Leadership Capitulation, Part II

 Today we have a specific example of the bureaucratic interpretation of innovation, action and the general direction of where I think we may be headed. The company is BP and the example is highlighted in this McKinsey article. For whatever reason the management of BP felt the need to address the performance of their organization and introduced some changes in an attempt to enhance their performance. This is my critique of these changes, why they’re unable to satisfy their needs, why the performance criteria are not appropriate and why the result is not acceptable. But then you’d expect nothing less of me would you. 

There is a poor analogy that can be made that has relevance here. An architect is designing a large building that is dramatic and pushes the envelope in terms of its new initiatives. Hence the costs have become something of an issue in having it built. Let’s assume for purposes of this analogy that building regulations are not as strict as they are and the architect therefore specifies substantially lower grade building materials in order to compensate for any cost overruns in the design. These lead to nothing but difficulties in the day to day issues that are being experienced by those that are involved in the building and implementation of the design of the architecture. And subsequently with the maintenance costs that are far greater than what they should be due to the poor materials used. These issues are raised with the building's managers throughout the life of the building, are cost based and therefore are focused on demanding better performance and effort be made by all concerned or they’d be terminated. What are the people who are involved in the day to day to do to resolve the issues that were created in the conceptual model? These are the permanent problems that can’t be resolved and to have the consequences of these poor decisions pushed down on to the people who are doing the day to day, who are powerless, as is anyone, to remediate the problem now, is patently unreasonable and misguided. It’s this analogy that I want to highlight in this discussion and will come too towards the end of the post. 

There is in the software development world a new and innovative form of organizational method that has come to take the world by storm. By that I mean it’s now become a catch phrase that’s used to sell an idea of a progressive and dynamic means in which people can work together. This is called the agile methodology and in its basic conceptual form it’s a good model. There are now two versions of agile as I see it. The management version and the version that is used by the people working in the agile groups, neither contain any similarities to the conceptual model. Managements are selling it as a means to recruit, to be with it and appear to be up to speed on the latest talking points and buzzwords. And as always will “talk the talk” with little forethought or understanding. The people who work in the agile method understand that it means self-organizing teams. What I see is unaccountability running amok in the organizations that have adopted agile as the next great thing. Conceptually dispatching legions of staff to attack a problem in whatever way the team may feel is appropriate will never solve anything. Don’t get me wrong, I am not a proponent of the waterfall software development approach, I would prefer agile any day in a properly constructed environment. First you have to have a vision of what it is they’re going to be building. A reference point that is standard across the entire organization. And most importantly the influence of a user community to guide the software development to develop what it is that they want and need. Groups of developers in self-organizing teams set upon a task to build the undefined x is anarchy. And that is what agile has come to mean by those that appeal to it the most. To be using agile as a one size fits all organizational solution to resolve any and all problems in any business at any time is exactly what it sounds like. A distortion of the concept.

These are the key points that I’ve taken from the McKinsey article entitled “An Agility Pioneer in the Energy Industry.” 

bp has recognized the need for bold action. At the start of 2020, new CEO Bernard Looney announced an updated purpose for the company: to reimagine energy for people and the planet and to be a net-zero company by 2050 or sooner (see sidebar, “bp’s new purpose”). To achieve these goals, bp would have to shift from a traditional business model to a much more focused and integrated organization. Bernard described this radical shift as “reinventing bp.”

Well no actually. BP was rebranded as “Beyond Petroleum” in 1997 by then CEO Lord John Browne onwards. From Wikipedia.

From 1997, Browne sought to re-brand BP.[4] The company linked itself in its corporate communications with green issues by the overt link of its BP initials with the phrase "Beyond Petroleum". Browne stated that the right to self-determination was crucial for people everywhere, and that he saw his company's mission as to find ways to meet current needs without excessive harm to the environment, while developing future, more sustainable sources of energy. He promised that BP would reduce its own CO2 emissions by 10% by 2010, a target which was achieved nine years ahead of schedule.

What we see here is the public relations expectations that memories are generational. Or doing the same thing over and over again is a sign of something or other. Nonetheless has BP, or is it bp, found an issue or challenge they’re concerned about? We’ll deal with the manner in which their concern is being addressed at the end of this post. 

Energy companies are facing major challenges. The COVID-19 pandemic has significantly shifted energy-demand curves, cost management needs to be resilient to commodity price cycles, and technological advancements are reshaping the industry. In addition, a finite global carbon budget and an impending energy transition present the biggest challenges yet for the industry. Energy companies need to respond quickly; survival will require a transformation, not incremental change.

One of my criticisms of the bureaucracy is that they incorporate the cost control business model. It continues in this definition of the issue with the statement that “cost management needs to be resilient to commodity price cycles.” No, this is not what needs to be done. The management needs to begin to look at the business holistically. It is not just costs but a business with revenues, customers, partners, suppliers and believe it or not profits. A greater oil and gas economy is what is defined and supported through the production of oil and gas. If nothing but costs are ever looked at, this is the perspective that the building manager is taking in trying to take the day to day costs out of the high maintenance cost building. It is the same thing here with trying to take the costs out of the greater oil and gas economy without addressing the larger issues that are being imposed. And just out of curiosity if Lord Browne undertook this same initiative in 1997, what have the results of that been and why do it again?

The company already had a head start: bp started the transformation journey in its upstream business in 2016, founded on agile ways of working and accompanied by investments in digital technology and by ways of working that could spur ongoing growth and innovation. The “Reinvent bp” program in 2020 amplified this experience to redesign Production & Operations (P&O) around an agile operating model with mission-driven, cross-disciplinary teams. These teams—or squads—are laser-focused on value, pursuing high-priority initiatives to optimize current assets and harness future opportunities.

 Well there we have it. The “transformation journey,” “founded on agile ways of working,” “investments in digital technology,” “ongoing growth and innovation,” “mission-driven, cross-disciplinary teams” and “focused on value, pursuing high priority initiatives to optimize and harness.” There we have the majority of the buzzwords that make the management of BP, or is it bp, the best that it can be. How could anyone criticize this? Well I’ll chime in here and say they’ve forgotten to allow the staff to bring their pets to work. 

Bp is stating they already have over 700 units of independent agile groups working. And these units may have over 14,000 people assigned to them by the end of this year. It is these unstructured, unconstrained yet fully responsible and accountable for their actions “squads” that should be the most frightening. What we know is that activity for the sake of activity is not action. Critically this is not how innovation works or how to implement it within organizations. These points are generally well understood in senior management and are on the list of things not to do, ever. You need to have all of the innovation being conducted separately from operations as it’s proposed to be done in the Research & Capabilities and Knowledge & Learning modules of the Preliminary Specification. The impact of changes made here or there can have consequences. These need to be understood before they’re implemented. The business is holistic and not just a cost centre. The question that should be answered first and foremost is, will it be profitable and build value. Secondly the ability for producers to innovate demands the involvement of the service industry. Which is a costly proposition if bp is going to be doing the same innovative discovery 700 individual times which is what this structure creates. It will also provide them with that same innovative discovery each and every other year from then on. Learning and relearning over and over again whether they were ever successful or not. This last point sets this entire article into the fake news category. When innovations come about on their first try or first iteration we see that they’re either not innovations, bp’s story is bunk, and quickly realize that the six people interviewed in the McKinsey article are all from bp's senior management. 

My point is that innovative ideas are usually right upon the first iteration about 1% of the time. A very large number of them fail outright. Without the time and effort necessary to prove the concept and its implementation they’re not worth anything. These therefore have to be organizationally constrained and controlled as is done in the Preliminary Specification. Having unconstrained, unstructured and disorganized people running around innovating, because they can, is a recipe for organizational disaster and runaway, unconstrained costs. Which may be the point that bp is attempting to prove. After all, I’m not speaking Martian here. This entire article is ripe with things that you would not do in an organization. Agile has been effective in some software developments but is being interpreted as a revisit of kindergarten in many implementations. It will never be a one size fits all organizational method. As this series denotes, I am chronicling the capitulation of leadership in the industry. Bp at the beginning of the article admits of upstream performance related issues. Instead of addressing those and architecting the appropriate solution at the appropriate levels it appears to me they are passing the issue down to those on the ground. Giving them the unfettered authority and responsibility to tweak the valves and potentially but unknowingly gumming up the works. And when all hell breaks loose, which the bureaucrats are fully well aware of, authored, are solely responsible and accountable for. The wholesale destruction that is already baked in and will be occuring in the very near future. They’ll have their “agile methodology” and their staff as the excuse to blame as their viable scapegoat for the failure they’ve orchestrated these past four decades in oil and gas. 

