Reality, Accountability, Myths and Chester Too

 We’ll be starting 2021 off with a sharper tone than what we left 2020 with. The state of affairs in oil and gas and the greater energy economic structure demands such. We will be increasing the pressure throughout the year as the producer bureaucrats find fewer places left to hide. These allegations that I’ve made are easily refutable through the accounting that the producers prepare and report in the statutory and compliance requirements that govern them. We have been making these same allegations for many, many years and have heard no response from the producers. On January 5, 2021 OPEC+ agreed to hold steady production volumes until March 2021. Having a strong impact on the price of oil. Proving once again that oil and gas commodities are subject to the principle of price makers. I note this due to the fact that the damage and destruction in oil and gas has been a result of the bureaucrats unwillingness to accept this principle for the past four decades. Why? And maybe we should ask why we should allow these same bureaucrats to continue in their current role?

If a producer was secure in their reporting, that their accounting procedures would ensure good compliance and their systems were what were necessary would they have allowed such claims to stand at the same time their financial position deteriorated so markedly? I would not have allowed it. The predominant system used in oil and gas is P2 which claims to have 1,700 clients. Their Qbyte offering has been in the market since the 1980s, and has been subject to the same lack of attention that all producer bureaucrats show towards accounting and systems. If Qbyte were adequately addressing the needs in the market would the producers, industry and service industry be in the financial condition that they’re in today? In fact it is People, Ideas & Objects contention that producers seek to remain as obscure as possible in terms of the accounting and systems that are used to ensure that they have a viable scapegoat when the time comes that they’re questioned vigorously. Would a dynamic, innovative, accountable and profitable oil and gas producer obscure their actions or performance? 

IBM offered to rewrite their Qbyte application in the early 2000s which was the opportunity these producers were granted. As a result of the lack of support for this initiative IBM sold Qbyte to P2 and left the ERP marketspace. A market they dominated with their Qbyte product. Oracle with their Oracle Energy did the same around 2000 when they were unable to source the necessary financial support to build the appropriate systems for the industry. Why was it that the producers were unwilling to better account for the activities in the industry with world class systems built by tier 1 providers? People, Ideas & Objects therefore felt that the door was open for our efforts to complete our research into what the producer and industry would need in order to fully utilize the Joint Operating Committee as the key organizational construct. Why did producer bureaucrats not participate in this endeavour? Since the time that I’ve been in this business I’ve seen the industry go from approximately 20 ERP providers down to P2 and SAP. There are a few others, however they’re unable to gain much momentum from the dominance of P2 and therefore struggle. Why would an industry atrophy the key accountability, compliance and governance capability in the industry during an era which can only be described as an Information Technology revolution?

We’ve heard nothing but the difficulty, complexity and scientific basis of the oil and gas business to justify the C suites executive compensation. Even today the industry scores number four in North American executive compensation. I guess there just wasn’t any money left over for accounting. If you were running a business on the basis of providing good governance would there be such contrast between the accounting and Information Technologies vs the executive compensation, or would they be more balanced? Information Technology has not been the productivity enhancing tool that is expected of it, yet. Granted, however there is a larger compliance and governance issue that is not being fully undertaken and the IT components maturity has been achieved as of 2015, I believe. It would be difficult to understand why there hasn’t been an embrace of this IT maturity, implementation of that along with the People, Ideas & Objects oil and gas business driven perspective and value proposition towards systems development. With its focus on innovation and profitability which is exactly what is necessary for the industry to be pursuing for the next quarter century by any measure. Instead the waiting and expectation that investors will return continues undeterred. We’ve been told that the business is difficult. We know that the bureaucrats are handsomely compensated. Even after a dismal decade has passed in natural gas and six years in oil. Yet nothing has been done for decades about the quality of the accounting that’s conducted?

Well how bad can it be? How much is the gross overhead of the industry? No one knows and no one publishes the amount of gross overhead that’s incurred. We assert that 85% of overhead is capitalized and therefore what is reported is not the reality of the situation. We’ve also documented this as the primary reason there is dramatic cash leakage in each and every producer. We also argued that interest was capitalized at material percentages and it still is. Since we began making these claims over a decade ago, slowly the demand to know what interest has been capitalized has been detailed in the financial statements of most producers. Odd then why this revised disclosure treatment has not been applied to the capitalization of overhead as well? And does this lack of overhead accounting transparency reflect the amount of total executive compensation that’s been capitalized? It is here that I think we find the answer to our questions as to why these numbers are unknown. There is also not one property under the administration of any producer that can tell you if it is profitable or not. None of the producers have the ability to determine the amount of actual overhead, but also the actual amount of depletion, recorded in any specific Joint Operating Committee. They more or less are flying blind on all aspects of where they’re making money, losing money, or wasting money. If you can just declare your organization is profitable and that’s accepted, why prove your wrong? In the Preliminary Specification we’ll be using computer systems, maybe bureaucrats have heard of them, to determine the properties profitability down to the well level on a standardized, actual, factual basis. Standardized in the sense that the service providers affiliated with People, Ideas & Objects will be applying their processes across the industry in a standardized manner. That way producer (a) knows that their unprofitability was determined on the same standard basis as producer (g’s) profitability and producer (a) will accept that they have to shut-in that unprofitable production as it’s in their best interests. As you can imagine this would involve mountains of data that would need to be processed. Computers are able to do this type of work, and in fact are quite good at it. It’s not that the mountains of data don't exist, that is the odd part, they do and are just aggregated for the purposes of accounting and reporting. The question that needs to be asked in a situation like this is. During a period of very low interest rates do you invest in labor saving devices or do you invest in labor? 

Let me clarify one point about that last argument. You can employ people in the task of completing spreadsheets and making them balance. Aggregating very large data sets and applying basic mathematical operations on them. Or as the Preliminary Specification chooses to do, which is to leave these menial tasks to the computers which are very good at processing, storing data and math. Allowing human resources to pursue the higher level tasks of leadership, issue identification and resolution, decision making, creativity, collaboration, research, ideas, design, planning, thinking, negotiation, compromise, innovation and financing. You know, accounting more or less. These are just a few of the ones I’ve come up with. As a bureaucrat rolling in fat compensation, which is your choice of the preferred method? Keeping people occupied in menial tasks providing information that is limited in its use and application? Or people thinking about how to enhance performance and innovation, and indirectly seeing what it is the executives are upto for those fancy paychecks and other innovative executive compensation they “earn?”

Which leads to the question of the accounting firms. “Yep, everything looks good over here!” They need to give up their “Chester” routine in the “Chester and Spike” cartoon and start asking some deep troubling questions. First, why is it that investors turn their backs on an industry? Is that the reason that investors turned their back on producers? And here is the first truly troubling question. What is it that you’ve done since the time that the investors turned their back on oil and gas producers? Yes, you’ve collected a lot of fees but that isn’t necessarily the answer that I was looking for. As producers stand today, do they have any deficiencies in their reporting? Is the big bad well built balance sheet accurately represented through the company's capitalization policies? Are the debtors at risk of default if those assets are materially overstated? How has shareholders equity held up since the exit of the investors? Were the investors presumptuous in their exit? Are the current shareholders at risk of a debtor action against the firm? Let’s assume a scenario that is valid in many, many producers today. You have massive property, plant and equipment and negative working capital. Bank debt is all that supports those assets as shareholder equity has been wiped out by retained losses. Makes “balance” in the balance sheet oxymoronic doesn’t it. Does that mean, understanding that property, plant and equipment is limited by the ceiling test to the value of the reserves, that the bank debt is higher than the reserves value? Does this “unbalanced” scenario rest on the assumption that those reserves can be produced profitably, when throughout their history we now know they never did? Is the producer a viable going concern based on these facts and the outlook of the industry? Do your assumptions consider OPEC’s current 8 mm boe or greater surplus capacity? Do you expect to audit these producers in 2022 or is your bankruptcy operation fully operational? You’d be correct in stating this doesn’t apply to all producers, this year. Would this preclude you from starting to fulfill your role?

Pointed questions that should never have to be asked. The time for niceties has passed as the tragic consequences of the bureaucrats inaction takes on serious momentum in 2021 that will be beyond any force capable of getting in front of it, and surviving. The bureaucrats have not accounted for their actions for four decades and the state of the industry now reflects that. Other than well built balance sheets and significant cash being put in the ground there is nothing anywhere for anyone. It is a comprehensive and total wasteland. The financial condition of the producers will have deteriorated markedly in the fourth quarter of 2020 and the year will stand as testament to the dirty tricks these bureaucrats have conducted. Many in the industry still don’t understand my points or my arguments. The culture of the industry has been severely distorted by the twisted nature of the bureaucrats that people have been in the industry for up to 30 years and don’t understand the difference or the substance of the issue. The bureaucrats do and they’ll be held to account in 2021 and they know it. Their officers and directors liability insurance is up to date and their exits are within arms reach. They’re very jittery, standing at the ready and the slightest noise will see them disappear. 

