Revisions to Background Pages

Leakage vs. The Right Information

People, Ideas & Objects established the means in which producers build value from their competitive advantages through their land and asset base, and their earth science and engineering capabilities. This was through the profitable expansion of reserves, increases in production or reductions in costs. With the Preliminary Specification a second revenue stream is firmly established from the deployment of their science and engineering capabilities to the various Joint Operating Committees they have an interest in. This revenue stream is designed to, at a minimum, offset the full cost of building and maintaining the competitive advantage the producer has in terms of their earth science and engineering capacities and capabilities. 

Providing people with the appropriate knowledge and information for them to act in a fast changing environment is difficult. Speed will be a critical component of the producer's capabilities, deployment and competitive advantage. Currently, some of the difficulty in getting the knowledge and information to the right people is a result of ensuring the integrity of the information was not breached by those that were not part of the organization, or not the information authorized by the organization. The Security & Access Control module of the Preliminary Specification imposes high levels of integrity on all the communications and storage of data and information. However with high levels of collaborations throughout the People, Ideas & Objects Preliminary Specification. There may be the expectation that these collaborations between firms in the Joint Operating Committee is where there may be some perceived leakage of proprietary losses of knowledge. And it is here that People, Ideas & Objects are asking if those losses of information impose any risk to the innovative oil & gas producers competitive advantages of their land and asset base, or earth science and engineering capabilities? No they don’t. In fact, it is the collaborations that enhance the innovativeness and the capabilities of the firm. In a fast moving, innovative industry the last thing a producer is going to want to be constrained by is a method of operation that they own the Intellectual Property of and as a result is the only method of operation the firm pursues. Are the producers and Joint Operating Committees capabilities that are being deployed a fixed point of science or an ability to apply the innovations and sciences developments, and most particularly the developments from the oil & gas marketplace as they occur?

The question therefore becomes how is this proprietary information and capability deployed on an as needed basis? Professor Giovanni Dosi notes that although the free movement of information has occurred in industries for many years, yet has never been easily transferable to other companies within those industries. The ability to replicate a competitive advantage from one company to another is not as easy, and indeed may not be worthwhile doing. Dosi (1988) goes one step further and states, “even with technology license agreements, they do not stand as an all or nothing substitute for in house search.” A firm needs to develop “substantial in-house capacity in order to recognize, evaluate, negotiate and finally adapt the technology potentially available from others.” Therefore why not focus on the need to increase the company's own unique and specific competitive advantages based on advanced specializations and divisions of labor of these sciences.

We are also discussing the operational governance of the firm and Joint Operating Committee. An important element of this discussion is the capabilities that these organizations have access to. Capabilities are documented in the Research & Capabilities and Knowledge & Learning modules of the Preliminary Specification. These are the documentation of the explicit knowledge that the producers capabilities are able to conduct. Therefore from a governance point of view these capabilities need to be safeguarded and ensure that they’re kept for their firm's eyes only? Nothing could be further from the truth. The simple usage of these capabilities will cause their leakage to outside firms. And it is imperative that the firm consider the use of their capabilities as having the right information deployed by the right people at the right time in the right location as their priority. Governance therefore should be more concerned with the appropriate and timely use of these capabilities in terms of generating value, rather than the hoarding and protection of information that will be released in some form nonetheless, may be generally understood throughout the industry and will be the basis of further innovations and developments in the near future. From Professor Richard Langlois “Organizing the Electronic Century''.

This is the basic modularization of the market economy. It accords well with the modularization G. B. Richardson (1972) suggested in offering the concept of economic capabilities. By capabilities Richardson means "knowledge, experience, and skills" (1972, p. 888), a notion related to what Jensen and Meckling (1992) call "specific knowledge and to what Hayek (1945) called "knowledge of the particular circumstances of time and place." p. 27

