dollars. We feel it would be inefficient for us and the industry to pursue something that may take upwards of four to ten years to do.

It is my personal opinion that no one has the wherewithal to challenge Oracle in terms of the quality of their software offering. What Larry Ellison and his team have done has made all others pale in comparison. It all has to do with the database in my opinion and that is where Oracle most particularly excels. If the data is wrong or the database is unable to conduct the operation correctly it doesn’t matter about much else. Performance of the overall system is another attribute of the database. The demand on these applications at times can be heavy. Oracle is light years ahead of anyone else and to me it appears that no one is even trying to compete anymore. IBM has repackaged their database offering as IBM DB2 and is a cloud offering. It has to be number two in the marketplace with number three being any number of pretenders. Microsoft included. IBM had a large lead as the creator of relational theory and rode that to dominance for many decades. I believe Oracle now has at least a decade on IBM DB2.

We have always configured the Preliminary Specification on the basis of Oracle’s Database, Java, Oracle Fusion Middleware and Oracle Fusion Applications. These also have been packaged as cloud offerings which we’re very pleased with. And there are many more peripheral applications that are provided by Oracle included in the Preliminary Specification. In our initial budget we also had the assistance of Oracle Consulting providing their software development services in terms of accelerating our delivery times. We have now dropped the software development aspect of our firm, chosen our distinct competitive advantages and will be handing Oracle the work of the development of the Preliminary Specification and our user communities contribution.

Artificial Intelligence, Machine learning and other pie in the sky dreams of the producers can’t be implemented until they get the base of their systems operational. Flying to the moon in Orville and Wilbur Wright's plane is going to be difficult. Maybe it would be possible but why would you try? Some producers are crediting Artificial Intelligence with building substantial value for their firm. As we’ve seen most producers are profitable, but where’s the cash? The role of IT in the producer firm and industry are far beyond what we’ve seen in the past. Today is a time when a different approach to the future and the long term are necessary. Information Technologies make fundamental changes to the outcome and profitability of industries. Picking up the latest tool and waving it around doesn’t.

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 American 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.

Our Oil and Gas White Paper, Part V

There is no consideration of an oil and gas future without discussion of the Information Technologies that are available in the marketplace today. The maturation of these over the past five years, from an ERP systems point of view, has been spectacular. What can be done in terms of what is available today is far beyond what has been implemented in oil and gas to date. My personal assessment of the systems that are in use by the oil and gas industry is that they have failed the oil and gas producers. In a world where software defines and supports the organization, when those oil and gas organizations and the industry as a whole has failed, and has failed to adjust to the issues that are causing systemic failure, then that has to be assessed as a resounding software failure as well. There are many reasons for the failure of the software vendors. Key among them is the financial abuse they’ve experienced at the hands of the oil and gas producers, their alleged clients. The software vendors products have therefore atrophied and their skills have degraded to the point where they are unable to appropriately service the industry and we have today's failure. The key point to note is that producers did not sacrifice any money on providing better management or information of their business, in order to drill the maximum number of wells possible.

The result of this history has demanded that People, Ideas & Objects take a different approach to our funding. We seek to raise the funds that we need to complete our developments in advance of our software development commencing. (Please see our ICO) This is in order to ensure that we do not become “blind sleepwalking agents of whomever will feed us.” Habermas. We must proceed to our completion without interruption and without undue influence from groups who seek compromise with the bureaucratic ways of the past. Creative destruction is at hand and we need to ensure that the configuration of the industry is true to the Preliminary Specification as its model with the user community filling in the details. Compromising to meet the current needs of the capital markets, or the bureaucrats in today’s producer firms will be unacceptable a decade from now. Our approach to the oil and gas marketplace is fundamentally different than that which has been provided to the producers by our competitors in the past. We have configured our organization as an Intellectual Property, Research and User community based provider. These are our distinct competitive advantages. We believe, fundamentally, that there is only one business in the very near future. And that is the software business. Just as the record store is now the iTunes app all industries will be operated in the same manner. Such that it’s not enough to own the oil and gas asset but also have access to the software that makes the oil and gas asset profitable. We see today that our competitors have not provided this, and the producers are systemically unprofitable.