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, everywhere and always. Setting the foundation for profitable North American energy independence. People, Ideas & Objects have published a white paper “Profitable, North American Energy Independence -- Through the Commercialization of Shale.” that captures the vision of the Preliminary Specification and our actions. 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 Parler @piobiz, anyone can contact me at 713-965-6720 in Houston or 587-735-2302 in Calgary, or email me here. 

Issue Mitigated, Nothing Litigated

 The need for the Preliminary Specification is unquestionable. The industry must change and do so within the time frame that it has left for itself. It’s financial position is untenable and demands that action be taken quickly to stop the further escalation of the destruction of its and the service industries capacities and capabilities. These are critical issues as of this moment, which are generating further momentum, sending the trajectory of the producers performance into an irreversible velocity. Let us all be clear about the insipid and ridiculous nature of the “muddle through” and “do nothing” strategy and operating procedure. They are the deliberate, permanent destruction of the productive capacity of the North American production profile. This fact makes up the bureaucrats foundation of “muddle through.” That by doing nothing the productive capacity will remain as it is or decline while consumption of the commodities increases. Therefore prices will eventually rise. This has provided for what we believe to be five profitable years in the industry out of the past thirty five. In the shale era this has proven to be toxic. Our White Paper “Profitable North American Energy Independence -- Through the Commercialization of Shale” addresses how the Preliminary Specification deals specifically with these difficulties in the oil and gas industry.

The past few years has seen People, Ideas & Objects escalate our budget costs on the basis of the methods that we’ve discovered to increase our organizational throughput and cut our development and implementation time. For each year that we’ve been able to reduce our timeline we were able to save the industry well in excess of a quarter of one trillion dollars in additional opportunity costs being irretrievably lost. Therefore these efforts of ours to reduce our timeline have brought about material benefits. The number of these methods are significant and form the plans we have in place. We can’t define what time frame we can complete our task as there are too many variables that we can’t control. Variables such as how long will industry take to raise the money from all of the producers in industry? As I’ve discussed before, I do not herd cats. It will be far easier for industry to organize themselves than what I can do in this regard. Besides, I prefer to eat. How long will it take for us to recruit the full complement of user community members? Will having skin in the game motivate producer bureaucrats to do the necessary work that we need from them? This includes the motivation to solve their issues, the commitment, dedication and resolve to follow through. These alone could take many years and we still would not have started our softwares development. All that we have is the history of the bureaucrats and their mosquito-like attention spans. Commitment, dedication and fortitude are not their game. Theirs is blaming, excuses and viable scapegoats. Taking the revenues of a primary industry and using them for their own personal benefit and power tripping. I challenge the bureaucrats to put up an argument about my budget. What will they argue, that it’s too much money? After all the damage and the trillions of dollars they’ve wasted? The financial jeopardy they’ve placed everyone and everything in the greater oil and gas economic structure? When these producer bureaucrats don’t invest in their own organizations profitability then why are they asking others to invest in them? If they don’t like these comments that I'm making then stop arguing with me and start establishing new precedents. They should look around, outside of their own little world and ask themselves why no one is coming to their aid anymore. Their reputation isn’t much worse than what I’ve described here. 

People, Ideas & Objects budget provides our developers and user community with the resources necessary to begin the development of the software and complete it successfully. We understand that there will be little to no opportunity for us to go back and raise additional financial resources. Therefore the need to convert these initial development funds into a revenue generating organization, or to have completed the development of the Preliminary Specification in its first commercial iteration as a necessary requirement to a) ensure that the development is not open ended and therefore never completed and b) attain the independence we need from the bureaucrats. Meaning we can never become “blind sleepwalking agents of whomever will feed us.” To break from the culture of the industry demands our complete financial independence and that is what is designed and delivered in our budget. I believe that what President Donald Trump has proven is that you can not change the culture of an organization from within. The amount of energy needed doesn’t exist and the bureaucratic inertia will consume anyone who tries. 

What has become evident to me in the past six months is the depth of the myopic focus of the bureaucrats. It is only concerned with their personal compensation at the expense of everything else. To be candid as far as they’re concerned there is nothing else. After decades of screaming at the top of my lungs about the looming, and now, actual damages being done to the industry, and all those associated with it in the greater oil and gas economic structure. It didn’t matter to the bureaucrats. Only when I struck proverbial gold last summer in my June 2, 2020 blog post and set off the panic about the liability bureaucrats were individually exposed to as a result of their chronic inactivity. There was never any concern before then. And since then, the only action taken has been to increase their officers and directors liability insurance by, at that time 70%, who knows how much they’ve increased their coverage since. The risk they’ve incurred has the potential to devastate them in terms of their personal asset value and only at that time did they perk up and start paying attention, but only to their personal risk. Then I noted the timing of the overproduction and oversupply issue had been in the oil market since at least July 1986. Nothing at all has been done about this issue for 35 years. I published the Preliminary Specification after completing ten years of the necessary research in December 2013. Again nothing has been done about it. Other than the fact that the chronic overproduction and oversupply issue, in both oil and natural gas commodities, have become the most prominent issue the industry has faced, ever. Going on 35 years of avoiding the biggest issue ever. And seven years of ignoring the solution, in fact the only solution in the market after their abuse of all the ERP vendors. Is it any wonder that the insurance coverage needed to be increased? I also questioned, if the fact that coverage was raised but only after these facts were raised, does that make these insurance changes a fraud?

In a court of law this is what is called evidence. Evidence that they were not doing their job and only working for themselves. But why sue the producers when there's no value left? That’s a good question, however I hear the insurance coverage is spectacular! This enhances one’s motivation doesn’t it. From what I’ve known and experienced over these past decades, I would find it difficult to accept that bureaucrats were working for anyone but themselves. I wonder if I could find a career as an expert witness?

First of all let me clarify that I’ve never seen the oil and gas bureaucrats as my clients. On the contrary when I started this it was with the expressed purpose of removing them. They are redundant in any economy and certainly in the 21st century. People, Ideas & Objects are disintermediating the oil and gas industry. Late last year I asked who would be the bigger fool ten years from now. Would that be the bureaucrats for their actions in creating such a mess. Or would it be us for allowing ourselves to believe, one more time, that they had it all in hand. We’ve been deceived, are we willing to be deceived again? I’m not of the belief that either side in this transaction has to bear any shame over these next 10 years. If we hold the feet of these bureaucrats to the fire today and have them provide the financial resources for our budget, we’ll take it from there. By providing our budget bureaucrats can redeem themselves in the eyes of everyone who is currently looking at them in disbelief. The important people that I want to point out here are the Judges that bureaucrats may face if the losses that shareholders, banks and others continue to experience and therefore choose to litigate. As an alternative they could say “However, your Honor, we took steps in early 2021 to make the changes to turn the industry around, remediate the losses and make oil and gas great again.” If a bureaucrat uttered that to the judge then there would be no reason for the bureaucrat to be in front of the judge. As they would have launched the development of the Preliminary Specification and set in place the resolution to their issues. Issue mitigated, nothing litigated. Their fiduciary duty has been met.

Action therefore involves the following. Producers will share the burden of our budget on an equitable basis. As noted they can organize themselves in one thousands of the time that I can herd cats. Each barrel of oil produced by the producer as of December 31, 2019 is assessed the $315 per boe necessary to fully fund People, Ideas & Objects budget. This is based on the North American production reported of 38.09 mm boe at the end of 2019. I’m finding “issue mitigated, nothing litigated” to be rather catchy and as a result will be using it extensively from now on. Bureaucrats should know now what it is they need to do to save their souls. You see I’ve discovered their motivation and their drive, I’ve always just assumed, wrongly, that they were concerned about the business as we are. I guess my naivety over the past decades of thinking the bureaucrats were morally motivated is now its own form of evidence 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, everywhere and always. Setting the foundation for profitable North American energy independence. People, Ideas & Objects have published a white paper “Profitable, North American Energy Independence -- Through the Commercialization of Shale.” that captures the vision of the Preliminary Specification and our actions. 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 Parler @piobiz, anyone can contact me at 713-965-6720 in Houston or 587-735-2302 in Calgary, or email me here. 