If the Joint Operating Committee coordinates these capabilities in the appropriate manner then the externalities will flow to the producers represented there. That is what the governance of the operation is most concerned about. That there was leakage of some explicit knowledge of these capabilities during the operation is immaterial to the externalities and the competitive position of the firm. Recall during our review of Professor Giovanni Dosi for the Preliminary Specification. His research showed that it took an equal and sometimes greater effort to copy another firm's capabilities than it did to generate the capabilities themselves. It is therefore more effective for a firm to focus on their key competitive advantages of their land and asset base, and their specialized earth science and engineering capabilities. In a dynamic, innovative and rapidly changing environment a producer firm wants its key competitive advantage to be state of the art and on the cutting edge at all times. Using the market offerings in ways that encourage and reward those that develop the actual Intellectual Property that make the service industry and other vendors able to support the oil & gas producers and their efforts to generate value. Intellectual Property is not the domain of the oil & gas producers or industry in any way whatsoever. Their value development is a result of the deployment of their tacit knowledge of the resources of the marketplace and what the producers capabilities can do with that knowledge to build value from their oil & gas assets. 

Pooling

People, Ideas & Objects are using specialization and the division of labor as the method to increase the performance trajectory and productivity of the industry. We have applied this solution to the earth science and engineering disciplines to deal with the anticipated difficulties in accessing adequate numbers of these resources in the mid to long term. When using the Joint Operating Committee as the key organizational construct of the dynamic, innovative, accountable and profitable oil & gas producer we are moving this earth science and engineering knowledge to where the operational decision rights reside to increase accountability for the decisions that are made. Therefore we have eliminated the “operator” designation to introduce our pooling concept. 

The capabilities to house “state of the art,” “just in time” earth science and engineering resources necessary to operate each of the properties within one oil & gas firm is believed to be beyond what will be commercially viable in the very near future. This is a result of the further specialization of earth science and engineering skills needed to be attained by each individual and each producer firm within the industry. Under the current environment, with the increased demand for these resources due to retirement and low numbers of people entering the professions, there will be an increase in producers costs as a result of the limited resources supply. Additionally the anticipated increase in throughput necessary to meet the future demands of energy independence. The known fact that each barrel of oil or gas demands more earth science and engineering effort as we consume the “easy” reserves first. When specialization is required, if each producer firm were to maintain the full scope of their capabilities necessary to achieve “operator” status, they would no longer be commercially viable businesses due to this increased demand from specialization. Specialization and the division of labor is the only proven solution to increase the performance and productivity from any and all organizations. Introducing multiples of what is currently available if the ERP supports any revised organizational definition. Therefore under the Preliminary Specifications pooling concept it is necessary for each producer in the Joint Operating Committee to contribute their uniquely specialized capabilities. The objective being to enable the Joint Operating Committee to draw from the much larger pool of the Joint Operating Committees producers capacities of engineers and earth scientists, but also the market offerings, in order to obtain the necessary “operator” scope and scale of capabilities for the properties operation. Additionally, there is the need for the removal and offloading to the marketplace of the lower level technical work from the producer firms to service providers that will specialize and divide their labor on the basis of their skills. Enabling producers to specialize in those highly specific areas of competitive advantage that provide them real tangible value creation. 

The producer firm is committed to developing their capabilities with the understanding that they advance their competitive advantages, and earn a return on their investment. They are the critical competitive differentiator in the industry under the Preliminary Specification. How within People, Ideas & Objects ERP software does the producer earn a return on their investment on their capabilities? The most obvious answer is through expanding their petroleum reserves, their production deliverability or by reducing their overall costs on a barrel of oil equivalent basis and therefore expansion of these capabilities through a highly competitive, dynamic and innovative environment. The answer in the short term is to ensure that these critical resources costs are recovered from the costs of oil & gas exploration and production on a day to day basis. Their time and direct charges being recovered from the joint accounts. That is to say that the people (representing the producers capabilities) who are pooled into a Joint Operating Committee, have been assigned a role within the Industrial Command & Control, Job Order and Work Order systems of People, Ideas & Objects et al Preliminary Specification and whose costs are captured in the Partnership Accounting module and are therefore recovering an established second revenue stream from these producers capabilities to offset the cost of building and maintaining these capabilities.

