Our Oil and Gas White Paper, Part XXXIII

We continue our review of Mr. Mark Mills paper "The New Energy Economy: An Exercise In Magical Thinking." Based on factual data, and the application of known physics Mr. Mills basis for making his conclusions that alternative energies are incapable of meeting our demands are as follows.

Scientists have yet to discover, and entrepreneurs have yet to invent anything as remarkable as hydrocarbons in terms of the combination of low-cost, high-energy density, stability, safety, and portability. In practical terms, this means that spending $1 million on utility-scale wind turbines, or solar panels will each, over 30 years of operation, produce about 50 million kilowatt-hours (kWh)—while an equivalent $1 million spent on a shale rig produces enough natural gas over 30 years to generate over 300 million kWh.

Solar technologies have improved greatly and will continue to become cheaper and more efficient. But the era of 10-fold gains is over. The physics boundary for silicon photovoltaic (PV) cells, the Shockley-Queisser Limit, is a maximum conversion of 34% of photons into electrons; the best commercial PV technology today exceeds 26%.

Wind power technology has also improved greatly, but here, too, no 10-fold gains are left. The physics boundary for a wind turbine, the Betz Limit, is a maximum capture of 60% of kinetic energy in moving air; commercial turbines today exceed 40%.

The annual output of Tesla’s Gigafactory, the world’s largest battery factory, could store three minutes’ worth of annual U.S. electricity demand. It would require 1,000 years of production to make enough batteries for two days’ worth of U.S. electricity demand. Meanwhile, 50–100 pounds of materials are mined, moved, and processed for every pound of battery produced.

What we also know is the volume of oil and gas produced totals 147 million boe / day. The mechanical leverage which our society generates from one barrel of oil is the equivalent of 23,200 man hours. Therefore based on the annual production of oil and gas, one man year of labor consisting of 1,952 hours, the total output of oil and gas produces the equivalent to 61 times the 7 billion people on the planet. If we expect that batteries, wind and solar are going to provide a worthwhile replacement to the scope and scale which oil and gas provides then that’s fine. If however, the alternatives are unable to provide a replacement then the need to find some other source of alternative energy to fuel our advanced economies and high standards of living. If we should lose the 61 times 7 billion people which oil and gas is the equivalent of, then we should prepare to live like caveman and fight it out just like we used to. People, Ideas & Objects believes if given these facts the consumer will make the appropriate choice. Potential doom and gloom someday down the road by adopting policies such as the Green New Deal. Or imminent disaster by denying ourselves the way we live today. We believe this is the posture necessary to be taken by the oil and gas producer, what it is they should be stating in order to promote their value to society and their products instead of the unqualified endorsement of “science” that obstructs and confuses their message and their mission. Producers in Canada love to accuse the pipeline companies and the governments of not doing their jobs in securing the pipelines which would ensure their revenue upside was stable. Rereading the sentence once again and the fallacy of the oil and gas CEO comes into clear view. It’s other people’s fault for producers losing out on the upside of their revenues. The only role the producer has in securing any pipelines space is to make the payments to the environmental activists so they have the financial resources to organize, legislate, litigate and protest the pipelines.

Today’s reality: hydrocarbons—oil, natural gas, and coal—supply 84% of global energy, a share that has decreased only modestly from 87% two decades ago (Figure 1). Over those two decades, total world energy use rose by 50%, an amount equal to adding two entire United States’ worth of demand.

The small percentage-point decline in the hydrocarbon share of world energy use required over $2 trillion in cumulative global spending on alternatives over that period. Popular visuals of fields festooned with wind-mills and rooftops laden with solar cells don’t change the fact that these two energy sources today provide less than 2% of the global energy supply and 3% of the U.S. energy supply.

To completely replace hydrocarbons over the next 20 years, global renewable energy production would have to increase by at least 90-fold. For context: it took a half-century for global oil and gas production to expand by 10-fold. It is a fantasy to think, costs aside, that any new form of energy infrastructure could now expand nine times more than that in under half the time.

If the initial goals were more modest—say, to replace hydrocarbons only in the U.S. and only those used in electricity generation—the project would require an industrial effort greater than a World War II–level of mobilization. A transition to 100% non-hydrocarbon electricity by 2050 would require a U.S. grid construction program 14-fold bigger than the grid build-out rate that has taken place over the past half-century. Then, to finish the transformation, this Promethean effort would need to be more than doubled to tackle nonelectric sectors, where 70% of U.S. hydrocarbons are consumed. And all that would affect a mere 16% of world energy use, America’s share.

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 Exchange Offering (IEO) that will fund these user defined software developments. It is through the process of issuing our IEO 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.

Vacation!

No postings until June 24, 2019

Our Oil and Gas White Paper, Part XXXII

We now begin our review of a paper that has been written by Mark P. Mills, a Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute. This paper is entitled “The ‘New Energy Economy:’ An Exercise In Magical Thinking.” This is a remarkable paper that presents the factual basis in which physics will deny the common thinking that there will be a natural transition to clean, alternative energy sources. That these sources of energy would replace the carbon supplies that we rely on today. As a precursor to our review I want to raise a number of points as to why this analysis is critical for the purposes of People, Ideas & Objects Preliminary Specification and the oil and gas industry at large. It is common thinking that “if” the prices of oil and gas commodities breached a certain point, that would initiate the transition to alternatives earlier than would be in the “best interest” of the oil and gas industry. I will be quoting from this paper extensively due to the high quality of the work that has been done, the factual basis that is presented in this document, People, Ideas & Objects are not and have no intentions of ever being in the business of researching within this alternative energy area, and therefore will be invoking the fair use doctrine. Starting with the introduction of the paper Mills states clearly that the alternative energies transition is a myth.