A Finer Point

 I’ve realized that I’ve made an assumption in the Preliminary Specification that may not be evident to everyone. When we’ve discussed the profitability of the Joint Operating Committee it has mostly been from the perspective of the producer corporation. Noting that shutting-in the unprofitable properties production would cause the producers corporate profits to rise as a result. Losses would no longer be diluting the earnings of the producers other profitable properties. We see this in most businesses where they shut-in or stop producing products or services that can no longer be produced profitably until such time as the market provides different opportunities. What I haven’t realized is that we’ve never discussed this from the point of view of just the single, stand alone Joint Operating Committee. A Joint Operating Committee can consist of a single well, just land, a gas plant or a unitized facility. Any asset(s) managed by a Joint Venture agreement establishes a Joint Operating Committee. Therefore it is also possible that we can treat the assets and facilities within a Joint Operating Committee as its own unique reporting entity as that is exactly what the Preliminary Specification does. Therefore, assuming a property consisted of fifty wells held through the Joint Venture agreement that would include the interests of, for purposes of this example, four producers. 

Within the Preliminary Specification we will be breaking the data down to the finest levels possible. Which means the well data at a minimum. Each well will then have its own fully identified financial statements available for each of the four producer owners to review, as well as the financial performance of the well as a whole. These will detail the capital, operating and overhead costs of each well. Note each of the producers will have a different set of financials that are unique to their share of assets characteristics and costs. For example one of the producers may have purchased an interest in the property and therefore will have far different performance criteria in which to evaluate the property. Alternatively a producer may have custom processing or an interest in the processing facilities that other producers don’t. The Preliminary Specification takes the Joint Venture Agreements determination of production allocation and applies that at each location. This technical flexibility is enabled through the highly engineered process we will be undertaking in the software development of the Material Balance Report. Each of these four producers would therefore be aggregating their specific revenues for each commodity based on the distribution defined in the Joint Venture agreement. 

Each producer's financial performance may vary materially from the point of view of profit or loss. Therefore the decision to shut-in the individual well to enhance the Joint Operating Committees performance may be conflicted. Within the Preliminary Specification we have dealt with this conflict from the Joint Operating Committee by way of the following. The Joint Operating Committee is the legal, financial, operational decision making, cultural, communication and strategic framework on an industry wide basis, and is its standard. In the Research & Capabilities module, as it is throughout the Preliminary Specification we have moved the knowledge to where the decision rights reside. As Professor Richard Langlois pointed out.

The question then becomes: why are capabilities sometimes organized within firms, sometimes decentralized in markets, and sometimes coordinated by a myriad contractual and ownership arrangements like joint ventures, franchisees, and networks? Explicitly echoing Hayek, Jensen and Meckling (1992, p.251) who point out that economic organization must solve two different kinds of problems: "the rights assignment problem (determining who should exercise a decision right) and the control or agency problem (how to ensure that self-interested decision agents exercise their rights in a way that contributes to the organizational objective)." There are basically two ways to ensure such a "collocation" of knowledge and decision making: "One is by moving the knowledge to those with the decision rights; the other is by moving the decision rights to those with the knowledge." (Jensen and Meckling 1992 p. 253). p. 9

It will therefore be within the Joint Operating Committee, where the knowledge of the financial situation at each of the producers, their abilities and capabilities and their rights to make their decisions in their best interests come into play. These are detailed in the Research & Capabilities and Knowledge & Learning modules. Within the Joint Venture Agreement it has been established within the Operating Procedure what the necessary criteria are and how decisions are to be made. The voting rights of each producer and the percentage ownership necessary to pass a decision will dictate the outcome of these decisions. As it is with the corporate decisions to shut-in an entire unprofitable property, People, Ideas & Objects believe it would be in the best interests of those producers to take the global, or gross working interest, perspective of the wells ownership interests financial performance in determining the outcome of these decisions. 

Producer bureaucrats may be jumping up and down at this point saying that this is exactly what it is that they do. Which may be correct except for three distinct differences that the Preliminary Specification implements. Until recently producers have refused and objected to shutting in any and all production. Prior to the virus they were adamant that formation damage would cause production losses to be material for the long term. This they now admit will not be the case. Secondly, the financial statement granularity that is provided by having the service providers re-engineering all of the processes of the producer to ensure they’re optimal and the data is captured at the lowest possible level. This provides for the direct overhead costs to be charged directly to the Joint Operating Committee enabling the decentralized production models price maker strategy. This can only occur with complete financial statements that detail all of the costs of exploration and production. Currently all of the overhead, however much is incurred, is recorded at the corporate level in property, plant and equipment of the producer. And woefully inadequate overhead allowances are charged to the properties. Actual, detailed and accurate financial statements are not currently prepared on any asset in North American oil and gas. If any decisions are currently made in this manner they would be woefully inadequate as they’ve left the major costs of overhead and depletion out of the decision. Lastly, the Preliminary Specification has eliminated the operator designation and replaced it with the pooling concept at the Joint Operating Committee. Decisions being made by one producer as operator introduced the conflict. Moving the decision making to where decisions are authorized removes the conflict the operator has had with the Joint Operating Committee. 

Bureaucrats always jump up and down at this point and suggest that neither the way the Preliminary Specification operates or what is suggested here is viable due to the fact that there are contracts of various kinds that need to be considered. Which of course there are. However, for the sake of a contract they’ll terminate discussion and destroy the industry on a wholesale basis. Contracts are written and rewritten everyday. If the producers do not engage any lawyers now might be a good time to begin a review of these self imposed constraints their contracts are having. Having their operations so severely constrained by a series of contracts might be considered foolish in the oil and gas industry that People, Ideas & Objects, our user community and their service provider organizations are building. A greater flexibility needs to be built into the industry and that is one of the benefits of the Preliminary Specification. 

Nonetheless there may be some wells within a specific Joint Operating Committee where the performance is not adequate to continue with its production. Within the Preliminary Specification there are two specific modules that will assist in the review and analysis of all of a producers Joint Operating Committees and the individual assets within these. They are the Analytics & Statistics module which provides analysis of the producer and the Performance Evaluation module for the analysis of the Joint Operating Committee. Let's look at two aspects of how People, Ideas & Objects enable different performance trajectories over what is available today. First, the Security & Access Control module seeks to provide the right people with the right access to the right information with the right authority at the right time and at the right place. We know the need for this access in the market is much greater today than just last year. It is not that I’m hedging on this ambitious goal set out in the Preliminary Specification. I know that Oracle has the technologies to provide this. I know that we’ve budgeted the right amount of financial resources to engineer the solution. I know that user driven software development such as People, Ideas & Objects Preliminary Specification demands that significant input from the sponsored community needs to be provided to our user community in order to achieve what is possible. This input or support has not yet been evident. And indeed it has been woefully inadequate. Having our budget funded may have producers change their minds on how to get involved by “having some skin in the game.” The commitment of the industry is the missing ingredient at this point. With the amount of losses being incurred at this point, and the history of losses we would assume this is satisfactory to the bureaucrats and this may not change until such time as their removal. 

The second aspect of how these modules provide a different performance trajectory is, we provide a division of labor between computers and people that is in stark contrast to what is implemented in the industry today. Computers will be used to store and process data. People will be employed in the efficiency and effectiveness of their organizations, quality, specialization, division of labor, automation, innovation, leadership, integration, issue identification and resolution, creativity, collaboration, research, ideas, design, planning, thinking, negotiating, compromising and financing to name just a few of the key points. Analyzing and accessing the data and information in the Joint Operating Committees and producer firms will enable new perspectives and understanding of how these financial statements can be used to generate new forms of value. A tool set that will be a blank slate that is provided to each of the producers in the form of advanced capabilities that have not been available before. Rendering a means of distinct competitive advantage that has not been available within the industry to date. 

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, everywhere and always. Setting the foundation for profitable North American energy independence. People, Ideas & Objects have published a white paper “Profitable, North American Energy Independence -- Through the Commercialization of Shale.” that captures the vision of the Preliminary Specification and our actions. 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 Parler or Twitter @piobiz, anyone can contact me at 713-965-6720 in Houston or 587-735-2302 in Calgary, or email me here. 

My Last Kick at This Dead Horse, For the Year That Is

 People, Ideas & Objects Preliminary Specification provides oil and gas producers with the most profitable means of oil and gas operations, everywhere and always. Who would have thought focusing on profitability would make us pariahs?