Software is the app that users see. Software is derived from Intellectual Property, therefore all industries will be based on the software’s Intellectual Property. This has been our strategy from the beginning. In the 1990’s Intellectual Property was more of the wild west, if you saw something you used it. Now it has to be respected and as a result the implications in business are dramatic and those with the Intellectual Property have many opportunities they did not have before. In terms of the impact on the people who work in oil and gas the same can be stated. Intellectual Property will be the basis of their employability and value in the marketplace. Education being the base of their Intellectual Property they’ll begin with the development of their unique skills from there. What’s different today is that they’ll also have access to some form of contractual Intellectual Property that enables them to generate their value. Without it, they may otherwise be unemployable. The three forms of Intellectual Property that they may have in terms of their employment is the development of their own specific capabilities based on the Intellectual Property they’ve developed. Secondly they may acquire the rights to Intellectual Property on the basis of a license in a commercial relationship. This is the nature of our user community members and their service provider operations in the overall People, Ideas & Objects community. Or lastly they will work for a firm who has the Intellectual Property itself or have acquired it as a result of a license. Today’s producer bureaucrats are displeased with this element of our offering and are unaware of the world in which we now exist. It is their archaic system of centralized command and control that will be unable to compete in the future and have none of the requisite capabilities (software) in which to do so.

When it comes to capabilities People, Ideas & Objects has also configured our offering on a different basis than our competition. We are a change based software development capability for the oil and gas industry. Our user community is endowed with the exclusive rights to change the Intellectual Property that makes up the Preliminary Specification and its derivative works. Therefore the oil and gas industry, producer and each and every person in the industry will know who to contact in order to make a change in the software of the system. Who do they call to have changes made in their systems today? Our developers only listen to our user community members for the information they need to develop the software. Making our user community the power and control of the oil and gas industries accounting, administrative and business model leadership and implementation. This allows us to make the changes to the system as required in order to avoid any and all issues that arise and realize the opportunities. Industry will no longer be provided with static software configurations that hold the industry in the current business model that loses money chronically and absolutely. Undoubtedly at some point the Preliminary Specification would create its own similar issues to the difficulties being experienced in oil and gas today. With this change based software, user community and service provider offering the means in which to avoid that is inherent in our offering.

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 American 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.

Our Oil and Gas White Paper, Part IV

We need to provide a new future for the oil and gas industry in North America. One that is prosperous for all, from the shareholders, the people who work for the producers, the service and support industries and for those in the general economy. Profitability is the only manner in which an industry such as oil and gas can prosper, but at the same time provide the consumer with the most affordable means of energy. Profitability will fuel innovations in a competitive environment where producers are actively able to focus on their competitive advantages of their earth sciences and engineering capabilities, and their land and asset base. What has happened in the past four decades is unacceptable for all concerned. We’ve seen nothing but boom and bust throughout the industry with all of the value that should have been built, and all that was built before, destroyed. The culture that has developed from all of this knows no difference and there is no common sense evident in the industry anywhere. I’m only being honest when I say that we’re moving away from the existing producers and using creative destruction to rebuild the industry in the image of the Preliminary Specification. The situation currently provides no future for today’s producers, I am not of the belief they’ll survive. It would be foolhardy therefore for me to accept their money and suggest that I can do anything for them. They needed to call me five years ago.

Therefore the future is a blank canvas in which we’ve etched the outline of what and how we’ll operate the industry based on the Preliminary Specification. It deals with the issues that are prevalent today and deals with them constructively. The thing that most people would find odd about these issues is that all of them are related to accounting. The chronic, massive and deliberate distortions and deceptions that have gone on for four decades have covered over the lack of profitability and therefore the lack of value (de)generation. Whoever said accounting wasn’t important doesn’t understand business. There are many people who are responsible but none of them will be held to account. We can leave this past and the associated issues by regenerating the industry with the participation of many like minded people who share our concerns. Our future is never written, however, the Preliminary Specification is a workable model that has been formulated through ten years of research. It is the start that the industry needs. It is designed to be based on a subsequent collaborative development of thousands of people to fill-in the various components of what is required to ensure the producers are dynamic, innovative, accountable and profitable. It is also the only idea that has been tested through time. The regeneration of the industry is therefore provided with a headstart in making the future real in both oil and gas, and the economy in general.

The most dynamic, innovative, accountable and profitable countries will be provided with the affordable energy they need. With 23,200 man hours in each barrel of oil, producers will need to educate the consumers on the value and role that oil and gas has in making a prosperous future a reality for all concerned. The remainder of the 21st century could be significant in terms of the value that is generated across North America if the energy industry that we’re now creating undertakes this obligation and opportunity responsibly. We know the oil and gas reserves are there, that is not the issue. Profitability is the first order of business in order to ensure a sound foundation in which to expand to meet the continents future demands. The Preliminary Specification provides the most profitable means of oil and gas operations. That has to be priority one in terms of the tasks that we undertake. Then we can begin to rebuild the industry and its associated infrastructure that will be necessary in order to increase the deliverability of the industry and ensure that all of North America is competitive and robust.