This pooling concept is the solution that People, Ideas & Objects have developed as a replacement to the current “operator” designation. The ability for each producer to have the just-in-time capabilities for all the properties they manage requires, on an industry wide basis, to have surplus or unused and unusable earth science and engineering capabilities to fulfill this just in time nature. This has led to what amounts to a hoarding of these resources by individual producers to meet their just in time needs, causing industry-wide low utilization rates. The ability to pool the producers' highly specialized resources into the Joint Operating Committee releases these otherwise unused and unusable capabilities and facilitates the expansion of specialization and the division of labor to resume. All producers need to contribute their specialized knowledge, skills, experience and ideas they’ve developed in an innovative oil & gas industry. Therefore each of these producers need to have the ability to charge and recover their costs for these resources through the joint account as necessary. Charges being made to either operations or capital expenditures in amounts necessary to earn a return on their specialized capabilities.

A note here to say that this falls under the domain of an ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) solution for the following reasons. People, Ideas & Objects noted the research of Professors Anthony Giddens and Wanda Orlikowski in terms of their Structuration Theory and Model of Structuration. In summary these suggest that software defines and supports organizations and therefore also constrains them. Without software to define what an organization is and does then it more or less won’t exist on a commercial basis in the North American oil & gas marketplace. And to seal the producer firm in the definition of the Preliminary Specification is just as inappropriate as today’s business issues continuing in the bureaucrats unchanging ERP software environment. Therefore People, Ideas & Objects, our user community and their service providers are building the Preliminary Specification and a permanent software development capability based on the needs of the dynamic, innovative, accountable and profitable oil & gas marketplace. Ensuring the Preliminary Specification and the services associated with it are kept up to date and serving the greater oil & gas economy. 

Operational Control

Operational control and innovation are on two opposite ends of the same spectrum. That however does not mean that they can’t be attained by the same organization. The innovative oil & gas producer must have both. One without the other is not worth pursuing. The conflict and contradiction will show up in the organization at some point and the need to deal with it becomes a governance issue. Producers using the Preliminary Specification will have the tools necessary to ensure that the Joint Operating Committee is able to discern the difference between innovative markets and tight operational control. 

When the Joint Operating Committee is conducting some field operations it is establishing a one time temporary organization representing individuals from a variety of different sources. Other producers who are partners in the Joint Operating Committee, vendors, suppliers and service providers are some of the sources that make up these temporary organizations. To have operational control over these resources is critical for the success of the innovative oil & gas producers. In the Preliminary Specification we provide a number of tools to enable the Joint Operating Committee to attain high levels of operational control over these temporary organizations. 

The first of these tools is what we’ve called the Industrial Command & Control. An ability to impose a chain of command over the resources that span the producers, suppliers, vendors and service providers that are working in the temporary organization that has been established. Next there is the Job Order which is a means in which to execute the plans and operations of this temporary organization during its operation. Simply nothing should be done without the appropriate Job Order being issued from the recognized authority listed in the Industrial Command & Control chain of command first. There is the AFE in which the budget is established and maintained, or possibly a lease. And the Work Order that enables the producers resources to be charged to the Joint Operating Committee ensuring the producers recover the costs they incur in building and maintaining their distinct capabilities. 

These are the tools that are at the disposal of the people who are responsible for the operation in the Joint Operating Committee. They are provided to bring a sharp contrast to the freewheeling innovative ways of the market that are healthy for the further development of the innovative oil & gas industry and provide the necessary operational control to have the execution, accountability and success necessary in a dynamic, innovative, accountable and profitable oil & gas producer. 

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 & gas industry with the most profitable means of oil & gas operations, everywhere and always. Setting the foundation for profitable North American energy independence, everywhere and always. 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? We know we can, and we know how to make money in this business. 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. Please join our community on Twitter @piobiz. Anyone can contact me at 713-965-6720 in Houston or 587-735-2302 in Calgary, or email me here.