Our White Paper “Profitable, North American Energy Independence -- Through the Commercialization of Shale” documents the state of affairs in the oil and gas ERP market. A summary of that discussion would reflect that Qbyte, which is owned by P2, and SAP have the largest market shares in the industry. Qbyte began life in the 1980’s and its life cycle has been extended repeatedly due to the lack of any serious competition being fostered in the market. SAP, as I suggest in the white paper, sells an ERP solution in the oil and gas industry however do not have an oil and gas solution. Their market is the multi-tiered manufacturing concerns where revenues from one of those implementations dwarf what they earn from oil and gas. We note that IBM, the prior owner of Qbyte left as a result of a lack of support from producers in 2005, and Oracle with their Oracle Energy solution did the same in 2000. It needs to be asked if P2 and SAP were adequate for the oil and gas industry, would the industry be in the disastrous condition that it currently finds itself? I don’t blame these software vendors, they like People, Ideas & Objects have been used and abused by their alleged “customers” and it is the starvation diet they’re provided by producer bureaucrats that keeps their offering as lean as they are. My point is, if you were responsible for what People, Ideas & Objects has alleged as a scam and a fraud you might be able to argue the difference if you had pristine accounting and systems in which to argue the point. Oil and gas, as I’ve commented here many times, does not have pristine accounting and systems. The question that none of the producer bureaucrats can answer is, using actual revenues, depletion, operation and overhead at the property level, which are their most profitable properties? Or here is another good question, what is the corporation's gross overhead costs? Therefore, why would you accept any of the major vendors like Oracle or those such as ourselves who are offering solutions focusing on real profitability and standardized, actual, factual accounting to provide the facts to offset People, Ideas & Objects allegations? 

When I began this adventure in 2003 it was inconceivable that any business would redevelop their ERP systems from scratch. My belief in the necessity of a “rip and replace” method was a result of three factors that forced its justification. First there was the fundamental change that’s introduced in the Preliminary Specification as a result of the use of the Joint Operating Committee, the legal, financial, operational decision making, cultural, communication, innovation and strategic framework of the industry. Secondly the pending failure of the producers as I saw it, as a result of the specious accounting methods used in the industry at that time and still used today. And finally, the quality of the systems of the producers are predominately manual, are inadequate and incapable of being rehabilitated to satisfy the needs of basic compliance and governance. Which begs the question of how did any of this financial and operational disaster we’re witnessing today pass muster with the professional accounting firms annual audits? This in no way should be taken as a criticism of my ERP competitors who I feel have done excellent work with no financial or moral support from the producers throughout their life cycle. As an ERP provider, incremental change was the only way for them to have proceeded from a financial scavenger point of view. 

Now, in 2020 “rip and replace” has become the only method for all industries to approach the development and implementation of new ERP systems. “Rip and replace” is now seen as the manner to strategically manage the enterprise and build real value. This task however does not form part of any ERP client organization's distinct competitive advantage. Development of ERP systems and their implementation are conducted on a decades long cycle. Purchases from vendors is the proven method for success, particularly in the cloud era. Producer bureaucrats criticize People, Ideas & Objects for undertaking the scope and scale of both the Preliminary Specification which is a comprehensive and integrated business model, and implementing it across the oil & gas, and service industries and our service provider organizations. Yet, they will approach the internal development and implementation of software that will undertake the same scope for their own organization with their budget, and think nothing of the viability or success of the task. We have argued consistently that the unshared and unshareable costs of the non-competitive attributes of oil and gas administration and accounting, being replicated in whole within each and every producer firm, is another reason for the lack of current and future profitability. We hear nothing but the complaints of the complexity and difficulty of managing oil and gas from the bureaucrats as an excuse to justify their excessive personal financial compensation, yet People, Ideas & Objects use of specialization and the division of labor in order to move the fixed administrative and accounting costs of the producer to the shared, variable administrative and accounting costs of the industry in order to deal with these high costs is refused to be considered.

You’ve read in this blog a number of times the time frame that I’ve personally been working on this issue of bringing appropriate oil and gas ERP systems to market. People, Ideas & Objects Preliminary Specification is a well researched and functional business model that addresses and resolves the issues that exist in the marketplace today. As a result of the behaviors of the producer bureaucrats over the past number of decades, not only have their ERP systems atrophied through a lack of financial support. The number of offerings in the market have also atrophied. To the point where the only solution that addresses the points of concern of the industry is the Preliminary Specification. This is due to the fact that we have Intellectual Property as one of our key competitive advantages, and a foundation of our organization. But also that there is and has been no money in it for any of the ERP software vendors. These software vendors have learned the oil and gas industry in North America is small in terms of outright numbers and a difficult, technical business that once again, no one makes money in. Therefore I would ask, who would be able to satisfy the need for oil and gas ERP systems if the Preliminary Specification didn’t exist? Or maybe you could ask who would want to? You could say that I’ve been persistent. Others would have other adjectives. Who would be the one to step up with a solution that provides a resolution to the issues at hand in the current North American oil and gas industry? They would have to do so without the inclusion of any of my Intellectual Property. And they would have to undertake the same onerous and difficult task of researching how a solution would operate in a functional business model. Knowing the bureaucrats in power today, that decade of research may be timely.

The producers expectation today is that oil and gas investors are just going to resume their investing. This “muddle along strategy,” is well outside the range of reasonable. The destruction that has been undertaken by their current administration is comprehensive. They feign to have no concept of what “real” profitability is or how they’ve betrayed their prior investors. Some people outside the industry have even alleged that this betrayal of the oil and gas investors was undertaken on a deliberate basis. Yet producer bureaucrats expect to be handed the investors cash once again so they can recommence the wild, uncontrolled spending in order to crash commodity prices even further? They will belittle People, Ideas & Objects budget as comical and out of context. Yet incur on behalf of the greater oil and gas economy hundreds of billions of dollars in actual losses each quarter, and hundreds of billions of dollars in opportunity costs to make their argument. We have priced the Preliminary Specification on the basis of the value that it provides industry. We believe that it holds a value proposition in the range of $25.7 to $45.7 trillion dollars over the next 25 years. Yet these bureaucrats feign once again not to understand the basic business principles that support the Preliminary Specification. The investors that would otherwise be interested in oil and gas, if not for the obtuseness of the bureaucrats, will not be investing in an industry that has no capacity or desire to invest in its own profitability. Spending is not a distinct competitive advantage outside of oil and gas, and there are many opportunities in which investors can invest profitably elsewhere. Unprofitability and the inability to address its chronic shortfalls is not changing anyone’s mind.

How many times do you see such a united, unanimous and symetrical front being put forward across an industry such as what these bureaucrats are doing at this time. Usually that’s an indication of a scam and when one of them breaks their discipline, they’ll all scatter for shelter. I think that day is near. The motivation for bureaucrats to stay has to come into question more and more each day. Which if they did leave, which has been the historical fact in these situations, it will be done as a herd so that no one remembers any of the individuals names, then all of us will be left with the issues that we know and are aware of today, but also what we’re unaware of. It’s nice to know that the bureaucrats are able to reap the past weeks benefits of oil price increases. If we review the reasons for the recent increases we see that OPEC+ has settled on a much smaller production increase than was originally scheduled. There are a number of vaccines that are coming onto the market that should be available which will remove the government imposed foolishness that has caused the decline in demand. Nonetheless we can congratulate the producer bureaucrats on doing absolutely nothing to earn any recognition for these rewards. My question is, doesn’t now look like a good time for them to execute that exit? With a mild upswing in commodity prices, end of the fiscal and calendar year, end of the virus in sight and an undecided Venezuelan style election that may set the United States down a tragic road.

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, everywhere and always. Setting the foundation for profitable North American energy independence. People, Ideas & Objects have published a white paper “Profitable, North American Energy Independence -- Through the Commercialization of Shale.” that captures the vision of the Preliminary Specification and our actions. 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 Parler or Twitter @piobiz, anyone can contact me at 713-965-6720 in Houston or 587-735-2302 in Calgary, or email me here. 

Who's Going to be the Bigger Fool?

 Further to our discussion of Monday and Wednesday. Producer bureaucrats have displayed two characteristics regarding their fiduciary duty to manage their investors money. There is never any question that the commitment made to their investors is fulfilled to the letter through their rigid “capital discipline.” However, once the cash is returned in the form of oil and gas revenues the use of that money is fair game. The WSJ was the latest to notice this in their article “Shale Companies Had Lousy Returns. Their CEO’s Got Paid Anyway.” Now that producers have set their sites on other horizons they’ll use those revenues to support a business where the performance has never been proven. And the lack of performance in oil and gas will be sloughed off as “it's a dying business.” Further evidence that we must not accept that they can continue in their unaccountable fashion. If this did happen, and we’re here again in a decade from now, who would be the bigger fool?