They’ll also have their absolute proof they’ll need to prove that the Preliminary Specification would never work. This being the parting shot for the bureaucrats to make their exit as life for them has become incomprehensibly untenable and they knew all along that People, Ideas & Objects, our user community and service providers would be a failure. And they were therefore right not to choose it. What we’re reading in this article has zero similarity to the Preliminary Specification, our user community and service providers. Ours is constructive, focused on profitability, theirs is clearly destructive. Lastly if our suspicions are correct regarding the bloating of accounts payable and to a lesser extent accounts receivable being symptomatic of the producers cannibalizing their partners net cash proceeds from their properties. In order to pay the massive losses on their profit hedging, as we call them. They are actively breaking down the legal framework of the industry and trust between the producers themselves. So yes its their staff’s incompetence that caused the destruction to bp and the Preliminary Specification would never have resolved that. For bureaucrats to be getting out now is maybe their best opportunity and don’t be surprised if we see this. It’s my opinion that producer bureaucrats contriving situations such as what McKinsey has documented in this article is shameful. We’ve established their pedigree of bureaucratic excuses, blaming and viable scapegoats being generated over the last decade. Never had they been designed so sinisterly and tragically against the people who have little choice or say in the matter. The destruction of the financial, operational and political frameworks was complete long ago. They’re actively looking to break down the legal framework of the partnerships that are a foundational concept of the industry and how it manages risk. Eroding the trust between parties and driving the final possibly fatal blow into any remaining trust they may have had with the people who continued to believe in them. 

On the other hand we have no shortage of work to do. Much needs to be done in the next few years. The Preliminary Specification needs to be built. The engineering and geological explicit knowledge needs to be captured as Intellectual Property and developed. New oil and gas firms need to be formed, capitalized and organized. Assets need to be transferred to these new producers in innovative, strategic and tactical ways. In this process we’ll all be helping the current producers to travel faster down their chosen journey to clean energy by disposing of dirty oil. This transition to the Preliminary Specification is something that must be done to deal with the financial difficulties the industry is plagued with from the current administration. This also needs to be done as preparation for the future. And to learn from the experience of this transition as we’ll be faced repeatedly with situations that share this same scope and scale of change in the near future of this business. We’ll therefore be somewhat prepared and experienced in challenges of this nature. Please review our Production Rights to see how everyone can participate in making this new oil and gas industry happen. An industry where it will be less important who you know, but what you know and what you're capable of delivering, what the value proposition is that you’re offering?

Those interested in joining our user community are People, Ideas & Objects priority and focus. The Preliminary Specification, our user community and their service provider organizations 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, everywhere and always. In addition, our software organizes the Intellectual Property of the exploration and production processes owned by the engineers and geologists. Enabling them to monetize their IP for a new oil & gas industry to begin with a means to be dynamic, innovative and performance oriented. Providing a new investment opportunity for those who see a bright future in the industry. A place where their administrative, accounting, exploration and production can be handled for the 21st century. People, Ideas & Objects have joined GETTR and can be reached there. Anyone can contact me at 713-965-6720 in Houston or 587-735-2302 in Calgary, or email me here. 

Leadership Capitulation, Part I

 We’re now past Thanksgiving and into the holiday season. That is for the bureaucrats, those we’ve identified as the officers and directors of the producer firms. This is the time when nothing to the power of two is undertaken. Unlike the time where nothing is ever done while they're in attendance. Returning in mid-January to what will be a litany of creative excuses and new viable scapegoats they’ll put forward. I thought I’d ask some questions for bureaucrats to contemplate and consider while they're off the office couch and on the recliner at their villa. Questions that are focused on the business of the oil and gas industry. Giving them time to research and understand the subtleties of these questions. Other than that, on behalf of all those that have experienced some form of financial, career or business destruction at the hands of these fools, we wish them a miserable Holiday Season for what they’ve showered across the oil and gas economy. 

Comfortable isn’t the word for how these people have lived. Spending money as the sole, distinct competitive advantage is taxing, almost as taxing as preparing specious financial statements or putting investors cash in the bank. Operating a profitable business from the “real” perspective” is a different level of effort and understanding than what these bureaucrats are capable of. They’ve had the Preliminary Specification in front of them since August 2012 and I’ve never received a call from them to discuss the finer details of it or to express an interest in it. Don’t get me wrong, I get lots of calls from bureaucrats. And they’re very active with respect to making sure People, Ideas & Objects, our user community and service providers never succeed. Maybe that’s where all their time is consumed and therefore they have no time for the oil and gas business? What does the future hold for the bureaucratic world of oil and gas?

Let's start out with some questions regarding the global oil markets. How come OPEC+ are not concerned with a potential rise of North American producers' production profile? They’re fully aware of North America’s historical and chronic overproduction, or unprofitable production as we call it. How come OPEC+ is not concerned with the threat that the U.S. might withhold military support if they don’t act in their best interests by raising production as requested? Do they now hold an equally valid threat that any lack of U.S. military support would just precipitate their move to Russian or Chinese military support? Therefore who’s more dependent on whom? The point that OPEC+ understands is that North American producers have never been profitable in the real sense. Don’t know how to be profitable. Don’t have a culture that understands or supports profitability. And do not have the financial resources, framework or capital structure to do anything about their business as it stands today. These bureaucrats have sailed off to clean energy and consistently resisted the calls to act by their investors for the past six years. They’re persistent and obstinate about doing nothing to deal with their lack of performance in comparison to what the competitive capital markets provide. What they've done is allowed People, Ideas & Objects to define why it’s necessary for producers to achieve real profitability everywhere and always. Everyone in oil and gas, the service and tertiary industries are fully aware of what the need for real producer profitability is and why it’s a necessary ingredient for a prosperous North America oil and gas economy. 

Without profits eventually everything just grinds to nothing. Careers are destroyed with the inability to advance in the industry other than through the bureaucratic arts. The excitement of doing things and being part of the team that did that is gone as each year you're faced with doing more with less budget and the ever increasing reality of being downsized. Businesses throughout this economy look to scavenge money and deal with angry investors who are displeased with the performance being displayed. Nothing is happening and nothing can happen because the money that is needed is not being earned to make it happen. Everything just slowly dies off, or in the very good years at best levels off. And this is the case with the greater oil and gas economy in North America. Not because oil and gas has lost its value to society but because industry leadership has lost its way as to its focus and objectives. “Building balance sheets” and “putting cash in the ground” is still not accepted as good corporate governance or objectives that are worthy for any organization to be involved in. If you were in business and your competition started mouthing these objectives you’d just snicker and forget about that wasted space. Which is where oil and gas is today. 

Leadership capitulation is a twisted opportunity being sought by our good friends the bureaucrats. I’ve mentioned many times that historically when leadership finds themselves in times of untenable situations they’ll just exit enmass and move on to other industries. The first time this happened was during the great depression. Oil and gas bureaucrats have now done this with the special twist that they think they’re taking the producer firms oil and gas revenues with them. They stated unequivocally that they could not make money in shale. Just as they couldn’t make any money in any of the other types of oil and gas businesses that they had previously rushed into and overinvested in. Conventional, heavy oil, offshore etc were all summarily written off to pursue shale as the shiny bright object that would make everyone so much money. Except there was no plan or understanding of how the business would work beyond the “building of balance sheets” and “putting cash in the ground.” Oil and gas was never able to make any money under their administration as even they admitted this past year. Therefore it was on to clean energy without any plans or strategies, any cash, competitive advantages, history, capacities or capabilities. But trust them that’s where the money is. The fact that no one outside of massive government subsidies has been able to generate any sustainable economic activity is not lost on them. The one thing they do think they have is the oil and gas revenues that investors had invested in good faith in the oil and gas business. Bureaucrats believe the fruits of those investments will be redirected to “support” these new clean businesses is not, trust me, ever going to happen. 