This “new energy economy” rests on the belief—a centerpiece of the Green New Deal and other similar proposals both here and in Europe—that the technologies of wind and solar power and battery storage are undergoing the kind of disruption experienced in computing and communications, dramatically lowering costs and increasing efficiency. But this core analogy glosses over profound differences, grounded in physics, between systems that produce energy and those that produce information.

In the world of people, cars, planes, and factories, increases in consumption, speed, or carrying capacity cause hardware to expand, not shrink. The energy needed to move a ton of people, heat a ton of steel or silicon, or grow a ton of food is determined by properties of nature whose boundaries are set by-laws of gravity, inertia, friction, mass, and thermodynamics—not clever software.

This paper highlights the physics of energy to illustrate why there is no possibility that the world is undergoing— or can undergo—a near-term transition to a “new energy economy.”

Locomotion of humans has historically been through the automobile. Therefore the transition to renewable energy will see battery powered cars continue that trend. This is ludicrous. Battery powered cars is an oxymoronic application of battery power that we’ll look back at, in the very near future, as a distraction. Two ton vehicles being powered by batteries, hurtling down the highway at 60 mph, could only ever make up 5% of the automotive market. That number of batteries would consume the world’s resources of the ingredients that make up any and all batteries. The average speed that a car travels in the intercities of major cities such as New York is 8 mph. Maybe the application of battery powered vehicles is in bicycles, segways and scooters where consumers could use them to travel at up to speeds of 15 mph for those short range 3 - 4 mile trips that they would have otherwise taken the car. This would be a far more logical progression of the technologies and its application. Particularly when the volume of battery power is constrained. The stumbling block to this progression is the outright banning of these battery powered vehicles in many cities around the world.

Nothing is going to eliminate or reduce the consumption of oil, natural gas or coal for the foreseeable future. Current and future use of these forms of energy are not materially changed as a result of the substantial investment that have been made in them, the constraints that are faced, the unbelievable volumes of oil and natural gas that are consumed each day, and the endowment that mother nature has provided in the oil and gas resources that we have built our economy around. Until you can fully visualize the power that is derived from the 147 million barrels of oil equivalent produced each day, you’ll never understand how fruitless it is for the Energizer Bunny to try and compete. The graph that follows is provided by Mark Mills’ paper “The ‘New Energy Economy:’ An Exercise in Magical Thinking.”

What is clear is that after 50 years minimal benefit will have been gained from the development of these alternative energy sources. Although it appears to be solely at the expense of hydrocarbons the sample size would be too small to draw any conclusions. At 2% currently, with wind and solar fields producing energy across the continent it’s reasonable for people to ask, “Is that it?” It will require development of some new type of technology that is unknown today that will drive the carbon economy into instinction. I’m betting on pocket fusion reactors myself. Here we have another graph from Mark Mills’ paper showing what electrical output can be derived from a $1 million investment in shale, wind and solar energy.

In light of these points what is the responsibility of the oil and gas industry? Continued verbal support for a myth and fallacy that inevitably will be seen as untrue? Continue to pay the environmental activists their ransom for being good corporate citizens when the purpose of those organizations is to disrupt the producers and confuse society? Let society casually roll down the wasteful and unproductive environmental focus and alternative energy blind bunny trails, only to be caught out when they see their dependence on oil and gas is far more significant than they could have ever imagined. Are the producers bureaucrats pursuing these alternative narratives so that they look like good corporate citizens at the expense of doing their job of ensuring that adequate energy is profitably and innovatively sourced for the long term? Why haven’t they asserted the industries narrative regarding the value that oil and gas provides society? What has been the purpose for the consumers discount that they’ve obviously provided consumers at the expense of their investors over these past four decades? It’s always best to consider these questions in light of the fact that oil and gas in North America is not a business. A business wouldn't do the things that these producers do and without any leaders, it's difficult for them to assert any leadership.

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 XXXI

Our Plan

People, Ideas & Objects plan contrasts with the oil and gas producers plan simply through its existence. The lack of a plan, or to “muddle through” is a feature, not a bug of the North American producer. Active management of the industry at any point, and in any form, is inconsistent with the industries culture developed over the past four decades as a result of the SEC implementing its Full Cost and Ceiling Test regulations for capital assets. These regulations have extinguished the producers initiative to act. If everything that you spend becomes an asset that increases the value of the firm, if everything that you produce is almost pure profit, you are disincentivized to see the situation as anything but wildly successful. “What could be wrong?” Planning, strategy and active management have been ineffective in this environment and as such grew to be unnecessary and therefore not undertaken. How else could you describe the past ten years in the natural gas business in which nothing has been done. If the business should ever have difficulties, as it has always done before, “it will work itself out.” People, Ideas & Objects have been in the oil and gas market promoting elements of the Preliminary Specification since 2005. The full specification since 2013 and nothing was done by the producers other than to abuse us and attempt to circumvent our Intellectual Property on five separate occasions. The threat that we present to the bureaucracy through disintermediation has been the only issue that has been of concern to our very good friends the producer bureaucrats.