The producer's third quarter 2020 reports reflect there is, and should be, a sense of urgency in terms of action to resolve the industry financial and operational issues. World Oil began discussing the difficulties inherent in oil and gas as a result of the situation producer bureaucrats have placed the entire oil and gas economic system in. This article argues that OPEC+ once again assumes the “swing producer” role in the market. I have argued that the swing producer is the North American producer. This assertion has been based on my misunderstanding of what the definition of swing producer is. Wikipedia provides the definition that World Oil and others are following, however I still assert that the swing producer is the one that alters their production volume to meet the demand in the market. Whether OPEC+ is trying to punish the market, the role of the swing producer, at this time is not in question. And just as it is stated overtly in the July 1986 Calgary Herald articles that we referenced on newspapers.com. OPEC has been instituting a war in the market in order to distill some cooperation among North American producers as to the chronic overproduction and oversupply that is a result of the North American based high cost producers. Overproduction and oversupply being defined as unprofitable production that has been conducted in North America for many decades. North America is the high cost producer and therefore would fulfill what I consider the swing producer role in that they will increase or decrease production based on the profitability of their production in the market. As the high cost producer their production will become unprofitable first, with OPEC production, being the lowest cost producer, continuing at a steady state always. The swing, or high cost producer would add or subtract production based on each of the properties ability to earn a profit. This would be enabled through the implementation of People, Ideas & Objects Preliminary Specifications decentralized production model’s price maker strategy into the North American market where we provide the most profitable means of oil and gas operations, everywhere and always.  

The cyclical nature of the industry's boom and bust cycle is a bureaucratic feature, not a bug. Claims to have been profitable have contrasted the five good years that I could identify out of the past 34 years. They say it’s the nature of the business and they’ll muddle through! Most people are sick of it, as industries all across the globe have worked to eliminate the boom and bust nature of their industries. Since 2008 what car manufacturer has had a bad year? None, because what they do is manage their inventories to ensure they don’t overwhelm the market with products that will kill their auto market prices. The exact thing every other business does and what we’ve recommended in the Preliminary Specification, but these producer bureaucrats have accused People, Ideas & Objects of “collusion” when we recommend that they too begin managing their inventories. Our response to their charge of collusion has been to question them on how are the independent business decisions of a producer at the property level, based on a standardized, actual, factual accounting considered collusion? We still haven’t heard their excuse, blaming or viable scapegoat regarding our argument. 

It takes intelligence, effort and a variety of other difficult attributes to make a profit. None of which has been evident in the C suite of any of the North American producers. But why not just stuff one's pockets full of cash and sit on the couch. They’ve consistently looked down their noses towards OPEC and their suggestions of working to stabilize the market. Suggesting that North American producers were all dominant and all others would be told what to do. It is true that at one time Houston was the centre of the energy universe. It should have been incumbent upon the management to have worked these boom / bust cycles out of the business by now, as they have in most other industries. We’ve only begun to see the depths of destruction that’s been conducted by those that were responsible for building the business. 

What we know at this point is that North American based producers will never implement the definition of what real profitability is or what real profits mean. They know, as do most business people, that the difference between real profits and making fudge are the same difference between vacationing in Hawaii and working in a coal mine. One of those takes work, effort, risk and skill, the other doesn’t. Why would you fly from Hawaii to take up a forty year career in Pennsylvania coal country? People, Ideas & Objects always felt that bellowing at sunbathers on the beach in Hawaii would be a futile marketing campaign therefore we took a different approach. Our marketing has always focused on those that have been affected by the inactions of the bureaucrats and to clearly identify the damage it's causing today and in the future. Our campaign has also been to promote our solution to what ails the industry and replace the disastrous bureaucracy through disintermediation. To organize our user community, which we began doing with the publication of our user community vision in March 2014, to resolve this inevitable and consequential disaster. You can only imagine how popular I was when I was completing the Preliminary Specification and speaking of the looming demise of the industry in January 2014 when oil prices were averaging $91.17. Yet seven years later this is where the bureaucrats have taken us, so much for being visionaries, and does anyone doubt what bureaucrats see in the clean energy future?

We noted earlier this week that the bureaucrats' answer to their insurance risk, culpability and guilt they’ve incurred is that they’ll move off to other industries. Capitulation of any and all responsibility is directly in line with their genetic predisposition and moving away from that which they’ve been entrusted with but destroyed. Leaving the devastation behind, and all those that have been damaged by these individuals actions. How much delusion exists within these bureaucrats when they consider they can just “shift” to clean energy with minimal staff, those being the ones they haven’t cut, the diminished resources they have at their disposal and no support from investors or bankers? A service industry that will need to be actively rebuilt with direct producer involvement and cash. And they have sugarplums dancing in their heads about zero emissions. Leaping tall buildings in a single bound, traveling faster than a speeding bullet. Clearly bureaucrats are not tough enough to stand the heat, therefore let's get them out of the kitchen. The issue now is what do shareholders and the employees of the producers have in terms of legal rights in litigation against the bureaucratic officers and directors of the producers they’ve been involved with? In a word plenty. The standard of care necessary for these individuals is that they’ve… from Wikipedia.

Tort liability is predicated on the existence of proximate cause, which consists of both: (1) causation in fact, and (2) foreseeability. A plaintiff must prove that his or her injuries were the actual or factual result of the defendant's actions.

The cause was and is the chronic overproduction and oversupply brought about by specious accounting that I’ve documented throughout this blog. The overproduction and oversupply is also documented in the commentary of Qatar’s Oil Minister in the July 26, 1986 Calgary Herald articles. The foreseeability arrives as a result of considering that I’ve been at this for 29 years, which only proves that I’m not as bright as an oil and gas bureaucrat. Yet, I was able to foresee the issue and start working on a remedy in May 1991 and had the Preliminary Specification published in December 2013. Guilt and culpability are reflected in the bureaucrats desire to cover their risk with ever more officer and director liability insurance coverage, paid for by the producers.

And from Legal Match.

A tort is an act that results in injury, suffering, unfair loss or harm to another person. Torts are governed by tort laws and serve two basic purposes (1) to compensate the victim for any losses caused by the defendant’s violations; and, (2) to deter (discourage) the defendant from repeating the violation in the future.

I would therefore ask the following questions;

• Were they (bureaucrats as officers and directors) aware of the systemic and chronic overproduction and oversupply of oil since July 1986? If not why not?
• Were they aware of the systemic and chronic overproduction and oversupply of natural gas since 2010? If not why not?
• Were they aware of Shale's inability to generate free cash flow for the past decade? 
• Were they aware of People, Ideas & Objects Preliminary Specification as a solution?
• Why were officers and directors liability insurance coverage increased in July 2020?
• Did they know, or should they have known about these imminent financial difficulties?
• What assessment of the shift to clean energy and / or zero emissions was made?
• Why is this shift supported and subsidized through oil and gas revenues?
• What actions or inactions were taken with respect to any of the above?
• What have the organizations CFO’s commented internally about the over capitalization, over supply and over production issues? What were their concerns about clean energy and zero emissions targets?
• Conversely, what has been asked of the CFO’s about the issues regarding their financial statements, the business environment or People, Ideas & Objects Preliminary Specification?

After these discussions have been undertaken it would need to be determined if fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation was involved. For determination of that we see the legal definition from Legal Match.

5) Fraud or Fraudulent Misrepresentation

Fraud is deliberate deception to secure unfair or unlawful gain. The intent behind fraudulent misrepresentation make it the most serious of all types of misrepresentation. As a result, it carries the most severe penalties. The required elements for a tort cause of action include the following:

Intentional misrepresentation or concealment of a material fact.

The misrepresentation is made with the intent for the other party to rely on it.

The other party does rely on the material fact.

The reliance on the material fact harms the person.

Fraudulent misrepresentation need not be a positive verbal assertion. It can be any act that would deceive another including simple gestures, innuendos, half-truths, and in some instances, silence.

I’m not a lawyer and therefore I’m not going to get into the finer points here. We’ve heard the bureaucrats suggest, when asked about the destruction that has been created on their watch, “that they too had lost money.” I find this a curious comment in light of the facts presented. A) who cares that they’ve lost money, B) who was in the best position to stop the loss, and indeed had the authority and responsibility to do so, and C) is this just another excuse posing as a deliberate deception?

The sequence of these events is the issue that has been present in the market since July 1986, People, Ideas & Objects solution has existed since December 2013 and nothing has been done whatsoever to remedy the losses, damage or devastation that these officers and directors have caused. We know that there was ample time and opportunities in which to work to resolve and avoid these issues and the only producer efforts were to “shoot the messenger” People, Ideas & Objects. We know two things today. Muddle along and doing nothing, the de facto strategy throughout this time, has failed catastrophically. We detailed this risk to the officers and directors in early June, July and August of this year. Yet nothing has been done except the increase in insurance coverage and the shift to clean energy. It looks to me like we’re being played for fools again. Shame on us?

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, everywhere and always. Setting the foundation for profitable North American energy independence. People, Ideas & Objects have published a white paper “Profitable, North American Energy Independence -- Through the Commercialization of Shale.” that captures the vision of the Preliminary Specification and our actions. 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 Parler or Twitter @piobiz, anyone can contact me at 713-965-6720 in Houston or 587-735-2302 in Calgary, or email me here. 

I Say We Want a Revolution!