It is my opinion that in this process of moving to clean energy they’ve tendered their resignations in the oil and gas upstream. They no longer have their hearts and minds in the oil and gas business and therefore they’re on to their clean energy frontiers. And the oil and gas revenues will be staying with the producer firm that they’re no longer part of. If they believe in clean energy then they’ll be better off solving the difficult technical challenges of making it a commercial enterprise. If they’re feeling the sting of an empty stomach, angry spouses and bankers and a bank account that drains exponentially faster than it ever grew. These are the things that focus the minds of the entrepreneur that allow them to undertake the miracles they have to create every hour of every day. Our good friends, the bureaucrats will never even create one miracle if they have oil and gas revenues that permit their lifestyle to continue in the comfort they used to know.

The lunacy of the bureaucrats is best described in this action of moving on to the next bright shiny object. Something they’ve done for the past four decades. These movements were all precipitated by the need for “more” of whatever was selling on the street. In the direct question category we have the following. Why did bureaucrats always walk away from their non-performing assets, move on to the “new frontier” and never seek to rehabilitate the financial performance of those assets that were not performing? How would a conventional oil and gas property be performing today? With much lower capital costs, expended decades ago there would be few capital costs left to deplete. The production doesn’t decline as quickly as shale and although lower in terms of production, may continue for many decades. The cost to maintain it is miniscule. Is it these properties that are taxing producer cash accounts? Is it these properties that are heavily leveraged? Is it these properties that are unprofitable in the “real” sense of profitability? Why is it that bureaucrats never undertake to do the hard work of figuring out how to make money? Instead, it’s on to clean energy and the oil and gas business, including shale, is finished, they said. Even though the commodity sold presents a life and death struggle if consumers were forced to go without! What business are they in? The most valuable commodity to the North American economy and they have not made any money at it, admit they can’t make any money at it and have decided to saunter off the stage! These are the people who have proven track records? These are the people we want to run the producers? Would anyone find this culture of failure acceptable? In April of 2020 when oil prices fell to negative $40 levels there was no clearer indication of the need for remedial action to fix the chronic overproduction that has been evident each and every year from at least July 1986. It’s important to note that the Preliminary Specification has been available to resolve these cultural and overproduction issues since August 2012 and I can assure you they were all well aware of it. Why was and has nothing been done? If leadership capitulation and the taking of oil and gas revenues to move to a business with a history of zero performance is their idea of how to operate the North American based oil and gas economy, is that considered a good idea? 

On the other hand we have no shortage of work to do. Much needs to be done in the next few years. The Preliminary Specification needs to be built. The engineering and geological explicit knowledge needs to be captured as Intellectual Property and developed. New oil and gas firms need to be formed, capitalized and organized. Assets need to be transferred to these new producers in innovative, strategic and tactical ways. In this process we’ll all be helping the current producers to travel faster down their chosen journey to clean energy by disposing of dirty oil. This transition to the Preliminary Specification is something that must be done to deal with the financial difficulties the industry is plagued with from the current administration. This also needs to be done as preparation for the future. And to learn from the experience of this transition as we’ll be faced repeatedly with situations that share this same scope and scale of change in the near future of this business. We’ll therefore be somewhat prepared and experienced in challenges of this nature. Please review our Production Rights to see how everyone can participate in making this new oil and gas industry happen. An industry where it will be less important who you know, but what you know and what you're capable of delivering, what the value proposition is that you’re offering?

Those interested in joining our user community are People, Ideas & Objects priority and focus. The Preliminary Specification, our user community and their service provider organizations 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, everywhere and always. In addition, our software organizes the Intellectual Property of the exploration and production processes owned by the engineers and geologists. Enabling them to monetize their IP for a new oil & gas industry to begin with a means to be dynamic, innovative and performance oriented. Providing a new investment opportunity for those who see a bright future in the industry. A place where their administrative, accounting, exploration and production can be handled for the 21st century. People, Ideas & Objects have joined GETTR and can be reached there. Anyone can contact me at 713-965-6720 in Houston or 587-735-2302 in Calgary, or email me here. 

Cannibals Do What Cannibals Do

 People, Ideas & Objects have been harping about cash and working capital throughout our time discussing the oil and gas producer bureaucrats mismanagement. Their solution has always been to have investors arrive annually with new funds for their capital budgets. Turning spending into their most prized competitive advantage. This was carried on for decades and became a cultural expectation and “what we do around here.” As a result the dependence on reliable outside capital sources eliminated the need to a) run a profitable operation and b) manage cash. Eventually what has happened is the principle of “building balance sheets” and “putting cash in the ground” demanded that accounting assume four fallacies that conspired to make producers wholly dependent on these outside sources of annual capital infusions for their existence. What would and should have been obviously a circuitous and unsustainable method of non-commercial production and operation remained unnoticed. Until the outside capital sources were removed. Even today bureaucrats feign obliviousness to the reason why their cash vaporizes. Or are they justifying this disappearance on their objective to just “put cash in the ground?” Culture is the reason that People, Ideas & Objects are rebuilding the industry brick by brick, and stick by stick. To eliminate this destructive culture in any other way is next to impossible. 

The four fallacies consist of the price taker assumption, capitalization policies, extended depletion schedules based on petroleum reserves and the objective of never reporting a bad quarter. Taking these one at a time, the price taker assumption is that markets are magically mythical beings that are able to take all of the production that is provided, no matter what. The consequences of doing so are irrelevant in terms of the producer's specific production profile, and the head in the sand opinion that there are no consequences. In our White Paper we noted the following effect of this attitude and assumption.

Producing below the breakeven point is the point where unprofitability begins. Producing below the breakeven point for one producer, in an industry who’s commodities are price makers, will have the effect where the price of the commodities will be dropped below the breakeven price for all producers. When all producers continue to produce below the breakeven price for four decades you have an exhaustion of the value from the industry on an annual and wholesale basis. Times were only “good” when investors were willing.

These four fallacies led to the myth making machine coming up with an accounting concept of pure wizardry. Producer bureaucrats were always able to maintain production, profitably, in an environment of declining commodity prices. Who remembers when oil was dropping from >$90 in 2013 to $36 in 2016. That each decline was matched by the declaration of the producer bureaucrats that the threshold of profitability was then miraculously $10 lower than their last declaration of profitability. The accounting innovation that enabled this is unknown to me and I’m still looking for it. What I’m seemingly unable to comprehend is how they’re able to revise historical cost accounting that saw producers' costs of $80 suddenly become $20 in three years time. 

What we’ve discovered so far is that these are not costs as we normally understand accounting costs to be. They’re “recycle costs,” the term used in the industry. They are a result of polling the service industry representatives as to what the cost to drill and frac would be if they slashed their prices to the bare minimum in a depressed $36 oil price market. The fact that the cost of 100% of their production was historical was not relevant to this conversation. You’ll recall none of the financial statements contain these specious profit quotations, these recycle cost quotes were only uttered to the press by the producers CEO’s. To be forgotten or denied when asked about them later. The Preliminary Specification was published in August 2012 and contains the decentralized production models Price Maker Strategy. These concepts were known throughout this period. Maybe the Internet didn’t have the ability to reach the rarified air of the bureaucracy at that time? Or, why do anything when you can just have investors inject the capital each year to keep the party going? 

The second aspect of the vanishing cash is the fact that as many costs as possible are capitalized to property, plant and equipment or “building balance sheets.” Interest and overhead have become extreme in terms of their total costs that are attached to these capital assets. This appears to be an inert action that has no consequences to bureaucrats who have no understanding of the follow on repercussions of their actions. The immediate impact is that producers claim overreported profitability when most of the costs are deferred to subsequent periods that extend beyond decades. And as we’ve noted, overreported profits lead to overinvestment by investors seeking to gain access to those profits which eventually leads to overinvestment that brings about the overproduction. When the commodity prices are price makers then chronic overproduction leads to collapsed commodity prices and the destruction of value. This didn’t need to be documented in the Preliminary Specification as it's a basic business principle that extends back at least one century. 

The third and fourth point in documenting our accounting based cash crash of the North American producers. Works hand in hand with the second item of overcapitalization and fourth of never recognizing a bad quarter. This is the extended depletion schedules based on reserve life indexes. A principle of accounting is to match the costs to their revenues. To do so on an accurate and timely basis. These have been tossed in the bin in oil and gas. For example our sample of producers in 2020 depleted their capital assets over a simple arithmetic basis of exactly 4.0 years. The factor they’re using for 2021 is 9.75 years as of the third quarter. What you do is forget about consistency and just plug in a number for depletion which will ensure that profitability is reported. People, Ideas & Objects believe that it would be the most competitive producer that had depleted the greatest amount of their capital assets. Contrary to the build bigger, better, beautiful, balance sheets principle. A producer should look to compete in the North American market for capital. Returning capital over a ten year period is inconsistent with the types of returns that other industries are providing investors with. Lastly it is our assumption that a capital intensive industry would have large components of capital being passed to the consumer in the prices being charged. 