What we have now, upon critical review, are obscene financial statements being produced by all of the oil and gas producers. Disproportionately large property, plant and equipment accounts are contrasted by minimal to negative working capital. Shareholders equity that has in many cases retained and current losses rapidly eating away at the money that investors provided to the producers over the course of decades of annual shareholder issuances. Revenues that pale in comparison to the capitalization of the firm, yet produce fantastical profits due to the lack of any substantial recognition of the capital costs of exploration and production in a capital intensive industry. Profitability was not the religion of the industry. Profitability was irrelevant, or we were told the thousands of times when we claimed that we provided oil and gas producers with the most profitable means of oil and gas operations. “Who cares” we were told. Today that profitability is such an issue in oil and gas that the investors and bankers have left as a result of the lack of it, the cash continues to erode from the industry, the service industry and the broader economies are now suffering as a result of a depression era downturn in oil and gas.

Profitability is the purpose behind the Preliminary Specification. Addressing the issue of producing unprofitable production all the time, and everywhere has been resolved by People, Ideas & Objects. Ours is a trillion dollar value proposition. Yet no movement from the producers. If they can’t be motivated by incremental value and real profitability in their organizations, based on their investment in the Preliminary Specification, why would investors and bankers be motivated to return and invest now that they understand the producers culture and history as just described. How is it then that the credibility in oil and gas regarding profitability will come about? The answer is the producers can’t, won’t and will not ever change. The cultural differences are too significant for them to bridge. The damage they’ve incurred to date is also too substantial for them to recover from. Rebuilding in the style of creative destruction will be faster, more effective, more productive and most importantly of all, more profitable. The acquisition of credibility regarding profitability by the existing producers has passed. They could have proceeded with the Preliminary Specification at any point in the past decade. They didn’t, I can’t help them now. They’re too far gone for me or anyone to rehabilitate, if we attempted to implement the Preliminary Specification I think it might end up being, as a result of the damage that has been realized, a failure. And then what?

That therefore is our plan, we are proceeding with our Initial Coin Offering (ICO) described below in order to raise the funds needed for the development of the Preliminary Specification and associated communities and capabilities. We expect that the ICO can be issued in three years time and provide us with the means in which we can move forward in the industry. Review of the “History of ERP Systems and Integration in Oil and Gas” section below will show the reasons that this is the only opportunity open to us. At which point we can then begin the development / integration of the technologies within whatever configuration the industry may be in. Key among these is the price maker strategy to ensure that all production is profitable and the structures that support innovation throughout oil and gas and the associated sub-industries are put into place. Innovation that ensures the consumers are provided with the lowest cost for their energy needs. Profitability has been an issue that we have argued for decades here at People, Ideas & Objects. It is in our DNA, the Preliminary Specification, and makes up our old time religion. As one can also see with the tone of this white paper, the history between us and the producer bureaucrats, the uncompromising manner in our approach, we will not compromise on these fundamental needs of the industry. Those within the oil and gas industry should now be able to look around and see clearly why profitability is so critically necessary, everywhere and always. The damage that I see is comprehensive and the expectation that investors will return to make everything all right again is only evidence that they’ve learned nothing and maybe never will. Expecting that investors will clean up the mess is frightening on two fronts. There isn’t enough investor cash anywhere to even begin solving the industries problems, the consumer is the only source of cash large enough. And when the investors are expected by everyone to make a difference today, you scare the living daylights out of the investors with such over the top, unreasonable requests.

Once we’ve established the capability for all production to be profitable everywhere and always, our plan will begin the process of increasing specialization and expanding the division of labor. This will be necessary in order to achieve a greater throughput from the same resource base. If we are to expand our productive capacity by another 8 million boepd to be truly energy independent, we will need to either expand the resources or figure out a way in which to work more efficiently. We have issues with the supply of earth scientists and engineers, and with the downturn pushing the capabilities of each producer beyond what is sustainable in the long term, this issue needs to be addressed before we can expand our deliverability. Specialization and the division of labor are the toolset in which the industry can achieve these objectives.

Once the profitability and throughput potential are addressed then the industry can set upon the objective of energy independence on the continent. Shale makes this a viable and worthwhile objective, however the manner in which its being done today provides benefit for no one other than the bureaucrats running the producer firms. Energy independence without profitability everywhere and always is unsustainable. With the state of affairs throughout the oil and gas economy we see clearly that today is inadequate for everyone's purposes. In addition to the increased throughput that is required there is a substantial amount of work that is needed on new infrastructure and repairs on existing infrastructure that we’ve relied on for many decades. These costs are not going to be undertaken by investors that are duped by specious accounting. They’ve now learned the lessons that oil and gas accounting is fraudulent and therefore these investments need to be undertaken on a different basis, I nominate the consumer. These costs will have to be borne by the consumer who pays the full cost, capital, operating, overhead and royalty of each boe they consume. That way producers can cycle their capital through their organization on a reasonable 30 month basis which will provide them with the cash necessary to reinvest and achieve the energy independence that is more than possible.

This is our plan, one that we feel deals with the realities of a critical industry that is necessary in ensuring our way of life in our advanced economy. What we do know as a result of the (in)action of the past decade is that the producer bureaucrats aren’t interested. They don’t have a plan and if history teaches us anything, when the situation becomes untenable that’s when management finds greener pastures in other industries. We’re not aware of any of these plans, it's just history tells us of these events that have happened before.

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 XXX

A continuation of the section entitled
Overinvestment Leads to Overproduction

The technical economic classifications of price makers and price takers are as follows. From Investopedia.