 Bureaucrats have been rewarded with three vaccines that have increased the prices of oil and gas, and hence the value of their shares. I was saving this gift for the bureaucrats' Christmas however since they're now in the holiday mood and are being rewarded for doing nothing, I thought I’d indulge them. The gift that I find keeps on giving is the one we documented last summer. The two Calgary Herald articles “OPEC can see Economic Destruction” and “Return to Glory Days Unlikely.” Recall these articles documented situations in the industry that mirrored the events of today, however they were written on July 26, 1986! These can be sourced from Newspaper.com (paywall) and are listed on the front page of the business section or page 33 of that day's paper. The quotes that best reflect the situation that exists today are. 

Qatar's oil minister has called on both OPEC and non-OPEC nations and industrialized countries to cooperate with OPEC to work out a policy aimed at restoring stability to the world oil market or face grave consequences. 

He said that continuation of the current situation would lead to destruction of the economies of both oil producing and oil consuming countries. 

“OPEC has no choice but to continue the current policy of capturing a fair share of the market until non-OPEC producers discern the importance of co-operating with OPEC.” Oteiba was quoted as saying. 

And

However, what those [OPEC] ministers do at the International Hotel on the shore of Lake Geneva could help decide a lot: Whether gasoline and heating oil prices will continue to drop or rebound instead, whether the devastated economies of oil producing states and provinces like Oklahoma, Texas and Alberta will continue to crumble and whether the debt problems of Mexico will get more severe. 

Only Saudi Arabia, which started the price plunge by boosting its output so it could protect its market share, has gained revenue amid the price war. That oil rich country is earning 10 to 15 percent more oil exports than last summer. 

Amid lower prices, the number of active oil rigs in the United States and Canada has plunged. 

As we noted in August these symptoms of overproduction and oversupply have been the case since at least July 1986 and have been evident each and everyday since. It is the reason I began this journey in May of 1991 to build a system where producers could just shut-in production. Something they were unable and unwilling to do in that era of the industry. And as we see since that time there has been nothing done about a critical, global, existential issue to all of those involved in oil and gas. It is only today we find the radical change of the producers moving out of the business to pursue their lofty dreams of clean energy and zero carbon emissions. As we noted in our “radical” recommendation on Monday, let them go, or have them spin off the oil and gas exploration and production to their existing shareholders. We could also just kick the bums out. That clean energy future with zero emission is what the bureaucrats have bought into, we should free them of these oil and gas assets and allow them to travel unconstrained into their new quest. This is what everyone else has been denied over the past four decades due to their bureaucratic mismanagement and let's admit it, fraud, corruption and self dealing. 

Corporations are structured so that directors and officers of that corporation are held personally accountable for any and all shortcomings that occur knowingly or unknowingly by the principles in these organizations. People, Ideas & Objects is another attempt by myself to take “another kick at the cat” after prior failures in the oil and gas ERP market. This attempt began in August 2003 with the commencement of our comprehensive research into what a dynamic, innovative, accountable and profitable producer would need in terms of using the Joint Operating Committee. This research took the better part of a decade with the result being the Preliminary Specification being published in its final form during December 2013. It's been since that time the officers and directors have been well aware of this solution in the market. Even if I was the only one that was aware of the published Preliminary Specification it doesn’t matter. There existed a published solution in the market as of December 2013 that the officers and directors should have been aware of and that fulfills the standard for shareholders to meet the demand of the courts to prove these corporations should have known. This is the law of torts and we’ll be discussing this more on Friday. 

How this particular part of our journey began was with the publication of a series of blog posts on June 2nd, July 6th and 8th of 2020, and subsequently, that detailed the manner in which insurance companies managed risk in their portfolio of officer and director liability insurance. That insurance companies will force the cancellation of coverage if the individual continues to work for the company they deem as too risky for them to continue. Forcing the individual officer or director out the door of the producer in order to maintain their insurance coverage. It’s in the July 6, 2020 blog post that I note the Reuters article stating that increasing officers and directors liability insurance coverage was a trend they’d noticed. People, Ideas & Objects asked explicitly if this is implied guilt and culpability?

After six months has passed a quick update in terms of People, Ideas & Objects activities. Shows that none of the North American based producers have contacted us in any way shape or form. And why would they, I’m just a guy behind a keyboard. The only action that we can document on the bureaucrats behalf is the wholesale exit from the oil and gas industry into clean energy and zero carbon emissions. I have stated here throughout my writing that bureaucrats can’t, won’t and will not ever do anything to resolve their issues. They’re genetically predisposed to avoid action unless it involves covering their personal compensation or risk. 

Whether we have the investors force a spin off of the oil and gas assets into new corporations or summarily fire the bureaucrats is a choice that someone needs to make. Either way let's make Christmas just as special for these individuals as they have for everyone else. It’s time for action and I’m one guy with a keyboard, but I also have the solution to what ails the industry. There is no reflection of any care or concern being expressed for the profitability of the industry, other than what it can do for these individuals' pocketbooks. Take these oil and gas revenues away from them before they declare ever larger annual bonuses for the job not done. We never want them using oil and gas revenues to support their activities in an unrelated industry which has repeatedly proven itself to be uncommercial even with substantial government subsidies. I’m now calling for a revolution within oil and gas to clear out the bureaucracy.

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, everywhere and always. Setting the foundation for profitable North American energy independence. People, Ideas & Objects have published a white paper “Profitable, North American Energy Independence -- Through the Commercialization of Shale.” that captures the vision of the Preliminary Specification and our actions. 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 Parler or Twitter @piobiz, anyone can contact me at 713-965-6720 in Houston or 587-735-2302 in Calgary, or email me here. 

Warning! Radical Recommendations Ahead

 There is abundant discussion throughout the North American market regarding the changing business landscape and environment. About the changes that organizations are undertaking and particularly in this era where the virus demands so much of everyone. The discussion that I want to begin with today is the topic that I’ve seen in a number of areas recently. Of how the American economy has never been subject to the kind of radical and revolutionary changes that we are seeing in many areas. And particularly the radical and revolutionary style of changes proposed by People, Ideas & Objects with our Preliminary Specification. Many oil and gas bureaucrats are suggesting that they do not subscribe to the radical method of change as that is not how Americans have evolved and developed. Suggesting that incremental change and adopting evolutionary principles and processes is how best to manage an organization and the industry. The question is do they have a point and is the Preliminary Specification out of step with the reality of how the American market has developed? These are my thoughts, comments and recommendations about evolutionary vs. revolutionary organizational, technical and cultural change. 

The Preliminary Specification suggests that North American producers recommit to the oil and gas business and learn what real profitability is and why it's important. Controversial when I began, I know, however is it as radical as it once seemed? Many producers have now set clear objectives for their organizations which include a shift to “clean energy,” based predominantly on wind and solar, and the adoption of zero emissions targets. These being only the most recent, viable scapegoats. If you’re as confused as I am with the incremental and evolutionary changes these producers have claimed, I too am failing to understand what it is about the Preliminary Specification that they’ve always found so distasteful, radical or revolutionary? Getting out of the business is less radical than making the business profitable? With that in mind I would suggest that they read Mark P. Mills, Senior Fellow of the Manhattan Institute and his paper “The New Energy Economy:’ An Exercise in Magical Thinking” regarding the physics of “clean energy.” And People, Ideas & Objects review of his paper on page 96 of our white paper “Profitable, North American Energy Independence -- Through the Commercialization of Shale.”

First I’d like to note that in terms of incremental changes in the market of oil and gas nothing has changed since the implementation of the SEC guidelines for recording capital assets. This was the point where the focus on assets became the cultural norm in the industry and led to the issue of overproduction and oversupply that we’re dealing with today. Simply over capitalization of assets leads to commensurate over reported profits, which has led to an over investment in the industry, creating overproduction and oversupply. The SEC made the change to full cost accounting in the late 1970’s and in terms of change in the industry very little has occurred. The producers have been able to raise vast amounts of capital in order to fund all types of projects that may or may not have been viable at the time or ever. Specious accounting of recording the majority of any and all of the producers costs to property, plant and equipment created the end result of overproduction and oversupply. For purposes of this discussion People, Ideas & Objects also describe overproduction as unprofitable production. This has become the culture of the industry and there has been no deviation from it throughout North America. Look at the symmetrical way in which producer financial statements are presented and you see bloated balances of property, plant and equipment, and now after decades of destruction, massive debts offset those balances, with not much of anything else. No working capital. No retained earnings and in fact most have lost all and more of their share capital structure. 

As we documented elsewhere the overproduction of oil became a global issue at least as far back as July 1986. We documented this in August 2020 in a number of blog posts that detailed the symmetry between what the issue was then and what the issue is today. There is no deviation whatsoever from what the story was back then. I guess one could argue that the major difference between then and now is that these producer bureaucrats have also destroyed the natural gas business, initially on a continental basis and now on a global basis. Incremental change has been the modus operandi of these producers, allegedly, and they’ve personally done extremely well throughout these past four decades. Establishing that oil and gas is a difficult business and therefore the need to be compensated in the top four of industry leaders is their reward. That is the top four for 2019. And that is the point for these oil and gas bureaucrats isn’t it, why change what is obviously working so well? 