The fourth fallacy is that accounting is a fixed determination of profitability is the myth that bureaucrats will hold dear to their last dying days. That the variance of how profits are reported can be distorted is not something they’ll accept as an argument or news to them. This is the engineering and geological science based understanding of profits. Profits are profits. If the company has been reporting profits they are profitable from the accounting basis and the audit has verified those profits. That profitability is subjective and a perspective that can be flexible is not understood. When they demand the CFO to magically never report a bad, bad is defined as a loss, quarter. They’re assuming their CFO is in financial control of the firm to ensure that profitability will come about. The CFO understands the demand to be flexible. Besides, in the bureaucrats' minds the only thing of value are petroleum reserves because they produce them profitably. If you interfere with that you're considered a fool and will be ostracised. Trust me on this point. 

Cash drainage is systemic, chronic and unavoidable in the bureaucratic oil and gas producers. These four methods conspire to destroy the bank balance every day the producers exist. Simple cash management would have identified the situation was untenable long ago. Why this was not the case is the question I have, especially in light of the points being discussed here throughout this blog and the existence of the Preliminary Specification as the solution. This is therefore how the cash disappears. 

• Producer costs are incurred in the form of capital, royalties, operations and overhead which include interest. 
• Other than royalties and operations all other categories are capitalized. 
• Large percentages of overhead.
• Tangible and intangible assets are recorded in an effort to emulate the value of the producer's petroleum reserves as determined by the independent reserve estimate. Reserves are worth nothing if they can’t produce “real” profitability.
• Oil and gas commodities are price makers. Over reported profits have led to overinvestment which enabled over production to collapse prices below the breakeven price. This began as a result of the late 1970s SEC implementation of full cost accounting and manifested itself initially in the 1986 oil price collapse.
• The cash returned to the producer was diminished in the past four decades due to overproduction dropping the commodity price below the breakeven level for all producers and everywhere. By how much is unknown. Cash shortfalls were made up by annual investor infusions.
• Producers are recording minimal percentages of overhead and interest in the current month. These therefore are the only costs, outside of depletion, being returned to producers in the form of cash from the sales of the commodities. Depletion emulates reserves life in what is hoped and understood to be a growing variable. And therefore the reserves life basis does not compete for capital in the North American capital markets.
• Cash goes in, sits for a decade or two in property, plant and equipment, where it is soon joined with the next year's investors' cash and these will grow old together before they’re ever passed on to the consumer and recognized in the price of the commodity. Finally converted to the cash they were when they were once invested, or as we’ve been told all these years of “putting cash in the ground.” Turning over the cash invested on a multi-decade basis in 2021, or at any time is ludicrous and yes, insane. 
• If accounting seeks to match costs with revenues. Oil and gas is the reason this principle was discovered and realized in terms of its value. 
• Oil and gas bureaucrats seek to match revenues with profits. Match their capital assets with the amount of their petroleum reserves. It didn’t matter if the price of the commodities were too low to produce real profits, they could report profitability by deferring more costs by “putting more cash in the ground” to “build the balance sheet” and increase their profitability. Therefore we should have been listening to them. 

Bureaucrats took this situation to extremes in the more recent two quarters of 2021. We noted they were, what we believed to be, harvesting their cash in order to pay the commitments on their hedging contracts. However at the same time their working capital fell to critically low levels in the third quarter, a trend that began in 2015 with the exit of their investors and accelerated in the second quarter of 2021 when the realized losses from hedging became an issue. We’ve published that our suspicion is these hedging losses are now being attempted to be financed by holding on to the shares of their working interest partners production proceeds. We don’t know if that is the case however accounts payable and receivable in the industry are ballooning to untold heights. There is not enough field activity to support this level of accounts payable debt being incurred and it is systemic throughout our producer sample. We noted that Conoco does not have any hedging activity and yet their accounts were ballooning too. And I questioned if Conoco were the only producer that was paying their debts what would that provide them? The fact of the matter is that there’s no other source of cash available to them. Hedging is incurring substantial losses and very rapidly. Just under $17 billion for our sample of producers that’s been incurred for just the second and third quarters. 

Bureaucrats have lost control of the operational, financial and political frameworks as we noted in last Friday's post. Today in the process of cannibalizing one anothers production proceeds they’re actively breaking down the legal framework of the industry. When investors, banks and the service industry have all been betrayed, that leaves just the other producers doesn’t it. Will investors be stepping up to provide the financial resources to bail out the bureaucrats? How about the banks?

While bureaucrats show their persistence and diligence in awaiting the inevitable return of their investors and bankers. It’s important to note the efforts they’ve taken in these past six years since their investors began their exit. Please note they left as a result of dissatisfaction with the performance and expected action would be taken to correct it. What’s happened in those six years is absolutely nothing, the same as the past four decades that established such a strong non-performant culture. Although not part of our sample of producer firms. A company that is the largest natural gas producer in the U.S., EQT has the enviable position of proving most of what I’ve claimed in these last two blog posts. For three quarters of the 2021 fiscal year they have negative revenue of $775 million. That’s correct negative revenue and losses of $2.9 billion. Working capital was negative $3.89 billion up or down, I don’t know, from 12/2020 of negative $547 million. Non-GAAP reporting was $1.115 billion in earnings! This is unfortunate and a tragedy but we know the score, muddle along.

On the other hand we have no shortage of work to do. Much needs to be done in the next few years. The Preliminary Specification needs to be built. The engineering and geological explicit knowledge needs to be captured as Intellectual Property and developed. New oil and gas firms need to be formed, capitalized and organized. Assets need to be transferred to these new producers in innovative, strategic and tactical ways. In this process we’ll all be helping the current producers to travel faster down their chosen journey to clean energy by disposing of dirty oil. This transition to the Preliminary Specification is something that must be done to deal with the financial difficulties the industry is plagued with from the current administration. This also needs to be done as preparation for the future. And to learn from the experience of this transition as we’ll be faced repeatedly with situations that share this same scope and scale of change in the near future of this business. We’ll therefore be somewhat prepared and experienced in challenges of this nature. Please review our Production Rights to see how everyone can participate in making this new oil and gas industry happen. An industry where it will be less important who you know, but what you know and what you're capable of delivering, what the value proposition is that you’re offering?

Those interested in joining our user community are People, Ideas & Objects priority and focus. The Preliminary Specification, our user community and their service provider organizations 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, everywhere and always. In addition, our software organizes the Intellectual Property of the exploration and production processes owned by the engineers and geologists. Enabling them to monetize their IP for a new oil & gas industry to begin with a means to be dynamic, innovative and performance oriented. Providing a new investment opportunity for those who see a bright future in the industry. A place where their administrative, accounting, exploration and production can be handled for the 21st century. People, Ideas & Objects have joined GETTR and can be reached there. Anyone can contact me at 713-965-6720 in Houston or 587-735-2302 in Calgary, or email me here. 

Our Price Maker Strategy, the Brandon Version

 “Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.”

Bureaucrats consolidation strategy has attracted the Brandon regime's allegation of “mounting evidence of anti-consumer behavior by oil-and-gas companies” which caused high gasoline prices. Who would have thought that oil and gas producers would’ve been used as the football in any and all situations where politics were involved? The accusation that People, Ideas & Objects Preliminary Specifications decentralized production models Price Maker Strategy was collusion was something that bureaucrats have accused us of, and we've had to listen to since the first time it was mentioned here on November 11, 2008. The first thing we should do today is pull down the economic definition of “price maker” from Investopedia. 

The price maker is a profit-maximizer because it will increase output only as long as its marginal revenue is greater than its marginal cost. In other words, as long as it is producing a profit.

The point of this argument is of particular interest in today’s oil and gas industry. Shale has transformed the industry from one of scarcity of the commodity to one of abundance in both reserves and deliverability. The ability to over produce, or to produce unprofitably as we’ve described it, by any producer is well established and fully represented in the financial disaster that is oil and gas. In the hands of these producer bureaucrats, shale is a nuclear weapon with a hair trigger. Bureaucrats have no understanding of markets other than they are magical and mythical. Markets will absorb any and all production that producers provide until refiners ultimately say no more. That is what amounts to their production discipline. There is only the race for “more” as the objective that mimics the consumption of drug addicts. 