What Is a Price Maker?

A price maker is an entity, such as a firm, with a monopoly that gives it the power to influence the price it charges as the good it produces does not have perfect substitutes. A price maker within monopolistic competition produces goods that are differentiated in some way from its competitors' products. The price maker is also a profit-maximizer because it will increase output only as long as its marginal revenue is greater than its marginal cost. In other words, as long as it is producing a profit.

What substitutes are there for oil and natural gas? Can hydro power lubricate your engine? Will nuclear power provide the chemicals that oil and gas can? What size jerry-can can you use to carry electricity from wind or solar? Clearly there are no substitutes to oil and natural gas. And although in the hands of the bureaucrats oil and gas has not been a profit maximizer, that does not mean that it can’t be, or shouldn’t be. The Preliminary Specifications decentralized production models price maker strategy enables producers to produce only profitable production, everywhere and always. Another characteristic of price makers is that small changes in production volumes lead to large changes in price. We’ve seen this with the actions of OPEC+ and the Alberta government’s implementation of mandatory production cuts. If oil and gas aren’t price makers then they would be price takers as the producers assume. So what are the characteristics of a price taker? Again from Investopedia.

What Is a Price-Taker?

A price-taker is an individual or company that must accept prevailing prices in a market, lacking the market share to influence market price on its own. All economic participants are considered to be price-takers in a market of perfect competition or one in which all companies sell an identical product, there are no barriers to entry or exit, every company has a relatively small market share, and all buyers have full information of the market. This holds true for producers and consumers of goods and services and for buyers and sellers in debt and equity markets.

The example that could be used here is the bottled water market. If you were to compete in that market what price would you set for the bottled water that you produced? Whatever the market provided because the choice between providers is immaterial to the consumer. Therefore cost control becomes the factor where profitability is earned. This may sound like the oil and gas commodities, but is it? It certainly is how the current producers bureaucrats perceive the business to be. The question that needs to be answered therefore is what would happen if the supply of bottled water were halved? I believe the price would remain the same as there would be alternatives such as the tap, juice or soft drinks that provide the consumer with their needs.

Although I’m sure I’ll be provided with continued disagreement from the producers bureaucrats, People, Ideas & Objects believes we’ve proven that oil and natural gas are price makers. Therefore the solution is to solve overproduction in the North American continent from a global, continental and regional point of view. So that producers are able to attain the prices that are necessary to profitably cover the full capital, operating, royalty and overhead costs of oil and gas exploration and production, based on a reasonable accounting. That there is an argument between myself and the industry on essentially this point, since at least 2005, in this 21st century, with the high cost of shale, with shales inherent rapid production decline rates and with the state of collapse that the industry is in. Is truly surreal to me.

What we are therefore discussing is instilling some form of production discipline in all of the producers involved in North American based production. The various forms of production discipline that have been recently implemented are the voluntary production cutbacks in OPEC+, and the mandatory production cuts in Alberta. Neither of these are suitable for the purposes of a long term industry solution. As soon as the mandatory production cuts were implemented, companies such as Canadian Natural, who were strong advocates for, and were one of the producers that requested the government implement the policy. Soon became dissatisfied with the allocation that they had to carry in comparison to other producers. This is the issue with mandatory or voluntary cutbacks. They are effective in the short term however discipline can be short lived when cheating and dissatisfaction with the policy creeps in.

People, Ideas & Objects have chosen profitability as the determinant to allocate production. If a producer can produce the property profitably, assuming a reasonable accounting, then there is no reason they shouldn’t produce. If it is unprofitable then the motivation to shut-in the property is instilled in the producer to maximize their profits. Having properties that are not profitable produce will only dilute their profitable properties and the overall corporate profits will suffer. If the property is unprofitable then the producer has every motivation to evaluate the property to ensure that all of their earth science and engineering capabilities can be applied to it to return it to profitable production as soon as possible. This is the structure, configuration and organizational template that is inherent in the Preliminary Specification for both the dynamic, innovative, accountable and profitable oil and gas producer but also the industry. Producers need to choose what methodology they should implement to solve the overproduction that is in evidence since 1986, wholly attributable to their current business model, and aggravated by shale in today’s environment. We believe that profitability is the only fair and reasonable method for a producer operating in a capitalist society such as North America. And therefore have adopted that for the Preliminary Specification.

There is an implied variance in the methodology of accounting conducted in the industry. Which is true in the current business model. What if the Preliminary Specifications software, in conjunction with the service providers were providing a standardized accounting methodology across the industry? This is what is possible with the implementation of the Preliminary Specification. Each property would be subject to the same accounting treatment by the wholly independent service providers who have the entire industry as their client base. In almost all instances the data and information they’ll be working with will be limited to the process they have under management. These data volumes will be significantly large, yet limited in their number of variables. To know what an individual properties situation is, or to influence the accounting for one individual producer would be difficult for them to undertake. The service providers accounting processing would be standard and as such the results would be the determination of profitability throughout the industry would be a reliable measure of performance that is consistent.

If a producer understands that their property is unprofitable and needs to be shut-in they’ll know they’ve received the same accounting treatment as everyone else in the industry. That the profitabilities determination will be standardized at the property level. There will be many instances where some of the participants in the property remain profitable while others are not. This would be a relatively frequent occurrence that would require that the determination of profitability be assessed at the whole property level. Shutting-in properties is not the detrimental action that the producers bureaucrats believe it is today. This should be seen by the producers as an opportunity to enhance the performance of the property, return it to profitable operations and increase their overall corporate profitability.