The Preliminary Specification is wholesale, radical and revolutionary change. The kind of change that would have occurred incrementally over the past four decades if things weren't working out so well, for the bureaucrats. Everybody else in the greater oil and gas economy have lost substantially in terms of capital, earnings, careers and business. But who’s counting, the bureaucrats will want to have a talk with them! Our Preliminary Specification addresses the changes that are as significant as that which are represented by the changes in energy prices, the global energy demand structure, shale reserves and the impact of Information Technology to disintermediate old, bureaucratic organizational structures. The kind of change that would reverse the industry's destruction and rebuild the industry on the basis of a new definition of “real” profitability, disposing of the specious methods of the past. The kind of change that addresses the very difficult future the industry faces in the next 25 years on the basis in which its devastated landscape exists today. A landscape that now includes the relatively new cost of escalating reclamation costs over these next 25 years. Costs that will fail spectacularly in terms of earning any return on investment from oil and gas, wind or solar and probably net zero emissions. I distinctly recall in 1988 that the industry strategy would be to muddle through and do nothing to resolve the difficulties that they faced at that time. A time when oil prices were $14.87, a full $0.43 higher than in 1986. Maybe 2021 we’ll see that muddle through strategy finally pay off? Or certainly in 2022!

And maybe I’m mistaken about the American economy and how it evolved. The most powerful economy in the world never took any chances and just assumed its premier role through passive, incremental change at a glacial pace. That’s how the most dynamic economy ever known to man came about? Creative destruction and spontaneous order were myths perpetrated by Europeans in the late 1700’s and enhanced by Hayak in the 1940’s. Far too long ago and far too distant to be relevant in North America today! I can not comprehend that it has taken as long as it has for the industry to accept the lifeline that People, Ideas & Objects Preliminary Specification has extended. There are certainly large political issues for bureaucrats to accept around our use of Intellectual Property as I’ve implemented it overall. Issues that have traditionally been trashed by said bureaucrats in their first five minutes of consideration. Yet for the sake of the industry and trillions of dollars in damages they’ll never accept that Intellectual Property is now the basis of the oil and gas industries value determination and generation, as it has become in every other industry. Such that it’s not the oil and gas asset that reflects the value in the industry. The value is realized through the producers access to the software that makes the oil and gas asset profitable. Heads exploding in the C suite! 

“No radical or revolutionary change” is the excuse not to accept the Preliminary Specification, yet clean energy is now the place to be and what about the new fad of adopting net zero emissions targets! Essentially changing the nature of the business fundamentally. Are people making money in these “clean energy” initiatives, is there value to be generated in these or is it unreasonable to ask what is the compelling reason for making these changes? It is fashionable, teenagers love it and it covers up a lot of the damage that’s been done in oil and gas. Kind of like a new, bright shiny object to focus on for the next few minutes. I think it’s just the same old story we’ve heard so many times before. “Can’t do this because of that,” only to find that bureaucrats are moving on with more dramatic efforts than the ones they’re denying are possible. Resistance to change is an inherent human condition. In oil and gas, bureaucrats are stricken with another condition where they’re unable to comprehend anything regarding profits. When you can come up with excuses such as “we’re out of that business” we see how easy it is to make those excuses as opposed to doing the hard work of figuring out how to make money. 

My recommendation is simple. Usually when a business becomes unviable to an organization they jettison it through to their shareholders in what’s commonly referred to as a spin off. I suggest these producers spin off their oil and gas exploration and production to their shareholders to see if they can make them viable and profitable. Clearly the current organizations that own these revenues are incapable of comprehending the need or purpose of profits, and have abandoned the investors business of oil and gas. Therefore it would be incumbent upon these producers to ensure that they wash their hands of these issues and move on with their chosen lines of business in clean energy and zero emissions. In fact in doing so they could achieve their second business objective immediately. Note too that a spin off would show the world these bureaucrats were serious about their commitment and were therefore never benefitting from those dirty revenues that oil and gas assets provided them in the past. A clean break as it were. And think how it would be perceived in the rest of the oil and gas economy, they would feel they too would have an opportunity to make something of their careers, businesses, investments and capital. This takes the bureaucrats radical idea of getting out of oil and gas, and makes it seem evolutionary to me, more of a natural process.  Or we could just have the bureaucrats removed.

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, everywhere and always. Setting the foundation for profitable North American energy independence. People, Ideas & Objects have published a white paper “Profitable, North American Energy Independence -- Through the Commercialization of Shale.” that captures the vision of the Preliminary Specification and our actions. 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 Parler or Twitter @piobiz, anyone can contact me at 713-965-6720 in Houston or 587-735-2302 in Calgary, or email me here. 

These Are Not the Earnings We're Looking For, Part LIX

 Last Friday we discussed the necessary investments that were required in order to refurbish, replace and expand the infrastructure necessary for the future in oil and gas. The discussion focused on the service industry and those within the secondary industries that service oil and gas. I made additional comments about the midstream and pipeline operations and how they needed to be expanded, refurbished and replaced. Most importantly we raised the issue of who was going to pay these costs since the investors in these industries are of the same opinion as what the investors in oil and gas are. People, Ideas & Objects ask, how will producers obtain an adequate return on these investments that will be able to compete with returns in other industries? They’re not, these costs are a trillion dollar tax or legacy cost that will be the burden that oil and gas companies will have to carry as a result of their decades of mismanagement and chronic non-performance. These legacy costs will cause them to be unable to compete in the market for capital and debt. Just as they find the investment environment is today, however on a long term, chronic and terminal basis. The only ones who will be happy with this environment will be the current bureaucrats who are nothing more than wannabe oligarchs. But maybe I don’t understand and these will be nothing more than accounting charges and “sinkable” costs.

At many points in the past decade we’ve discussed the constraints that we believe exist to the forces of creative destruction and spontaneous order. Two economic principles that are a foundation to the dynamic nature of particularly the United States economy. How these principles are affected by the development of software which now holds a commanding position in “how” and “what” is done within organizations. The dynamic nature of organizations were developed on the basis of spontaneous order which enabled the changes and developments to occur naturally, or seamlessly. Now with software having an outsized role in our lives, IT both defines and supports organizations in a comprehensive fashion. At the same time they constrain our organizations when changes that are needed or desired are unable to be made until such time as the software is changed first. And without the required software development capabilities, or access to these capabilities to make the changes these organizations remain stagnant with the status quo. We’ve pointed this out repeatedly throughout our efforts since August 2003. We’ve also noted the behaviour of our good friends the bureaucrats throughout this time when they’ve used this knowledge to ensure that they do not make any changes to the software and therefore not cause any threat to their franchise to develop. And as a result creative destruction is being exercised on the industry as a whole itself, with no replacement.

And there are many other constraints to the development of creative destruction and spontaneous order. In oil and gas we are seeing a revolving door of bankruptcies, reorganizations and consolidations that are designed to secure some scale in terms of capital structure or operations. Once released by the bankruptcy courts these producers limp along for another year or maybe two and then proceed right back to court again. The key is that once a producer declares bankruptcy they are eligible for new loans to carry on their operations. These new loans hold a priority over all the other debts they carry into the process. This revolving door has been carried on for so long in oil and gas and in some cases so many times that now there are creditors that participated in loaning money to bankrupt producers that have no hope of getting these preferred creditor loans repaid. This overall process doesn’t allow for the old to be washed away and replaced by the new. We see the same old bureaucrats that we’ve all known and loved from twenty years ago piloting this process. These constraints to change are having a material effect in all industries through the liberal application of legislation such as bankruptcy that treat the walking dead with bandaids. I assume the key objective of the bureaucrats who’ve destroyed the value of the organization is to ensure that the bankruptcy process relieves their investors of the actual share certificates.

Bureaucratic efforts to deal with their cash demands have been to drill more, complete more and produce more. Contributing to the overproduction and oversupply that plagues the industry. Just ask any drug addict what it is they want and the answer always comes back as “more.” The depth of thought and analysis by the drug addict is consistent with what these industry bureaucrats have been doing. When they drill and expand their reserves, “that’s where the money is.” Except it is no longer, and hasn’t been the case for some time. Now that it’s evident that it’s all been a scam for the past four decades we’ve been through a number of phases of grief which are commonly understood to be “denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance.” Stages that everyone outside of the C suite and boards of directors have been experiencing. To make a decision to remedy this situation appears not possible to me. Due to the realization that there isn’t any grief being reflected in the industry when the bureaucrats are fine, and they thank you for asking. 