Production discipline is gained in the Preliminary Specification through the fact producers need to compete for capital in North American capital markets. This demands they produce “real” profits and return those to their shareholders in a competitive manner to all other industries. Profitable operations also assume a healthy and prosperous oil & gas, service and tertiary industries everywhere and always. This demands the deliberate elimination of the boom / bust cycle that producer bureaucrats hide behind and have so willingly accepted as fact. Why have they accepted this destruction, asking for a friend? Through our user community and their service providers, all of the costs of the producer become variable, based on production. Minor exceptions aside such as surface rights rentals. Therefore when a property is reported as unprofitable it can be shut-in and the producer firm will maximize profits by no longer diluting their profitable properties with production from unprofitable properties. Only the Preliminary Specification will provide the necessary standard, objective, actual and factual financial statements at the property level. 

Bureaucrats would rather run the industry into tatters and destroy everything in their wake to ensure that they’re never accused of collusion. Only to have the Biden regime set the Federal Trade Commission to investigate industry “anti-consumer behavior” to alleviate his administration's responsibility in rising gasoline prices. The only thing I can suggest the producer bureaucrats should do is enjoy the hypocrisy of the situation. The same hypocrisy they’ve been selling regarding their management of the industry. According to them it’s always been someone else’s fault. Coming up with excuses that tested the depths of people’s intelligence. And used all of their creativity in generating the viable scapegoat of the day as to why the situation was something they couldn’t do anything about. Let’s also recall the fancy systems they devised in order to better understand the “market” by knowing what the world wide inventory of oil was on any given day. By analyzing the floating roofs of storage tanks the world over, through satellite imagery, knowing the time of day and the size of the shadow cast on the tank they could accurately predict the amount of oil in the tank. Aggregating the storage globally they’d come up with a storage number. Recall the futility of their information when they were no doubt pouring over this data while the oil price “suddenly” and “unexpectedly” headed to negative $40 in April 2020 and the shock they must have realized at that point! 

Markets use prices to pass all the necessary information on to producers and consumers that they need to know to make intelligent decisions. If producers are able to produce a profit at that price they’ll produce, otherwise they’ll shut-in production. The benefits of doing so are logical, common sense and consequential. The producers optimize profitability by no longer diluting it with losses from other properties. Reserves will be saved for the day when they can be produced profitably. Those reserves will not have to carry the additional costs of prior production losses that would therefore need to be recovered in the future by the remaining reserves. Commodity markets would find their marginal prices that were needed for profitable production everywhere and always. By keeping their commodities as reserves, it is a form of zero cost storage by avoiding production and storage costs. And on what planet would making independent business decisions, at the property level, based on detailed actual, factual, standard and objective accounting to determine profitability or loss be collusion? These points have been ignored in the industry since November 2008 in order to achieve… 

It is the daily headlines that drive producer bureaucrats. Whether it's the climate or the prevailing political winds they’ll go with the flow. Leadership is their forte’. When it comes to the business of the oil and gas business however it’s “muddle through.” I would like to ask a simple question. What the hell are we doing? I’m reminded of a particular quote that I found relevant to today’s situation. British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain was most famous for his “Peace for our time” quote and flaunting his “agreement” containing Hitler's signature. Subsequently when his management of the situation became World War II he found the hostile attacks coming from within his own party. From Winston S. Churchill, The Gathering Storm (The Second World War, Book 1)

From the benches behind the Government Mr. Amery quoted, amid ringing cheers, Cromwell's imperious words to the Long Parliament: “You have sat too long here for any good you have been doing. Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go!" These were terrible words, coming from a friend and colleague of many years, a fellow Birmingham Member, and a Privy Counsellor of distinction and experience. p. 593

How much longer do we have to suffer this destruction under such incompetence? They have outlived their uselessness. Who is it that these bureaucrats will listen to? In the name of God, just go! A culture of bureaucratic economic denial is not what is needed at any time and it is no longer acceptable. High cost North American overproduction, or unprofitable production as we describe it, became a global issue that demanded remedial action by these producers in July 1986. That’s when we’ve been able to document the issue was raised globally. Over thirty five years ago and the reason I began working on this issue in 1991. Shale has fundamentally changed the business and nothing has been done to make the business capable of dealing with this new dynamic. Natural gas prices collapsed in 2009. Oil prices collapsed in 2014. Investors began their exit in 2015. Banks began theirs in 2019. The industry collectively has lost control of the operational, financial and political frameworks. This is something People, Ideas & Objects have argued here for many years. Otherwise, producers will just muddle through.

On the other hand we have no shortage of work to do. Much needs to be done in the next few years. The Preliminary Specification needs to be built. The engineering and geological explicit knowledge needs to be captured as Intellectual Property and developed. New oil and gas firms need to be formed, capitalized and organized. Assets need to be transferred to these new producers in innovative, strategic and tactical ways. In this process we’ll all be helping the current producers to travel faster down their chosen journey to clean energy by disposing of dirty oil. This transition to the Preliminary Specification is something that must be done to deal with the financial difficulties the industry is plagued with from the current administration. This also needs to be done as preparation for the future. And to learn from the experience of this transition as we’ll be faced repeatedly with situations that share this same scope and scale of change in the near future of this business. We’ll therefore be somewhat prepared and experienced in challenges of this nature. Please review our Production Rights to see how everyone can participate in making this new oil and gas industry happen. An industry where it will be less important who you know, but what you know and what you're capable of delivering, what the value proposition is that you’re offering?

Those interested in joining our user community are People, Ideas & Objects priority and focus. The Preliminary Specification, our user community and their service provider organizations 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, everywhere and always. In addition, our software organizes the Intellectual Property of the exploration and production processes owned by the engineers and geologists. Enabling them to monetize their IP for a new oil & gas industry to begin with a means to be dynamic, innovative and performance oriented. Providing a new investment opportunity for those who see a bright future in the industry. A place where their administrative, accounting, exploration and production can be handled for the 21st century. People, Ideas & Objects have joined GETTR and can be reached there. Anyone can contact me at 713-965-6720 in Houston or 587-735-2302 in Calgary, or email me here. 

Everyone in the Pool!

 A few issues have come about in the user community that need to be discussed in the broader community of the oil and gas industry. For those people who may be considering joining the user community and have questions of their own. These issues involve two areas of concern and their impact on the dynamic nature of the user community and hence the overall oil and gas industry. The user community in the Preliminary Specification is being seen as the leader in how the industry will evolve and manage change on a day to day, and long term basis. It is also seen as the leader of how the big issues such as overproduction can be resolved through solutions such as the Preliminary Specifications decentralized production models price maker strategy. The user community members are the ones that have the sole ability to make changes to the Intellectual Property making up the software specifications. They’re the ones who’ll have the hands on knowledge and experience of managing their process across the industry in their service provider organization. They’re the only people who our software developers will and can take their input from. Therefore in a dynamic and changing environment such as our user community and the software we are delivering to industry. Where specialization and the division of labor, innovation, change, automation of the business process, issue identification and resolution are part of their day to day activities. It’s not difficult to see that the scope and scale of their work might decrease over time as a result of their own efforts to ensure producers maintain their optimal profitability. 

Efficiency and effectiveness to increase the productivity of the administrative and accounting of oil and gas, to ensure the oil and gas industries short, mid and long term profitability is the objective we’re all working towards in this People, Ideas & Objects initiative. The results mentioned are somewhat counterproductive and counterintuitive to the best interests of the user community and those they employ in their service provider organizations. Which is true, so how is this resolved? I’m not suggesting the resolution here. That will be for the user community to determine themselves and in their own way. They’ll be far better equipped to understand and resolve their issues than any other individual. I am only raising the issue for discussion as I would find that a recreation of the bureaucracy in a milder form would not be acceptable. It is the purpose of a high performing community and its organizations to ensure that their overall objectives are maintained and continue to be their primary focus. 