We should also note this brings about a new dynamic with respect to the age of the producing properties. If the producer has had the properties in excess of the two and one half years that we recommend that they retire their capital costs. Then those older properties will not have to carry any capital costs and as such these properties will be profitable at all times. This brings about the need for a new capital discipline in terms of new projects for the producers. A discipline that asks if the new wells being drilled will be able to achieve profitable production and therefore produce? Creating a higher threshold, we believe, in order to attain project approval. At the same time the acquisition of properties from other producers will not have the associated reserves times current commodity price valuation that they generally do today. The properties acquisition price will need to be on a present value of the future profitability of the property. Therefore we would see much less of the Occidental acquisition of Anadarko for an enterprise value of $69 billion. Assets that have achieved a total of $695 million in lifetime earnings.

The differences noted here are the evaluation of a property based on its financial performance vs. its evaluation based on the reserve report. Currently the industry uses the reserve report to provide an understanding of the properties performance. These reports are not based on actual accounting of the producers but on field estimates of the costs to conduct an operation today. This is the way in which producers are able to state that their costs have been innovatively reduced from $60 / bbl to $20 / bbl in a capital intensive industry and are therefore continuing to produce profitably in a declining commodity price environment. Alternatively, they may be the financial accounting numbers that have somehow, and in miraculous fashion, disposed of the historical aspect of historical accounting.

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 XIX

From the section of our White Paper entitled
Overinvestment Leads to Overproduction

Whether overinvestment occurred in oil and gas is under debate by the producers bureaucrats. Not only do they deny that overinvestment has occurred, they deny that it would impact overproduction. The fact of the matter is they believe they always need more investor money. They would then deny that oil and gas commodities are price makers and therefore if there was any overproduction it would not impact commodity prices. They’ll refuse to be a party to any collusion to rectify the situation as proposed by People, Ideas & Objects in their Preliminary Specifications decentralized production models price maker strategy. What motivates these bureaucrats is quite simple, inaction. There’s is a strategy of “muddling along” and “doing nothing.” Which has provided these bureaucrats with handsome compensation for the past four decades. That only five of the past thirty four years were of any value to anyone other than themselves is immaterial in their minds. They have, and will continue to hold onto, these myths to allow themselves to appreciate the work that they don’t do. As anyone can see none of the points in this paragraph, overinvestment, overproduction, price maker and collusion have any basis in fact whatsoever.

Overproduction happened in material ways in the natural gas marketplace over a decade ago. Shale reserves were being exposed to the marketplace and the decline in natural gas prices was precipitous. Prices were eventually damaged in a comprehensive fashion where natural gas has since traded anywhere between 15 to 1 and 25 to 1 of oil as opposed to its traditional heating value equivalent of 6 to 1. Rereading of the previous paragraph may provide the reader with an understanding of a) how this was allowed to happen, b) what efforts have been taken to rectify the situation, and c) why was nothing done? The answer is, the oil side of the business was healthy enough to carry both sides of the business. Which was true, oil was doing well until December 2014. At which time the shale technologies application to oil fields began the same, dare I say, overproduction on that side of the business. And soon we saw the beginnings of the same shale based phenomenon that was seen earlier in the natural gas side of the business.

The difference between the oil and natural gas markets is that one is global and the other is continental. The collapse of natural gas in North America was almost immediate in retrospect. Natural gas prices in North America were substantially lower than anywhere in the world. Then the LNG boom began to export the overproduction of natural gas globally and eventually global natural gas prices fell to where they’re not significantly different from North American prices. Overproduction in oil has a different history. A global commodity that is exportable without extensive facilities. Overproduction took some time before it began to impact the price. However when it did it affected the global prices of oil the world over. Over the past few years we’ve seen efforts by OPEC+ to allocate production quotas amongst its members and Russia to somewhat successfully rehabilitate the global price of oil. Proving the commodity is a price maker through small changes in production having large impacts on price. This is the global situation in oil today. However, the continued overproduction by the North American oil producers have now created their own “regional” oil markets as I call them. Constrained by pipelines, refineries and other physical infrastructure; regions within North America are creating their own oil prices due to the dramatic overproduction that producer bureaucrats insist doesn’t exist. Production from areas such as the Permian, Canadian heavy oil, and others far exceed the takeaway capacity in the region and as a result producers face steep differentials on the oil prices that they receive. Creating what are global prices outside of North America, and regional prices on the continent.

Similar regional prices are being reflected in natural gas. The Marcellus is chronically overproducing with producers receiving about half of the posted price on the New York Mercantile exchange. In the Permian, which produces associated gas, prices fell to the lowest level in the month of April 2019. Prices of -$5.75 were realized. That is producers paid customers $5.75 to take the gas off of their hands. In addition the Permian and other shale basins are collectively flaring 1.6 bcf / day, the equivalent residential consumption of Texas. The point to remember in this diatribe of mine is, that the producers myths that overproduction doesn’t occur, price takers is the role they occupy and it really is not their fault, they’re profitable! Hence we revisit the previous discussion regarding the policies of how costs are capitalized in oil and gas. Even in the desperate times that we find ourselves today our sample of 23 producers reported profits of $6.13 billion for the first quarter of 2019. Of those producers ten reported losses totalling $1.139 billion. One might assume this was an otherwise healthy industry based on these profits. Which is what the producer bureaucrats would assert.