Revisions to the Service Providers Part 2

 To call the service providers a sub-industry of the oil & gas industry is appropriate based on their scope and scale. Replacing the industries administrative and accounting capabilities which are housed within each individual producer involves many individuals. And in terms of costs, on a North American basis, it is estimated that the producers incur $25 to 40 billion in G&A costs across North America that would be reallocated as revenues to the service providers. A significant change in the way in which the oil & gas industry is operated. Incremental value is generated based on the ability of the service providers to exercise real economic growth through the toolset of specialization and the division of labor. Providing enhanced performance throughput from the same $25 to $40 billion in G&A costs. And unquantifiable savings as a result of building and sharing the costs of one non-competitive attribute of the industry based, variable cost, administrative and accounting capability and capacity instead of each producer involved in providing their own unshared and unshareable capability.

Arguments against this change are bureaucratic in nature and supportive of their self centered needs. Only a bureaucrat can aspire to defend the current administrative and accounting needs of a producer firm as being anything but necessary. Suggesting People, Ideas & Objects software and services scope and scale is too broad yet well within their internal domain of what they can provide. Through the compliance requirements of the various government agencies, the sophistication of society that we find ourselves in and the needs of the oil & gas producers partners. The redundant, unshared and unshareable building of administrative and accounting requirements of an oil & gas producer are the secondary cause of the lack of real profitability in the oil & gas industry. Long ago these demands were instrumental in eliminating the startup and small oil & gas producers from commercial operations. The road to success for them was their capacity to raise capital, not their geological or engineering capabilities. We’re not far from the point where these demands on all producers are exceeding the expectation of what overhead costs are reasonable. The high throughput production model, the business model industry is structured under, demands the producer to produce at capacity at all times in order to cover their fixed overheads. Production at capacity is leading to the many commodity price collapses we’ve seen since the first oil price collapse in July 1986 and are creating systemic losses that will lead to the demise of the industry at some point in time. If overhead is not a material issue, why do bureaucrats keep destroying the commodity prices?

It is the lighter weight of the producer organizations under the Preliminary Specification that enables the desired characteristics of being dynamic, accountable, innovative and profitable. Having the administrative and accounting provided by the service providers has left the C Suite executives, the engineering and earth science resources of the producer firm, the land, some legal and support staff. With this smaller footprint, no matter the size of the production profile, the producer firm is able to focus on their key competitive advantages of their land and asset base, and their earth science and engineering capabilities. Having state of the art administrative and accounting service providers is what they’ll have on a variable service fee basis. Variable based on production. Accessing this industry wide capability and freeing them from the onerous tasks of building the currently costly unshared and unshareable administrative and accounting capabilities they've created in-house. 

This will enable the producers to be able to focus on their business of generating greater value for their shareholders. Why we need to focus on generating value and profitability for shareholders should be evident to everyone now that we've been witnessing the performance of the bureaucratic establishments interpretation of what is priority and the devastated North American oil & gas landscape that remains. 

This Cloud Administrative & Accounting for oil & gas capability will accommodate changes in the way in which producers do their work. Through user community participation and the People, Ideas & Objects software development capabilities the service provider can enable change in the software and processes to increase the productivity and throughput of the producer firm. Changes made within the oil & gas producer itself, and changes to enhance the producers key competitive capabilities. These can be handled by the service provider to ensure that they’re adopted within the processes that producers use. Enabling a further specialization and division of labor within the earth science and engineering disciplines. Something that is suggested here as necessary in order to address the shortfalls in these critical resources over the mid to long term. 

The world is a dangerous place to live not because of the people who are evil but because of the people who don’t do anything about it. 

Albert Einstein 

The scope and scale of what it is that People, Ideas & Objects are undertaking here is comprehensive. That we would aspire to undertake this in the normal course would be unheard of. I don’t believe we’re in an environment where we’re anywhere near normal and what is accepted as normal today is unacceptable. There are serious consequences now as a result of what the bureaucrats have authored. Houston can barely make decisions as to which business they’re in. They were once the center of the global oil & gas industry, it’s difficult to suggest how they fit in today.