These are classic issues that we’ve been faced with throughout the last number of generations. The speed in which society has changed has raised questions of how many jobs will be lost to computers or robots. Or worse we’ll become drones at their beck and call. We can look back in retrospect and see that the issue isn’t the quantity of jobs or quality of them. We’ve populated the earth substantially in the past few generations where poverty and hunger have declined precipitously. The quantity of jobs in the western world is abundant however it is also the increase in the quality of those jobs. These innovations have generally freed us from the menial work that need not occupy our day to day. And although today’s producer bureaucrats seek to continue to have us print out the single data element of interest and ceremonially walk it across the building so that others can key that information into their system. There is a lot of redundancy in oil and gas administration and accounting. And the issue is more prevalent today as the change dynamics being introduced by software are beginning to push the envelope of possibilities and increase the concern of how it will affect people's lives. 

There is an investment being made by those in our user community that began many years ago with their commitments to their chosen profession, their education and then the oil and gas industry. To now commit the required level to the user community is being seen as a serious mid-career change. First I’m glad that people are seeing it this way, second they are expressing the risk associated with the building of this business opportunity, particularly in the service provider operation that will be the substantial part of their future revenue of each of the user community members. There are no guarantees in life and even fewer that exist in the People, Ideas & Objects user community. I would be dishonest to suggest otherwise. If living by your wits is not part of your DNA then it will be difficult for you to prosper here. A dynamic change oriented environment doesn’t come about through the implementation of bureaucrats. 

The process of specialization and division of labor is a particularly valuable Organizational Construct that has been adopted in the Preliminary Specification. The simplicity of the theory's implementation is the means in which we achieve the dynamic nature of the user community. The simple filling of gaps is that process. As time passes society evolves in the way that it determines is best. Over time gaps between the offerings of two firms begin to be seen by entrepreneurs and are then filled through some innovative new product or service offering. (People, Ideas & Objects see a gap between the oil and gas industry and the tier 1 ERP providers such as Oracle. The inability to communicate creates this gap and it has only broadened.) Those that fill the gaps are establishing themselves a new business that they’re able to make viable as a result of the wits they’re endowed with. This is the process that we’ll be relying upon to maintain the user community and the overall objective of ensuring we provide the most profitable means of oil and gas operations. Gap filling will be part of the day to day process management of the user community member as the principles involved in their service provider organizations. Producers have to only look to the user community to interact with in terms of having their software and services provided, enhanced and issues resolved. Who is it that they talk to today to have these taken care of? As time passes anyone in the industry may see new gaps forming and filling the gap is part of the role that we are depending upon our user community members to undertake. They, and only they, have the access to the People, Ideas & Objects developers to make the changes to the software and are the principles in the service provider organizations that deliver the software and services to the industry.

The other issue that’s been raised is that no one can accurately predict what will happen. If a user community member is managing a process that is heavily influenced by government regulations then one day those regulations are repealed then their entire investment is lost. The people they employ in the service provider are potentially lost. And that capability of those individuals is no longer available to the producer firms. This could also occur purely out of the drive for efficiency. This is an investment that I would suggest can’t be left to atrophy. In an environment where Intellectual Property is a distinct competitive advantage and the overall value that is delivered to the producers. The individual hit to the user community member is of course devastating. The concern that I have is the influence this has on the risk profile and orientation of the user community members and their service providers staff. This will cause them to look at any opportunities differently and stay silent on anything that may be detrimental to them. A contrary point of view of what we are fostering of achieving the most profitable means of oil and gas operations. 

Conceptually there are 3,000 user community members needed for the development of the Preliminary Specification. One for each of the major processes under management by the application modules. These include the Oracle Cloud ERP modules or elements of both. Therefore there are approximately the same number of service providers. We are replacing the administrative and accounting of the producers and reallocating that work to the service providers. The scope and scale of these service provider operations is therefore of substantial revenue in terms of what it is designed to replace. The amount is unknown because the costs are not broken down in financial statements. The amount of overhead allowances, capitalization and other aspects of those reported costs would need to be considered. We can all however see it’s not small. How the service provider organizations are managed is upto the user community member. For example where they’re located, are they working from home etc. We see the user community members as part-time and interacting with the 600 developers needed for this initiative. Therefore approximately 20% of their time is spent with developers. People, Ideas & Objects pay a fee for the title to the Intellectual Property they develop iteratively off the Preliminary Specification and assume that fee covers all of the costs associated with the user community member to do their job. The service providers generate their revenue from the fees they’ll charge the producers for the software and services they’ll deliver. For example the fee to determine elements of the production allocation process. These fees will be charged to the Joint Operating Committees, mostly, and will be variable based on profitable production. 

The question therefore comes about who is the net benefactor of the drive for enhanced profitability of the producers and oil and gas industry? Is it in their best interests to have these communities looking to replicate the bureaucratic process of self-serving motivations that have so comprehensively destroyed the industry today? Or, should it be the user community's understanding of the larger role they take in the industry? That the destruction of real profitability by the current bureaucracy circumvents the value generated by not only producers but all those associated in the service and tertiary industries. The user community members role is to be the score keepers and to be the objective, accountable and responsible to all of the stakeholders that depend on the most profitable means of oil and gas operations. And therefore, ensure that those user community members and the investments that have been made in their service providers are kept whole during times of any transitions from regulatory or efficiency changes. Where they’re able to turn to the community at large and seek out new gaps to fill or new regulatory requirements in the software and services that are needed. The funding for these transitions may be funded by the user community members making small monthly contributions to that fund. And conversely once the service providers are established a separate and much larger fund for that purpose. Revenue insurance for lack of a better term. This however does not mitigate in any way the investment of time, energy and money that the user community member will have to make in order to establish their service provider organization. As the title of this post denotes, the water’s warm, and everyone in the pool!

This is a democratic process where the end user has the say. This is not a top down dictation of the way it must be or what the outcome will be. There are no guarantees and there are nothing but risks as we pass into this future. The framework described here is as the user community member deals with the details of the day to day aspects of the truth that they discover. They are the ones trusted to deal with the issues and opportunities they’ll find in the domain of their processes management. Intelligent people doing intelligent things. Not having to look over the shoulder for the competition who somehow are selling the same service at half the cost. An impossibility in the People, Ideas & Objects environment being created here as the licenses granted to the user community members and service providers will be for their exclusive responsibility and authority for the domain of their process. Yet competition between these service providers will never have been so strong as it finds new and innovative ways to configure their offerings in the market. Using their competitive advantages of leadership, issue identification and resolution, creativity, researching, generating ideas, designing, planning, negotiating, compromising, financing, reasoning and judgement to name just a few. If you find this too risky and unworkable. The objective of profitability everywhere and always seems unattainable. Find that these ideas are naive, altruistic and impractical. Then you’ll determine they’re not for you. And I can assure you that you’ve made the right decision. 

On the other hand we have no shortage of work to do. Much needs to be done in the next few years. The Preliminary Specification needs to be built. The engineering and geological explicit knowledge needs to be captured as Intellectual Property and developed. New oil and gas firms need to be formed, capitalized and organized. Assets need to be transferred to these new producers in innovative, strategic and tactical ways. In this process we’ll all be helping the current producers to travel faster down their chosen journey to clean energy by disposing of dirty oil. This transition to the Preliminary Specification is something that must be done to deal with the financial difficulties the industry is plagued with from the current administration. This also needs to be done as preparation for the future. And to learn from the experience of this transition as we’ll be faced repeatedly with situations that share this same scope and scale of change in the near future of this business. We’ll therefore be somewhat prepared and experienced in challenges of this nature. Please review our Production Rights to see how everyone can participate in making this new oil and gas industry happen. An industry where it will be less important who you know, but what you know and what you're capable of delivering, what the value proposition is that you’re offering?

Those interested in joining our user community are People, Ideas & Objects priority and focus. The Preliminary Specification, our user community and their service provider organizations 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, everywhere and always. In addition, our software organizes the Intellectual Property of the exploration and production processes owned by the engineers and geologists. Enabling them to monetize their IP for a new oil & gas industry to begin with a means to be dynamic, innovative and performance oriented. Providing a new investment opportunity for those who see a bright future in the industry. A place where their administrative, accounting, exploration and production can be handled for the 21st century. People, Ideas & Objects have joined GETTR and can be reached there. Anyone can contact me at 713-965-6720 in Houston or 587-735-2302 in Calgary, or email me here. 

Cloud Administration and Accounting!