All of this does not come about as a result of a “muddling along” and “doing nothing” strategy and operating procedure so the producers can buy time while they wait for the next upturn. Where the next upturn only occurs as a result of destroying the previous low water mark in terms of production deliverability. Leadership in the industry will therefore need to be developed. This can begin by selling the North American consumers on the value and the role that oil and gas makes in their lives. Cease funding the contrary opinions that are political niceties and are inherently providing strategic conflicts to the industry. Specifically I mean the environmental movement. It needs to be understood that the Nazi’s had it right when they said “if you repeat the lie often enough, people will believe it.” All but four years of my life, the four that I have no memory of, I’ve lived in an unending series of imminent, environmental armageddons. I don’t walk around in a gas mask. I am still protected by the ozone. Acid rain hasn’t got me yet. The ice age is still intermittent here in Canada. And as long as I can remember, and certainly since its first declaration in 1989, I can’t tell if global warming has had any effect or not. You can call me a “denier” which is what I am, I’ve just been around the block a few times and can see the results when you get the children and nutjob congresswomen predicting the future out of fear. These ad hominem attacks on people who have alternative thoughts about the environment are only typical of the desire of some to move toward socialism and control the population with fear. Oil and gas has a job to do and a responsibility, they can’t shirk this or blame it on others such as the governments or pipeline companies. If China or Europe are the most powerful economies in a decade then we’ll have achieved what the democrats have always sought, a second rate United States.

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 American 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.

Our Oil and Gas White Paper, Part III

Oil and Gas Future

Over the past number of decades the producers have relied on what they called “market rebalancing” to deal with their overproduction of oil or gas. Relying on this mechanism requires no effort, other than the few calories it takes to mouth the words. It is a critical and successful element of the “do nothing” operating procedure used by all oil and gas companies. In other words, just wait until the production profile of the industry atrophies to the point where it meets demand. It is the willful destruction of the productive capacity of the industry. A policy that is as foolish as “profitability isn’t what producers seek.” Or maybe I have that backwards, I can never remember which one is the least intelligent of the two. We also find throughout North America oil and gas CEO’s providing financial resources and verbal support to any and all the ludicrous environmental issues that will see the elimination of oil and gas from the market place before we all die in as little as twelve years. This is where the backbone of the industry begins to sag precipitously. Logistical and political issues are the key difficulties of the oil and gas CEO. These are all derivative of the environmental causes they parrot willingly. They accept that there are no pipelines for their overproduction and will accept commodity price differentials that take 90% of their revenues. “Their value is in the oil and gas reserves they hold in the ground!” This is not a business it’s a science experiment! As long as there was investor money and there is someone to blame for their difficulties, that is all that matters.

The Elementary school kids are terrified that we’re destroying the planet for them and they won’t graduate high school as a result, they and the planet will be dead. What has become almost certain imminent demise in the next decade is believed by most people, yet no one acts. And where is the adult argument being put across by the oil and gas producers? There is none, and that is wholly consistent with the “muddle along and do nothing” point of view. This imminent environmental armageddon is a foolish thing to believe for an oil and gas producer, and an irresponsible approach for their role in society. What will they do when the demand for energy increases, point to the environment movement and say that “we thought we were all dead.” Or “where is the wind and solar that was the replacement.” This is the quality and depth of thinking that has been exhibited in oil and gas for four decades. If you find my writing too sarcastic I’m sorry, it's the only way that I can deal with the frustration of having to watch so much destruction occur across the industry while having what I believe to be the solution at the ready. “If demand for energy doubles in the future we’ll just get the money we need from investors and bankers. We know how to do it, the reserves are all in the ground.” The nature of oil and gas today.

Producers and the industry need to begin to assert their point of view in the discussion. Yes, there could be environmental consequences of the consumers use of hydrocarbons. Nonetheless the consumers can’t live without hydrocarbons and their need for them in the future is far greater than what it is today. Wind and solar as a replacement are as big a myth as the myths regarding the environment. We’ll discuss that more clearly in this position paper next. Producers drill wells. They leave everything else in the business to others. Pipelines are regulated companies that install the pipelines. They are the focus of environmentalist who receive financial and verbal support from the producers. The environmentalists actively demonstrate and obstruct the process to the point where it’s difficult for pipeline companies to get pipelines put in place. This as far as the producers in the oil and gas industry are concerned is the government's fault. What producers have done is handed a financially, logistical and politically complex and difficult bureaucratic process over to a regulated bureaucracy in the pipeline companies, to seek approval from the ultimate bureaucracy, the government. Producers leadership and management of the pipeline process is complete once the checks to Greenpeace are mailed.