To be continued Monday.

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 XXVIII

Producers legacy in dealing with ERP vendors.

In order to provide an ERP software solution to the oil and gas marketplace. People, Ideas & Objects needed to evaluate the strength and weakness of our competitors, the structure of competition for ERP software in the industry and how we were going to earn a living. The oil and gas producers approach to ERP systems is best summarized as they’re expensive and therefore take away from drilling more wells. Accounting is not a necessity when the reserves report from the independent reservoir engineers tells producers what the companies reserves are worth. Therefore they limit the spending on ERP systems and use a variety of methods in order to obtain the lowest cost ERP implementation. Strategies such as realizing that the ERP vendor has a small handful of producers in which to sell their offering into the industry each year. Therefore they could be motivated to make the sale if they were made to realize that the producer was evaluating several different options. That these options were providing better financial incentives then the vendor they were talking to and unless they contributed more, they would be eliminated from consideration. You’d be surprised how effective this strategy has been. Most if not all of the intermediates and larger producers have had their software acquired at $0.00 cost and only pay the service contract. This has led to a devastated landscape in the oil and gas ERP marketspace, with few opportunities to choose from. Software investors soon began to understand that they were the “mark” and quickly made their exit in the late 1990’s. This left only SAP, IBM and Oracle with any basis in which to compete.

Due to some sophisticated marketing SAP had managed to gain a large market share of the more senior producers. Their offering, in my opinion, was too static and incapable of capturing the essence of an oil and gas producer. Workarounds for partners and partnerships needed to be made. SAP was conceived on the basis of a manufacturing enterprise. Where a manufacturer such as Ford has to organize their production lines through tier 1 and tier 2 suppliers, just-in-time. This is inappropriate for oil and gas. Oracle entered the market looking to develop new solutions for oil and gas in February 1997. I remember that day very well for some reason. And IBM purchased PriceWaterhouseCoopers Qbyte application which had the largest installed base of oil and gas customers at the time. Operating on a 1980’s application framework.

SAP was uninterested in ever making an application for oil and gas. They sell one for oil and gas however it is considered to be difficult and inappropriate for the industry. Oracle left the industry in frustration as a result of being unable to source willing producers to fund the development of next generation ERP software. Seeing the lack of commitment and the small marketplace of producers in which to sell too, Oracle left the oil and gas ERP space around 2000. IBM with their industry leading application Qbyte understood better than anyone about the need to redevelop that application. They too attempted to source the financial resources from the producers in order to undertake those developments. In frustration IBM left the marketspace in 2005 as a result of the inability to source any support from industry for its redevelopment.

Since that time there have been some minor attempts at providing the industry with new product, however I am unaware of anything being successfully prepared. The industry operates on either 1980’s technology or inappropriate SAP interpretations of oil and gas. I understand that in 2018 Quorum Software, who have applications in this marketspace, were hired by a, or a number of, producer(s) to build a new system. This was well on its way with staff working on the development, when I assume, the price of oil dropped more than 2% one day and the project was cancelled by the producer(s). This is the issue that People, Ideas & Objects have to concern ourselves with. What we call the attention span of mosquitos. Producers have never been able to apply themselves in any direction for a sustained period. Hence they have no successful implementation of any ERP software.

People, Ideas & Objects approach considers all of these aspects of the oil and gas ERP market. We have enjoyed being in this market in one form or another since 1991. The other area that concerns us is the methodology that is used throughout oil and gas that sees Intellectual Property (IP) managed by the producers as if its community property. We have addressed this issue specifically in the Resource Marketplace module as the ability to build an innovative oil and gas industry will depend on the respect of everyone and anyone's IP by all. We have seen firms hired for their unique capabilities and IP, then there competitors are brought in to help them develop the same capabilities and IP and ensure that there is adequate price competition fostered within the industry. The 1990’s was very much like this in all industries. I remember them more as the wild west in terms of IP. Those days are gone. The management of my IP has been done in a way that producers are fully aware of the consequences of any violation.

Which brings us to one of the strong beliefs that we have regarding why the Preliminary Specification was never funded by the producers. This would have violated their policies on how to deal with vendors IP claims and they would feel they’d be opening a pandora's box in terms of the cost implications of any and all vendors making claims based on their IP. Which is true, however, at the same time they don’t have a robust, innovative or profitable industry as a result of the methods they use today do they? They are the IP dinosaurs of the 21st century and the sooner they forget this regrettable past the better off they’ll be.

We have captured these concerns of ours in our Revenue Model, our user community vision and in other areas within People, Ideas & Objects and the Preliminary Specification. They say once bitten, twice shy, which would be how I see this situation. We do not expect that the existing producers to survive in their current financial, political and operational state of accelerated decline. We are building the new oil and gas industry based on the vision of the Preliminary Specification, funded by our ICO, and based on the user communities contributions. This is how we will be providing the most profitable means of oil and gas operations.

When we announced our plans to develop an ICO and raise our development dollars from that method, bitcoin, ethereum and others were in a nose dive. The overall ICO marketspace was as well. As we see in all things technology today, time passes much more quickly now. Bitcoin began 2019 at $3,826 and is now at $8,204. It is too soon to determine if this is a sustainable recovery or dead cat bounce. And the market is still too small for the demands of our offering, we believe our time frame of three more years is coming better into focus each month.