Time is now of the essence. My point here is that time is wasting and there are consequences of actions and inactions by good people that are having much greater implications than we’re realizing when they subsequently occur. As much as I belittle the bureaucrats it’s obvious to everyone that inaction by them is in their DNA. We can't and should not expect anything from them. They’ll continue to deny us the resources we need to proceed. However that is not a reason to sit and watch this tumble further downwards. There should be no doubt of the need to rebuild the industry in my opinion. It’s too important not to. It will be far easier to rebuild than trying to compromise and deal with the bureaucrats and end up with something that will not work. 

I have defined the market for our user community and their service provider organizations to fall within the domain of the North American oil & gas administration and accounting roles and responsibilities. Our objective is to provide the dynamic, innovative, accountable and profitable oil & gas producers with the most profitable means of oil & gas operations everywhere and always. The areas covered by the service providers include the operational, exploration, land, IT and traditional areas of administration of the producers. This is a data rich environment and the need to have these captured in an ERP system are paramount. The feeding of multiple systems with the same data is due to the fact that these systems bridge different domains in the bureaucracy and conflict between the bureaucratic empires of the producer which is one of the key impediments to the lack of integration in the current systems. These have been implied and well understood with regard to our user community.

People, Ideas & Objects, our user community and their service providers are employing what is now commonly referred to as a Software as a Service (SaaS) style of offering to the North American oil & gas industry in this Cloud Administration & Accounting for oil & gas and the implications of that are broad. The following are the areas of concern that fall under the SaaS model of delivery. And give a brief overview of how the specific user community and their service provider organizations will be involved in the development of the Preliminary Specification and then how it is they’ll support the industries producers within this model. Starting from the bottom and working to the top we’ll break down these services. The following diagram shows from a systems and services perspective what this consists of and who will address these areas of concern. These areas are what were traditionally considered the Information Technology domain. What People, Ideas & Objects consider to fall under the administrative role in the administration and accounting of our user community and their service provider. From the book “IaaS for Dummies” page 8, John Wiley and Sons.

Data Center, Networking, Storage and Servers

These form part of the Oracle Cloud ERP offering and are supported by their regions located around the world. We have discussed briefly the method that we’ll be incorporating the Preliminary Specification within the Oracle Cloud ERP offering and will state at this point we are implementing Oracle’s recommended method. We are writing our Java application within the Oracle Fusion code itself through the Oracle Fusion Middleware Server. It will not be a series of separate modules that sit on top of Oracle Cloud ERP which has been the traditional approach. It is in this way that either People, Ideas & Objects or Oracle may update their respective code bases on their currently scheduled quarterly release without impacting one anothers code. Using the full value of Java’s inheritance, polymorphism and most specifically encapsulation. 

These four base elements of a SaaS are determined at definition by the user of the Oracle Cloud ERP offering. Selecting the data center, processor, storage type and all other manner of configurations are available. People, Ideas & Objects are employing a microservices architecture that will map the service provider's single administrative or accounting process to the domain of concern to one specific microservice. In the employment of specialization and division of labor we do not expect the service provider to be conducting the accounting involved in an individual process to also be involved in the IT related SaaS roles and responsibilities. These are mutually exclusive capacities and capabilities. There will be other members of our user community with their own service provider organizations that are used to manage elements of the SaaS offering on behalf of the population of service providers.

Virtualization

Within the Oracle Cloud ERP offering there is a registry service for the various images that we will have developed and published and those that Oracle have published. These will be deployed as needed by the service provider that may be configured for managing or deploying the “month-end” processes, etc. Virtualization is a way of life in the cloud and it is evolving at a remarkable pace with the future configuration and architectures of systems being derivative of these technologies in some form or another. The core of Oracle Cloud ERP, including the modules of the Preliminary Specification, will be run on centralized servers in a more traditional sense where these microservices will access their data and defer their heavy processing to. 