What they need to be doing is informing the consumers of the choices they have to make. Accept that the environmentalists are right and start hiking to the outback. Or, understand that each barrel of oil equivalent has the mechanical leverage of 23,200 man hours of labor. I ran the calculation that states the annual global output of oil and gas is therefore equivalent to the output of 76 times the world's population. If consumers want to rely on alternative means of energy then there will be a wholesale downward swing in industrial capacity than what oil and gas provides today. Without oil and gas there is probably 95% overpopulation and the quality of life would be prehistoric. So let's keep scaring the kids because they are the thought leaders in society today, we know it’s not the producers. But that is the point of the exercise isn’t it. If the producers accept the children's concern for the planet then they’re absolved of the responsibility to ensure that oil and gas is provided for the future. If they find that they’re unable to provide for the demand they’ll be able to point to the children and say they thought they were serious and there was no reason not to believe the children.

We see the consequences, particularly here in Canada, when our primary industries are not profitable. The carry on effects down through the secondary and tertiary industries is highly detrimental, and the general economy suffers as a result of the lack of growth and investment. You have to remember though that this is the declared strategy of the producers to “muddle along, do nothing and rebalance markets.” Which is as we discussed the willful destruction of the productive capacity of the industry. We are one fifth of the way through the 21st century and we have an industry that fundamentally believes that there are good days and bad days. When the bad days arrive, that’s when you shrug your shoulders. To effectively manage the business beyond the ups and downs of the commodity price cycle takes a lot of effort and work. Something we’ve seen no signs of in the past four decades. The capacity to spend money, blame others and shuffle the rest into your own pocket are the only strategic competitive advantages of today’s oil and gas bureaucrat! There are lessons on these topics held at each producer every day.

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 American 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.

Our Oil and Gas White Paper, Part II

Yesterday we began discussing our position paper. We pick up where we were discussing the results of 1970’s era SEC designated accounting changes that began a cultural change in the management of the producer, and the beginnings of the dependence on annual investor infusions and cash flow. Profitability became a foreign concept that was deemed of no value to the producer.

Why are these such issues today? The culture of the oil and gas industry is an issue due to the fact that the belief that value is generated in drilling is not backed up by the financial performance of these businesses. And when I say the financial performance I limit that to just include the cash. The industry became a massive call on investor funds each and every year. There never was or is any understanding that “business” should be self supporting. It was necessary that you “build the business” and this was represented by “building the balance sheet” which is the unanimous calling of the producers even today. Spending is the only capability and is the decided competitive advantage of oil and gas. As proof you can look at all of those reserves. The problem the producers don’t see is that you can’t and you never have produced any “real” profits from the reserves. The value that has been invested in the industry is sitting in the ground with those reserves as represented by the bloated balance sheets of property, plant and equipment. Reporting only the operating and royalties as costs, more or less, that's all the costs left after the majority of costs are capitalized, making the producer look profitable. The fact is everyone believed those bloated assets and profits. The profits were not just over reported as a result of not recognizing much of the cost of oil and gas exploration and production. Producers only deplete the property, plant and equipment account on the basis of taking all of the capital costs that were spent. Allocating these costs to the entire reserves base, and only recognizing the capital costs that would have been apportioned to the reserves that were produced that year. Leaving the capital on the balance sheet for decades at a time.

What we had in essence was a massively profitable industry based on the chronic spending of investors money. The amounts of recorded capital in property, plant and equipment weren’t assets, as represented in the specious financial statements of the producers, and rubber stamped by the public accountants who should have known better and done something about it. They were and are the unrecognized capital costs of past production. We believe any and all producers should be subject to a pro-forma accounting adjustment to consider the reality of this situation by moving at least 65% of property, plant and equipment to depletion. What we then find is that all of shareholders equity is eliminated in the industry and the banks are in financial jeopardy too. Oil and gas is a capital intensive industry implying that the majority of its costs are capital in nature. Just because the SEC defines the outer limit of what a producers property, plant and equipment account can be, that does not mean that each and every producer reaches that limit each and every year. The most competitive producer would strive to recognize their costs as quickly as they could and hold the smallest balance of property, plant and equipment.