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 XXVII

The Preliminary Specifications assumption is that the industries interpretation that oil and gas commodities are subject to price taker characteristics is incorrect. This is evidenced recently through the actions of OPEC+ with their removal of less than 2% of the oil from the market on two separate occasions which has brought about at least a 32% increase in the global price of oil. There is also the example of the Alberta government's mandated production cuts that removed regional differentials on heavy oil that were in excess of 80% of the global price. This small production cut, less than 10% of the overall productive deliverability of the province, had a dramatic effect where the differentials were eliminated within one month of the implementation. These are markets that follow the characteristics of price makers, not price takers. To state that “markets will rebalance” or to continue to produce and increase production in a market of declining prices and profitability is not a business. It is foolish, irresponsible and reflects an uncaring attitude that is prevalent in today’s oil and gas producers. The Preliminary Specification is structured to implement the decentralized production model’s price maker strategy to rectify this behavior.

Secondly the concern that is expressed by producers is that if their products become too costly to the consumer, alternatives will become viable and replace the carbon industry. Therefore I guess it’s permissible to fleece the investors, have them pay for the capital costs and only charge the consumers for the operating costs of their energy consumption. For fear that the alternative energy boogeyman will otherwise deny them health and happiness. These masters of the universe who run the oil and gas companies are all powerful and can deem the configuration of the economy and its energy output in their own minds. Bureaucratic control is their forte and they will not bow to any challenge. Market economies provide choices to consumers. Alternative energy sources are not viable today, and as we will read later will never be viable. Consumers will choose to use less carbon based energy if they have to pay more for it. Consuming it more prudently is the choice they’ll have to make. Nonetheless at 23,200 man hours of equivalent labor in each barrel of oil we believe that the most powerful economy will be the largest consumer of energy. In whatever form the consumers choose.

With the inherent value contained within each barrel of oil. With the supply possibly limited to the next half dozen generations. Why would we ever produce any oil or gas that was unprofitable? What would be the purpose of doing so? Would we not just be robbing future generations of the resources they’ll need to expand their quality of life? On the one hand the costs of oil and gas exploration and production continue to escalate with each barrel of oil produced. This is due to the increased difficulty and science necessary to extract the resource. Therefore a more accurate accounting is necessary than what has been provided to the industry in the past decades. People, Ideas & Objects provides a more accurate accounting of the costs of exploration and production as part of the Preliminary Specification, our user community and their service provider operations. When only profitable production is produced it is implied that we are accurately capturing the costs and passing these costs on to the consumer. Profits and innovation will be used to ensure an abundant, affordable supply is provided for the long term. Conversely, consumers paying the full cost of their energy will ensure that they’ll choose the most efficient and effective use of the resource.

We see that the Democratic Parties indoctrination of the youth into the communist way of thinking is almost complete. The fear is that the world will meet with environmental Armageddon if we don’t stop burning carbon based energy sources. The bureaucrats within the oil and gas producers have bought into the party message too. They are more focused on their role in eliminating carbon then they are with their own business. In Canada we have the producers who need pipelines more desperately than sunshine; are mute, invisible and leaderless on the topic of pipelines. They’ve experienced hundreds of billions of dollars in revenue losses which they point out are the governments fault, the pipelines fault or soon to be Santa’s fault once again. If it’s not their responsibility to safeguard the upside of their revenue streams, then I would state that it’s difficult for me to understand how they can claim to be the responsible party for their existing revenues. Meanwhile they gladly cut another check to Greenpeace and all manner of environmental organizations so that those organizations can fund the next pipeline protest against what the producers need most. This is masters of the universe thinking once again. If they can save the planet as well as make alternative energy sources viable, all the time benefiting from the carbon economy then they’ll be seen as the hero’s that they know they are. We all understand that actions speak louder than words, and we have neither actions or words to indicate this thinking is not what they’re doing. These decisions are best left in the consumers hands. Let them make the choice in terms of their behaviors and their consumption. I would also challenge anyone to suggest that one individual has truly changed their energy consumption in any material way in the past twenty years as a result of the imminent, environmental Armageddon. Intuitively and deeply I don’t think people outside of the environmental echo chamber believe in any of it. They pick out the good ideas and use them, but just tolerate the noise otherwise. And as for the producers maybe they should get busy managing their business with the first step being to secure the upside of their revenue streams. This will require the Preliminary Specification however.

Producers have a job to do. None of which they are doing today. Providing affordable and profitable oil and gas across the North American continent has been compromised. Energy self sufficiency is a political objective that does not suit an industry that is in an advanced state of destruction and on life support. The introduction of shale reservoirs has accelerated the destruction over the past fifteen years. There is no net value reflected in the industry today. It demands cash in order to function, implying that it is worthless. The past 34 years has seen 5 years that would be classified as good years retrospectively. The oil and gas industries current destruction has extended to the service industry which is now affecting the tertiary industries and the broader economy in significant and detrimental ways. The responsibility for this societal damage has to be placed at the feet of the oil and gas bureaucrats. They, who piously bark out orders towards these “lesser” industries have done nothing to safeguard their revenue streams when they sell their products for less than half of what they’re worth. Something as price makers they have complete control over. They are deluded by myths that have no basis to be considered in the oil and gas business. Myths such as alternative energies as a competitive alternative. Yet the business principles that have been proven over the past several decades are not considered or implemented within the industry. They are all knowing and all powerful, yet haven’t a clue.