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, everywhere and always. Setting the foundation for profitable North American energy independence. People, Ideas & Objects have published a white paper “Profitable, North American Energy Independence -- Through the Commercialization of Shale.” that captures the vision of the Preliminary Specification and our actions. 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 Parler @piobiz, anyone can contact me at 713-965-6720 in Houston or 587-735-2302 in Calgary, or email me here. 

These Are Not the Earnings We're Looking For, Part LVIII

 I’m continuing with Wednesday’s discussion of how the revenues of the producers need to be substantially higher in order to cover the full costs of capital, operations and overhead of exploration and production. This is in order to earn not only a “real profit” but also generate the cash that’ll be necessary to fuel their future capital expenditures, dividends and pay down debts. Wednesday’s analysis showed that on a cash basis the investments that had been provided to the producers from investors were diligently invested. It is the return of that cash from the retirement of those assets that is frittered and wasted in the process of operating these organizations. Where depletion, which was more than inadequate to recognize the real cost of capital, provided the excuse for the producers bureaucrats to have ignored their impact as “just accounting adjustments” and to deal with them as “sunk costs.” Their ability to ignore these capital costs as a significant part of the cost of oil and gas exploration and production has allowed producers to deceive themselves into “building balance sheets” and never recapturing the real cost of oil and gas from the consumers of those products. The costs that were passed on to the consumers were heavily subsidized when the investors were picking up the tab for the capital budget each and every year. Now that this is no longer happening the value that was built within the organization is being cannibalized, sacrificed and destroyed through low commodity price production in order to continue the consumers subsidy and the bureaucrats personal bounty. 

I have suggested consistently that the real cost of oil and gas exploration and production in North America is in the range of $135 to $150 / boe. That would have commanded a far higher price than what was realized in the third quarter of 2020 and even higher than what would have been required in my revised revenue number of $195.72 billion of revenue in Wednesday’s post. Based on our sample of producers production profile the average price received for 2020 as of the third quarter is $45.38 / boe. This considers all forms of revenue from tariffs, royalty, production and hedges. Therefore the price needed for the revenue of $195.72 billion would have been $79.89. Still well below the minimum threshold of what we believe would be necessary to cover all the costs of oil and gas exploration and production. At $135 and $150 / boe revenues for the nine months would have been between $330.7 and $366. billion. Note these are just the costs, an element of profit would be incremental to these prices. These will be the numbers that we work from for the remainder of this post. 

The first aspect of the need for these heightened revenues is the fact that they would be subject to much higher taxes. These would be incremental to the taxes that have been paid and have what I would consider to be a material impact on those revenues. What that amount would be is unknown and to be determined. Our first point regarding increased capital costs is represented in the discussion of the ERP market space in oil and gas. On page 18 in our white paper “Profitable, North American Energy Independence -- Through the Commercialization of Shale” we discuss the difficulties that have been created in this market over the past number of decades. There has been and will be no funding of investment made by anyone into these ERP systems at any time in the foreseeable future. The producers activities with respect to the expectations and their behaviors of how the ERP providers were treated has left a bad taste in the mouths of those investors. Large systems providers such as Oracle and IBM also left town as there was no ability to deal with producers that expected everything to be built on spec and once ERP providers investors were able to put their system on the market, and the market being so small, succumbed to producers not paying anything for these systems. Producers will now have to pay for their systems in advance such as the offering People, Ideas & Objects are providing. There will be no other way in which new systems will be brought to the market. 

I raise this as I feel it is now the precursor to understanding the service industry. Who invested diligently and faithfully to service the oil and gas producers and were used and abused in similar ways to the ERP systems providers. Where will the service industry find the resources necessary to rebuild their organizations? Who will be the provider? We saw Oracle and IBM leave in 2000 and 2005. Schlumberger is just leaving now. Haliburton and others appear to be of like mind. Who is going to fund these operations and rebuild the capacities and capabilities of the service industry to support the operations of the oil and gas industry at the capacities that are needed in the near future? The funding of People, Ideas & Objects will become the defacto method in which things are completed in the future. Producers have destroyed their business but most importantly their credibility. If they’re unwilling to fund the next iteration of development, based on the providers Intellectual Property, then the producers will have no choice or opportunity otherwise. Just as People, Ideas & Objects suggest to the producers now, if they can’t invest in their organizations profitability, why would they expect anyone to invest in them? There will need to be direct involvement in the areas that the producers need to conduct their exploration and production. Not involvement from sticking their fingers in things, direct involvement from the point of view of providing the financial resources upfront. The only source of cash that I see for the next 25 years in which the producers will be able to do this will need to come from the consumers in terms of they’ll be paying for the full cost of exploration and production. Producer bureaucrats have now destroyed all other methods of funding for at least a generation. When their credibility has been summarily destroyed as the producers have so effectively done, that’s it they’ll never get it back. 

You want a new pipeline to where? Well then that’s going to cost you. Shifting the burden of developing the infrastructure for oil and gas onto pipeline companies and others is not going to fly any longer. Especially when in the past as soon as the producers commissioned a new line they paid the annual bounty necessary to stop Greenpeace and all the others from picketing their head office. Now that producer bureaucrats have taken a more “progressive” attitude toward clean energy, carbon capture and climate change, why would the pipeline companies want to be the companies that violate this goodwill on behalf of the oil and gas producers in the eyes of their new clean energy and climate change communities. Producers should add Paymaster to the name of their companies. It would better define what it is that they’ll be doing in the very near future. Oil and gas is a primary industry indicating they receive their revenues from the resources they extract. These resource revenues continue irrespective of the actions of the producers and account for the actions of all the sub-industries activities as well. The service industries involved in oil and gas are secondary industries who do not have primary revenues and do not service other industries. Drilling rigs, oil and gas ERP systems and the like are unsuitable for any other industry. Therefore if the primary industry that wants these services will have to start paying for them. Expecting that others will do it for them is over. Investors have been burned comprehensively in every aspect of oil and gas and won’t be back. I only continue to mention investors as they are the ones that initiate action. Action that leads to the activities that generate value, employment throughout the greater oil and gas economy. “Building balance sheets” and “putting cash in the ground” just doesn’t have that old time appeal anymore. The industry has been broken and can only be fixed through a decade of prudent and effective management that mitigates the memories of what has gone on. A decade at a minimum, and People, Ideas & Objects will have years of work to do before that clock even starts ticking. 

There have been some instances where producer bureaucrats thought they could walk away from the assets they’ve benefited from over the past decades. However, a tiring and aging infrastructure is not something that taxpayers are going to accept as a gift from the industry. As more administrations become wise to the actions of those few there will be steps taken to ensure that the burden of one irresponsible producer attempting to abandon their environmental disaster will be shared across the industry in some form. These costs are minor in the great scheme of things today. However, in five to ten years they will become trillion dollar costs of remediation and will exceed bureaucrats comprehension. They most certainly will not be granted the license of muddling through. Expectations will be that these are either refurbished or reclaimed and the demands for energy met. What return on investment will bureaucrats be offering investors on these reclamation, rebuilding and infrastructure projects? Investors just might not be enamoured with "building balance sheets" or "putting money in the ground" anymore.

How do the producers come up with the money to pay for all of this? And to do so in this new era of abundance brought about by shale? Simple, as a primary industry producing commodities that fall within the definition of price makers they start with the development of People, Ideas & Objects Preliminary Specification with its decentralized production models price maker strategy. Which provides the only fair and equitable method of production allocation. If it’s profitable, considering a standard accounting across the industry that includes all of the costs of exploration and production, it should produce. Until such time as there is this method of fair and equitable production allocation in North America, we will continue on this downward trajectory. Once the price maker strategy is implemented then and only then can these producers begin to produce oil and gas profitably from the real sense of the word and consider the full cost of oil and gas exploration and production. What’s going on today is far from this. With a group of self interested and distracted bureaucrats who are only concerned with their needs and looking good to John Q. Public. They have no idea, no ideas, no plan and no strategy but most of all no concept of the looming difficulties and why they’ll be so complex. The energy safety and security of this continent is not something that can be fooled around with. It is reasonably evident that these bureaucrats are satisfied with themselves. They haven’t done anything for over a decade now and should be happy. Please note, within the Preliminary Specification there is the Resource Marketplace module that provides the means in which to establish the methods necessary to rebuild these markets in the secondary industries that the oil and gas producers will need and to move the industry forward. 

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, everywhere and always. Setting the foundation for profitable North American energy independence. People, Ideas & Objects have published a white paper “Profitable, North American Energy Independence -- Through the Commercialization of Shale.” that captures the vision of the Preliminary Specification and our actions. 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 Parler @piobiz, anyone can contact me at 713-965-6720 in Houston or 587-735-2302 in Calgary, or email me here.