When investors are told profits are as healthy as they’re reported in the industry over these past four decades. They rush in with their money in order to capture some of those profits. More investors lead to overinvestment in the industry which leads to the chronic, systemic overproduction that we see. The chronic problem that has existed in oil and gas since 1986 when OPEC first dropped the price of oil. $10 was their price and all the North American producers had to do was to pull back production 15% in order to rectify the price decline. What they did was nothing. Except for bring about the beginnings of the second cultural phenomenon that is systemic throughout the industry. Looking under each and every rock for the responsible scapegoat and crying “oh whoa is me” in the process. In seeing this it became clear to me that the configuration and structure of both the producers and industry could not reduce production. They’re not configured for that. It would only leave large portions of overhead uncovered and profitability would suffer. I therefore set out to build the software that was necessary to enable the industry to deal with the chronic overproduction that was occurring as a result of the chronic overinvestment created by the specious accounting and financial statements that were produced. That is the Preliminary Specification that provides the oil and gas producers with the most profitable means of oil and gas operations. Everywhere and always. We believe this chronic overproduction situation has created 28 poorly performing years out of the last 33. With shale it will be terminal.

Without real profitability. Without anyone searching for value outside of the reserves that were being discovered. Without any half decent reporting being undertaken anywhere. The value that was the oil and gas industry and the investment dollars put in has been frittered and wasted while the bureaucrats whistled by the tombstones. The industry is now worthless as it demands capital in order just to operate. The cash crisis created as a result of investor and banker withdrawal is slowly progressing towards it final demise. Cash was consumed, lines of credit were drawn, more cash was consumed, properties were sold for half of their recorded value, working capital is now diminishing at a remarkable rate. This has taken three years to become a serious problem throughout the industry. Now the tough part begins. Debts are slowly becoming due and the bankers are generally satisfied to this point to roll the debt over. Even to the poorest performers. As time passes and no plans, no strategy other than “muddle along and do nothing” become obvious as to its unanimous adoption throughout the industry. The bankers will become spooked and with the lack of action and diminishing cash, will bankers begin to want to see more cash? How long before this becomes material to the banking sector and rolling the debt over can’t continue? Then what, is that the day my phone rings off the hook?

People, Ideas & Objects have assessed that the beatings that we’ve been subject to since 2003 have been enough. That we are also unable to take on the task of saving those that have shown no propensity to save themselves, and have traveled down the wrong road for too long for us to retrieve them. Creative destruction is the tool we’re using to exercise the necessary changes in the industry. The scope and scale of changes that the Preliminary Specification necessitates demand an inertia that I no longer maintain, or may never have had. Therefore we have adopted other plans in which we will prepare the Preliminary Specification and the rebuilding of the oil and gas industry based on providing them with the most profitable means of oil and gas operations.

There is a long history of failures in the oil and gas ERP software market. It is a small market with possibly 150 producers able to purchase a system that meets their needs. Producers have used this fact to abuse the vendors by playing one off against the other and gaining the software product for just the service contract. Keeping the ERP vendor on a starvation diet was consistent with their thinking that accounting systems interfere with the drilling budget. People, Ideas & Objects, IBM and Oracle have all used the method of having the producers pay the upfront costs of development. In the late 1990’s Oracle left as a result of the frustration of trying to deal with the producers who had no appreciation or budget for the type of solutions that were needed. IBM owned the market leading application in Qbyte. There inability to raise any money for new software development, finding the same frustrations, led them to sell out of the oil and gas ERP marketspace in 2005. People, Ideas & Objects are committed to the oil and gas ERP marketspace. We have developed significant and necessary value the producers need. We however have had the same difficulties of IBM and Oracle. We are unable to deal with the producers who are incapable of saving themselves and are therefore working on what will be the systems, the Preliminary Specification, for the regenerated oil and gas producers from the ashes of these producers creative destruction.

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 American 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.