The investors and bankers have suspended all of their activity in the industry over the past three years. This has had no effect on the behaviors or actions of the producers. People, Ideas & Objects have been discussing these points on this blog since 2005 and have received no support from the producers whatsoever. On the contrary, we have received the full force of their negative attention. We have determined that the state of affairs in the industry are terminal. There is little that we can do to remediate the industry from the current financial catastrophe that exists. We suspect that given our best efforts the implementation of the Preliminary Specification would be a failure. And therefore we have chosen to use the toolset provided to us in the form of creative destruction, spontaneous order and Initial Coin Offerings. The production of this paper is the beginning of this renewal process.

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 XXVI

By way of two analogies we are able to capture the oil and gas accounting issues that have been in place now for four decades. We call these the donut shop analogy, and the second is the pizza shop analogy.

The donut shop analogy has a new operation opening in the local strip mall. The new owner recently retired from oil and gas and has brought the culture of that industry with him. When the doors are opened business is good and the operation is declared a success based on the financial statements that are produced. Understanding that only some of the territory that could be covered by the donut shop the owner purchases new donut making capacity that triples the output of the operation. He does this with investors money based on the strength of the financial statements he produced. The new donuts are made at double the throughput and at twice the pace of the previous capacity. Creating somewhat of an issue with surplus donuts. As business continues to expand the owner thinks this is a temporary situation that will remedy itself in time and he should let the market rebalance itself. Therefore these surplus donuts are stored in the parking lot. As a result of the changes to the operation the owner is very pleased with the performance of the donut shop as a result of the most recent financial statements. Clearly the operation continues to perform and has much more room to expand. Therefore he goes to the financial market once again to raise money to purchase more donut making capacity and also additional parking space to store the surplus donuts while he waits for the market to rebalance. Investors make their investments and the operation increases its capacity and begins to produce triple the number of donuts that it had just recently. Luckily the foresight of the owner had purchased the land for the extra donut storage.

Soon it’s realized that the operation is not generating the cash that a successful business would be expected to be producing. The banks are asked to provide some funding to help wait out the period of time while the market rebalances. Upon the bankers review they see some anomalies with the last financial statements that were produced. All the donuts that are stored in the parking lots are capitalized as goodwill in building the business. In addition all the labor, oil and flour are capitalized too, making for a very well capitalized operation. The only costs that are expensed are the utilities and the rent on the store. Something that the owner adamantly disagrees with as he feels they should be capitalized too.

Oil and gas bureaucrats find this analogy insulting, as they should. They feel that the oil and gas business is different and the amounts that are invested and capitalized are supported by the reserves that are discovered. Their understanding of accounting is that it should emulate the value that is being generated as a result of their activity. The activity of drilling and cementing casing are all intangible costs. They can not be retrieved just as the oil and flour is irretrievable at the donut operation. What they fail to understand is that accounting is about performance, not about assigning value to the organization. If it was about assigning value then the donut shop in its current configuration could eventually challenge Apple and Amazon as a trillion dollar company. Eventually they will spend that much just on land. Therefore since the end result of the oil and gas producers accounting emulates approximately the value of the firm, what’s the issue? The issue is that there’s no financial performance in terms of the money that has been invested. It has reported large profits but never earned them. Cash became an issue and the donut shop was closed as a result of being unable to pay its bills. Even though they were building their balance sheets!

We now turn to the second analogy that provides evidence that the valuation of the producer firm is supported by the market value of the properties. The other end of the strip mall has the pizza shop that has been in operation for a few years. It has successfully provided the owner with the opportunity to work sixteen hour days and feed his family a steady diet of pizza. Nonetheless for a variety of reasons he feels that now is the time to sell the operation and retire. What’s the value? There are the financial statements, however he does not believe they accurately reflect the market value of the operation. Therefore he lists the property on the following basis. Most of the money that he makes is in the sale and delivery of pizzas. Each pizza sold averages $2.00 profit. He also has 450,000 pizza boxes in storage. Therefore he lists the property at $900,000 which is for this example the present value of those earnings.

We have an example of a sale of an oil and gas producer and the financial statements that had been produced over the past number of decades. It is important to note that People, Ideas & Objects assertion is that the attempt of producers is to reflect the market value in the accounting reports. It is not about performance. Building balance sheets is the name of the game, where capitalizing most of the costs and recognizing very few of them is the art and science of oil and gas accounting. Therefore what we see in Anadarko’s financial statements is the net capital assets total $28 billion. Just $10 billion short of Occidentals offer. In terms of accounting that has to be considered fairly accurate accounting since they’re just about one quarter short of the actual offer. What this clearly represents is that Anadarko has operated on the basis of an attempt to emulate the market value of the assets. However, the equity of the company is only $8.9 billion of which $695 million are the retained earnings. Debt is $31.46 billion. Anadarko’s market cap is $36.84 billion closely emulating Occidentals offer. Therefore at the end of the day Occidental will have paid $68.3 billion dollars for assets that have produced a cumulative lifetime earnings of $695 million. Whereas these earnings were also based on the recognition that few actual costs were ever recognized, only capitalized, reflecting the bloating of the balance sheet and the bloating of earnings, sort of. This makes the pizza box analogy valid, the donut shop analogy is seen as valid when Anadarko had $6 billion in cash in the second quarter of 2017 and they now have a working capital deficiency of {$1.32} billion. The only thing I can say is that’s a lot of pizza boxes.

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.

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