 Operationally People, Ideas & Objects, our user community and their service provider organizations introduce a number of new principles of how oil and gas will increase its performance. Taking the lessons that have been and are being learned today from the new paradigm of cloud computing. We’ve expanded the general concept to include the administrative and accounting processes that are conducted within the industry. The benefits that will be achieved as a result of not only the use of cloud computing but also these principles being applied to the other non-competitive attributes of the producer firm. These will be dramatic in terms of increased financial performance that the industry experiences. This is stated when the industry's leadership has capitulated the viability and commercialization of shale to the same dustbin their management has done with the rest of the industry. 

What we see is cloud computing simply centralizes or industrializes the computing power that would otherwise be needed by the firm. Making it on demand for a small fee on the basis of how and when it’s used. Moving it from a fixed capital and operating cost to a variable operating cost. The need to build the physical infrastructure and maintain it in house is a costly undertaking with the need to build the capacity and capability that will satisfy the peak demand in a reasonable period of time. The maintenance can become a significant part of the cost when the software stack becomes ever more capable and the features demanded by users more complex. The need to have these resources in house, or to go without the feature, becomes less and less of a viable or financial choice. Whereas the cloud computing providers can disperse what are to them incremental costs across their vast user community. Therefore the cost of computing from a capital point of view disappears. And the resource becomes an affordable variable cost. The features become enhanced and far more capable due to the ability to distribute the costs across the higher population of users. If you’ve never used a cloud computing service on a personal basis I would highly recommend it. Google has its Google Cloud Platform which from a general user perspective is the far superior service in my opinion. However Oracle's Cloud Infrastructure is the industrial choice to use. Note it will also be the cloud computing offering that will be used by our user community and their service providers in the People, Ideas & Objects Preliminary Specification system. 

It is this feature of cloud computing that needs to be applied to the larger areas of administrative and accounting in oil and gas. There would be no reason that these same principles could not be applied here to solve many of the issues being experienced in the industry. Taking the administrative and accounting costs of the capacities and capabilities that are demanded of the producers to function in the North American public markets. It is these overhead costs that are consuming producers profitability. Each producer replicating the exact same uncompetitive capability and capacity in an unshared and unshareable configuration is costly and inefficient. We believe this to be the secondary reason behind chronic overproduction that profitability is such an issue. If there is an organizational principle of decentralization that is exploitable by the use of the Internet, making industry overhead variable is most certainly the beginning. 

These are what we’ve adopted in the configuration of the Preliminary Specification. It is how we’ve configured the user community and their service provider organizations to function in providing the administrative and accounting capabilities and capacities to the North American producers. It is all of the above and it’s more. It is this configuration that enabled these costs to change their characteristics from being fixed, producer based capabilities and capacities to a variable cost, industry based capacities and capabilities. Where if the accounting of the property in the Preliminary Specification showed that the actual, factual performance of the property was a loss it could be shut-in. When it was shut-in it would be producing no data that would generate any subsequent activity in the service providers, no work would be conducted by them, for example no costs for the recording of revenue, and therefore the property would incur a null operation, no profit but also no loss. Enabling the industry to remove the marginal production from the market. When the pricing of the commodities are subject to the economic principles of price makers then producers will only produce when profits are achieved. Producers will only increase production when it can be done so profitably. And this chronic overproduction across North America will stop, as will the need to always participate on the treadmill in order to pay the fixed overhead costs. A producer capable of producing 100,000 boe / day would be able to produce at any level of their production profile, based on the market price, and remain profitable at all times. Whether that was 100, 95, 80 or even 50 thousand boe / day it wouldn’t matter when all of their costs have become variable cloud based capabilities and capacities.

These are just simple, modern day examples of the expansion of specialization and the division of labor that are available to us as a result of the development of the Internet. They hold untold riches for society when we understand all the value that has been generated by them since 1776 when Adam Smith wrote his book “The Wealth of Nations.” There has been no other source of value generated other than from specialization and the division of labor. Application of it in the form of cloud computing is being experienced and realized today and that is leading to its strong(er) uptake. Expansion of the same concepts within industries is to be realized in other areas and that is an organizing principle that we’ve adopted in the Preliminary Specification. These are detailed in the Organizational Constructs section where we’ve identified the five main organizing forces being employed include Information Technology, Intellectual Property, Markets, Specialization and the Division of Labor and of course the Joint Operating Committee to define and support what is conducted in oil and gas. 

There are a number of inherent virtues of configuring the accounting of the industry in this manner. With the service providers conducting the transactions of the producers. There is an objectivity used in how they apply their process to the data they process. In many cases they’ll know very little about the data other than what is necessary for them to effectively conduct the process they’re responsible for. Therefore every producer will be receiving the same standardized accounting process management and transaction processing that any other producer will obtain. This is critical when the onus is on the individual producer to shut-in the production of unprofitable production. The accuracy and timeliness of that accounting information which is the base of that determination of unprofitability is going to need to be objective and producers will need assurance that all other producers were subject to the same criteria in determining their profitability. With these methods described in the Preliminary Specification this assurance will be provided. If Exxon were to be calculating their profitability on an unknown and different basis would other producers be willing to accept that their property was unprofitable? At the same time if Exxon was the source of the accounting system used in industry would anyone doubt the objectivity of that? This independence of the service providers, standardization of accounting and objective nature of the work being done brings a new level of integrity and reliability into the outcome of the efforts of the industry. There will be a standard of objective performance that is applied to all production irrespective of the producer or its influence outside of the business. When the integrity of the accounting of oil and gas is such that the investors have abandoned the industry for the past six years and demanded tier 1 ERP systems. I see this as a mandatory requirement. 

Typical of any industry in a crisis the ability for new and innovative firms to enter and prosper ceases to occur. The effect of the inability of the start-up to junior oil and gas firms to prosper in the past several decades has finally become a reality where their existence is challenged and seemingly terminal. There are to my knowledge no new companies being formed and the consolidation of the larger producers is a symptom of the same decaying carcass. For a dynamic, innovative, accountable and profitable oil and gas industry there needs to be a diversity of firms participating. With a broad and robust level of new and innovative firms leading the way. The question therefore is how do you implement a system that introduces the complexity and comprehensive difficulty of Oracle ERP Cloud with the Preliminary Specification into the startup and junior oil and gas firm in order for them to compete for capital in today’s North American capital markets? The lack of success of the small and junior oil and gas producer has been attributable, in my opinion, due to the demand for them to achieve the financial momentum that will include the costs of the executive, accounting and administrative overhead that is demanded as a minimum requirement of a producer listed on the regulated public markets. Let’s put this requirement at $3.5 million which is a standard that demands more than just the engineering and geological skills of a producer. 

With People, Ideas & Objects Preliminary Specification, our user community and their service providers, producers large and small gain the ability to be able to access these systems to conduct their business on a standard, objective service that is a variable cost. A startup and junior producer doesn’t need all of the features when they start and can build their firm on the basis of what is used when it is used on a variable cost basis. The benefit of having the service provider delivering their service and the software ensures they’ll have the capacity and capabilities available when required, but also they’ll have the state of the art administrative and accounting providers who are trained in these by their daily use across the industry. Initially access to the Preliminary Specification may be as little as what is needed to prepare their financial statements. This short paragraph does little to establish how the Preliminary Specification, our user community and their service providers are able to provide these services to the startup and junior producers and it is more comprehensively documented in the Organizational Construct section located here. When you sign on to a cloud computing provider you’re signing on to the most complex and comprehensive systems ever conceived. You may not appreciate that when you reduced your accounting close in half and received the shockingly affordable invoice. 

I’ve discovered another mistake that I’ve been making throughout these past years. I’ve been referring to the Preliminary Specifications publication and completion as being December 2013. In retrospect I don’t know why. Reviewing this blog I see now that it was actually August 2012 that it was completed and published. What occurred throughout 2013 was a discussion of the impact and consequences of implementation of the Preliminary Specification in oil and gas.

On the other hand we have no shortage of work to do. Much needs to be done in the next few years. The Preliminary Specification needs to be built. The engineering and geological explicit knowledge needs to be captured as Intellectual Property and developed. New oil and gas firms need to be formed, capitalized and organized. Assets need to be transferred to these new producers in innovative, strategic and tactical ways. In this process we’ll all be helping the current producers to travel faster down their chosen journey to clean energy by disposing of dirty oil. This transition to the Preliminary Specification is something that must be done to deal with the financial difficulties the industry is plagued with from the current administration. This also needs to be done as preparation for the future. And to learn from the experience of this transition as we’ll be faced repeatedly with situations that share this same scope and scale of change in the near future of this business. We’ll therefore be somewhat prepared and experienced in challenges of this nature. Please review our Production Rights to see how everyone can participate in making this new oil and gas industry happen. An industry where it will be less important who you know, but what you know and what you're capable of delivering, what the value proposition is that you’re offering?