Our Oil and Gas White Paper, Part I

Background

The following series of blog posts represent People, Ideas & Objects Position Paper with respect to the overall achievements the oil and gas industry must strive for in the next three decades. These are what we seek to provide the North American producer through the development of the software and services defined in the Preliminary Specification. Enhanced capabilities that enable producers and the industry to undertake a strategic and tactical business approach that provide a dynamic, innovative, accountable and profitable footing. Software is the enabling technology of the 21st century. When organizations are supported and defined by the software that is consistent with the industry and producers objectives, strategy and tactics, then success and profitability will be the outcome. When organizations are not supported or defined by the software that they use they’re limited and constrained in achieving any results that are competitive in the marketplace for capital, labor and the support of the public. People, Ideas & Objects Preliminary Specification is the result of our research based on what we’ve determined is necessary in order to make the change from using the corporation as the key organizational construct of the producer, to use the Joint Operating Committee as the key organizational construct of the dynamic, innovative, accountable and profitable oil and gas producer. It is a fundamental reorganization of the industry and the producer firm in order to deal with the issues that are prevalent today. Enabling a dynamic change based organizational capability throughout the producer and industry. Positioning the producer and industry for the challenging and difficult future that we all agree will be the most dramatic and exciting the industry has ever experienced.

To execute the necessary changes to build, implement and operate the Preliminary Specification doesn’t exist in the oil and gas industry. Based on the work that we’ve done in this market we also believe that it will never exist in the current configuration of producers. This is due to the response we’ve received from the industry in our attempts to market our product. Their response has led us to the conclusion that they can’t, won’t and will not ever change from the status quo. And that now creative destruction is a necessary and valuable tool to eliminate the unproductive and most particularly unprofitable elements of a poorly performing industry. People, Ideas & Objects are therefore now taking an active role in the preparation of what we see as the new oil and gas industry, based on the vision of the Preliminary Specification, where profitability is achieved throughout the industry everywhere and always. We believe the nature and characteristics of these resources can not currently justify our use of oil or gas to future generations if it is not used in a manner where it was at least produced profitably. We therefore can ensure that because it wasn’t produced unprofitably it wasn’t used wastefully and provided its full value to society. In summary then, we are focused on rebuilding the industry on the vision of the Preliminary Specification. We are unable to provide any value to the current producers as the forces of creative destruction have been put in play through bureaucratic neglect. The time in which they should have acted was many years ago. There is nothing that People, Ideas & Objects are able to do for them in the short term, and we are of the belief that the long term is beyond the grasp of the current producers as their situation is terminal.

The common sense approach of the Preliminary Specification is in dispute by the producer bureaucrats who are challenged by the Information Technologies disintermediation that we represent. They know instinctively this would be the end of their reign of control and power over the commanding heights of the oil and gas industry and are unwilling to give up what has provided them with untold riches at the expense of the shareholders, employees of the producer, the service, secondary and tertiary industries that depend and support the oil and gas industry. It is this conflict and the constraint of the ways and means in which they approach the industry that has created the ongoing tragedy that is playing out over this past decade. Shale has been an exceptional endowment of value across North America. Due to the chronic mismanagement by the bureaucrats the only benefactor of the shale reserves is the energy consumer who realizes a substantial discount on their energy consumption as a result of the specious accounting that has been used in the industry over the past four decades. Outside of this, shale has been an absolute failure from a business point of view. The commercialization of shale is not a topic of concern of the oil and gas bureaucrats, yet is the primary concern of the oil and gas investors who have now withheld their capital from the industry in excess of three years. There are no plans or strategies in place to deal with these difficulties or how to approach the future demands. The financial capabilities of the producers are close to collapsing as a result of the investor and banker strike that began over three years ago.

It is People, Ideas & Objects belief that through a fundamental accounting change that occurred in the late 1970’s. When producers were forced to change to Full Cost accounting and the associated ceiling test regulated by the SEC. A methodology that determines what the capital assets recorded in property, plant and equipment are. This enabled producers to record “assets” that equalled, with some adjustments, the total of their reserves times the current commodity prices as the upper limit of their property, plant and equipment account. If these assets exceeded the reserves “value” then they would be subject to the dreaded ceiling test write down that corrected any asset overvaluation. What was quickly discovered in the high interest rate environment of the 1980’s was that interest was a key attribute of the asset value and therefore interest expenses were capitalized. Someone then asked about overhead with the resulting policies today that see approximately 85% of all overhead in the industry capitalized to property, plant and equipment. Slowly the culture of the industry became a spending frenzy fueled by what came to be the annual share offering. This culture has grown over the past four decades to know no difference in terms of what and how the industry generates value and what destroys value. The belief is that drilling wells releases the oil and gas reserves that are tremendously valuable and that is how the game is played. Until People, Ideas & Objects began arguing that profitability was necessary, the industry did not care whatsoever about profits, it was about cash flow, not profits. We believe these reserves are of no value if they can’t be produced profitably and profitably considering an appropriate accounting of all of the costs, including capital, in a capital intensive 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 American 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.