Those interested in joining our user community are People, Ideas & Objects priority and focus. The Preliminary Specification, our user community and their service provider organizations 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, everywhere and always. In addition, our software organizes the Intellectual Property of the exploration and production processes owned by the engineers and geologists. Enabling them to monetize their IP for a new oil & gas industry to begin with a means to be dynamic, innovative and performance oriented. Providing a new investment opportunity for those who see a bright future in the industry. A place where their administrative, accounting, exploration and production can be handled for the 21st century. People, Ideas & Objects have joined GETTR and can be reached there. 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 LXXIII

 The perspective in which People, Ideas & Objects see the performance of the North American oil and gas producers stands in stark contrast to the culture that drives the industry. We believe that a capital intensive industry would have large elements of capital costs included in the cost of the commodities passed to the consumers. That profitability is necessary everywhere and always for a prosperous and healthy oil and gas, service and associated industries. The industry culture has developed over the past four decades to the level where it’s best represented by the claims of “building balance sheets” and “putting cash in the ground.” Where cash flow is deemed to be adequate as a performance measure, and that profitability doesn’t necessarily represent where the value is generated. Industry culture believes the value is represented in the reserves that are released as a result of the exploration and production conducted to expose them to the market. People, Ideas & Objects believe that reserves are useless and valueless if they can’t be produced profitably. The reserves present value today is negative as they demand cash in order to be produced. The industry is therefore worthless. A conclusion that industry leadership has also reached after decades of feigned self deception and aggressive, specious accounting. A leadership that has now capitulated on oil and gas’ viability to saunter over to clean energy and give it a try. Funded by oil and gas revenues that belong to shareholders who the leadership never hesitated or felt any remorse betraying before. 

Our sample of producers' third quarter financial statements show that culture is persistent and unchangeable. Left to itself it will continue with its status quo operation. This is affectionately known as “muddle through” in oil and gas. For People, Ideas & Objects Preliminary Specification to instil a culture of profitability everywhere and always within existing producers is an impossibility as the force of the existing culture would eventually consume everyone. It’s not going to happen and will not happen, we’ve known that from the beginning, and so have those that have prospered from the culture they’ve cultivated. Ours is a rebuilding of the industry brick by brick and stick by stick in the vision of the Preliminary Specification. A renewed method of how the industry interacts within itself and how its processes are conducted. Both in terms of the ERP software, administrative and accounting services. If you change the process you change the outcome. What is the status of the producers as they stand today? No one would deny that the oil and gas future has never been in such great demand. Society's ability to mechanically leverage a barrel of oil to at least 10,000 man hours of labor is the reason we’re able to live the luxuries that we do. At the same time the challenges to industry have never been greater. There are incremental issues that are far more complex than what has been faced before. And we have the alleged leadership of the North American producers sauntering off the stage in an active capitulation of responsibility to avoid the accountability they know they’ve used and abused. 

All of this speaks to the scope and scale of the damage that has been experienced and realized by these producers. The continuation of poor performance and deterioration of basic financial health of producer firms continues to decline as reported in their third quarter financial statements of 2021. There is no acceptable reason on earth why oil and gas should continue to operate under the fallacy of the “boom/bust” cycle. It is wholly attributable to bureaucratic laziness and sloth. The thought that oil and gas commodities are subject to price taker characteristics and “markets” somehow magically take all the production that producers could produce was the myth and general thinking. Markets do one and only one thing, pass information about that market in the form of its price. If that price is adequate to make a profit, then produce. The method used in the Preliminary Specification. This blog first raised the point that oil and gas commodities are subject to price maker characteristics in a post entitled “Times Like These Calls For…” on November 11, 2008. Thirteen years ago and industry bureaucrats have done nothing about it. Information that could have been used to generate the trillions of dollars of needed and necessary value to maintain a healthy, viable, prosperous and above all profitable oil and gas, service and associated industries. What’s your definition of sloth, or are these just opportunity costs as bureaucrats assert? Maybe I should bite my tongue but in the face of such unnecessary destruction within the industry I find it increasingly difficult to do so. Now, as we step into the broader societal damages these bureaucrats will never accept and hold themselves responsible or accountable for what prudent management or even just the ability to read a blog would have ensured was avoided.

I still don’t see the majority of these producers surviving these financial damages. The scope and scale of the wrought they’ve authored is well entrenched within the producers financial statements. What I see is the disproportionate size of their assets valuation as a result of “building balance sheets.” These assets have become disproportionate in terms of the overall size of the revenues they're generating. Accepting that these long term assets are bloated, conversely short term assets are abysmal. The level of debt being carried by most of the producers is unacceptably high. To clarify, that’s too much debt on asset valuations that are bloated disproportionately. Which is something that their banks appear to agree with. We believe the bloated asset balances more accurately represent the amounts that investors have subsidized consumption. Instead of passing these costs on, they were collected on the “well built, bigger, beautiful, balance sheet” so the CEO could strut down mainstreet and gloat about their spending. Where are the strategies? Where are the plans? Caught flat footed, again, just as they were in 2015 when their investors began their exit. Bureaucrats can conveniently ignore these issues as they replace them with larger, more urgent and critical ones. 

This is the frustrating aspect of all of this for me. Accepting that oil and gas commodities are price makers. Ensuring that the capital costs associated with exploration and production were passed on to consumers in a timely and accurate manner. These being the two basic principles of accounting. Producing only profitably as described above. This is the method that we’ve defined for the oil and gas producers within the Preliminary Specification. (Please recall it was published in its entirety in December 2013.) This would have ensured that the “cash they were putting in the ground” was being returned to them in a timely manner. Giving them the means in which to operate their organizations as businesses and pay down debt, fund their capital expenditures and dividend the appropriate earnings to their shareholders. It was just so much easier to continue duping investors. Where are their strategies today? Where are the plans? Caught flat footed, again, just as they were in 2015 when their investors began their exit. Bureaucrats can conveniently ignore these issues as they replace them with larger, more urgent and critical ones. 

Existential issues, enhanced complexity, cultural impedance and leadership abdication. Yet all I see for oil and gas is the most spectacular opportunity to produce profitably everywhere and always, and in the real sense of the word, to achieve energy independence on the North American continent and ensure that we remain the most powerful economy for the remainder of the century. Instead these facts were used as proof as far as the bureaucrats were concerned, that I’m crazy, that the Preliminary Specification wasn’t viable and they otherwise had this in hand. The only question I have is do these bureaucrats have the gumption to ask for another chance?

On the other hand we have no shortage of work to do. Much needs to be done in the next few years. The Preliminary Specification needs to be built. The engineering and geological explicit knowledge needs to be captured as Intellectual Property and developed. New oil and gas firms need to be formed, capitalized and organized. Assets need to be transferred to these new producers in innovative, strategic and tactical ways. In this process we’ll all be helping the current producers to travel faster down their chosen journey to clean energy by disposing of dirty oil. This transition to the Preliminary Specification is something that must be done to deal with the financial difficulties the industry is plagued with from the current administration. This also needs to be done as preparation for the future. And to learn from the experience of this transition as we’ll be faced repeatedly with situations that share this same scope and scale of change in the near future of this business. We’ll therefore be somewhat prepared and experienced in challenges of this nature. Please review our Production Rights to see how everyone can participate in making this new oil and gas industry happen. An industry where it will be less important who you know, but what you know and what you're capable of delivering, what the value proposition is that you’re offering?

Those interested in joining our user community are People, Ideas & Objects priority and focus. The Preliminary Specification, our user community and their service provider organizations 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, everywhere and always. In addition, our software organizes the Intellectual Property of the exploration and production processes owned by the engineers and geologists. Enabling them to monetize their IP for a new oil & gas industry to begin with a means to be dynamic, innovative and performance oriented. Providing a new investment opportunity for those who see a bright future in the industry. A place where their administrative, accounting, exploration and production can be handled for the 21st century. People, Ideas & Objects have joined GETTR and can be reached there. Anyone can contact me at 713-965-6720 in Houston or 587-735-2302 in Calgary, or email me here.