Operating System, Middleware, Runtime, Data and Applications

This software stack will have a myriad of configurations contained within the virtualization registry. Whatever the process needs to operate will remain in the image and the remainder of the operating system, database and others are removed to have a lightweight configuration for the sole purpose of conducting that one process. There will also be the main configuration where Oracle Cloud ERP and People, Ideas & Objects Preliminary Specifications core applications will be operational at all times. Service providers will deploy virtualized images of what they need when they’re needed. Oracle has taken their Linux operating system and most importantly their Database in the automated direction with machine learning technologies. By reviewing the logs of the system it can make changes to the configuration and tune the database as needed without the need for human intervention. The work of our user communities service providers that are administrators of the database will no longer need to concern themselves with table size growth as the automated database will drop tables when required, etc. It is here where our service providers and their ownership by the user community will be able to make the significant impact that the Preliminary Specification provides. The motivation behind the user community is that they’re business people who are building their own business based on serving the producer population with the objective of ensuring the most profitable means of oil and gas operations. They’ll have the motivation, the tools by way of access to the Intellectual Property and our developers, but also exclusive access and attention of the producer firms in order to determine what is the best method to meet their objective of real profitability everywhere and always and how to rebuild their business in this vision. 

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 & gas industry with the most profitable means of oil & gas operations, everywhere and always. Setting the foundation for profitable North American energy independence, everywhere and always. 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? We know we can, and we know how to make money in this business. 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. Please join our community on Twitter @piobiz. Anyone can contact me at 713-965-6720 in Houston or 587-735-2302 in Calgary, or email me here.

Revisions to the Service Providers Part 1

 Members of People, Ideas & Objects user community are licensed for a variety of rights and privileges in the development, implementation and operation of the Preliminary Specification. One of these includes the exclusive right to own and operate a service provider that will manage an individual process within the Preliminary Specifications software and deliver that to the oil & gas producers along with the services they will offer. The scope of the service providers, as a sub-industry, includes the administration and accounting domain of the North American oil & gas producers. Delivery of People, Ideas & Objects software with their services to the producers, combined with the role of their user community member leading the service provider, who has exclusive access to our software developers, gives these service providers an environment where they would be able to innovate and iteratively change their managed processes software and services to meet the producers changing conditions. 

Cloud Administration & Accounting for oil & gas is the sub-industry that we are providing in this change. Taking the concept of Cloud Computing and applying it to these processes is appropriate as the same issues, opportunities, cost reductions and efficiency exist and are available through this reorganization. First the service providers are the key change in making all of the producers' costs variable, based on production. Enabling them to shut-in any unprofitable production and ensuring that the industry remains profitable everywhere and always. Service providers are therefore the means to generate the critical elements of the Preliminary Specifications value proposition. Reducing the producer's individual overhead costs incurred. When each producer is tasked with building, maintaining and operating the exact same, non-competitive attributes of administrative and accounting capacity and capabilities, on an unshared and unshareable basis we have the secondary reason for a chronic lack of profitability in the industry. Specialization and the division of labor are able to more effectively deal with the complexity of these environments when they are also done on this shared basis. Our dual approach to the resolution of this loss of profitability will ensure that consumers are provided with the lowest possible costs available and continue to be provided with abundant, reliable energy. 

An operational service provider will be responsible for the management of an individual process on behalf of the North American oil & gas industry. The dimension of the work would be breathtaking in terms of understanding the scope and scale of the work that is undertaken each month. Without getting into the details of a specific process, and speaking only of the generalities, I want to discuss the scope and scale, and the details of the “what” and “how” of a service provider in the People, Ideas & Objects Preliminary Specification. 

Having as the process domain, the entire North American producer population to manage would be a difficult and challenging task to grasp initially. The approach to the process would be fundamentally different from that which is currently done in a junior oil & gas company or ExxonMobil. Even they don’t come close to that scale of the proposed volume of transactions of a service provider. Therefore the need to design the process within our user community from the basis of a new method of organization will have already been determined as a result of the service providers owners early participation in the People, Ideas & Objects user community. Our user communities research will have determined the level of specialization and division of labor for the people that need to be involved in a process and the tasks that will need to be done. Both individually and from a global perspective in terms of application functionality. Defining what the computers and what the people can each do best. As we've noted here many times before, computers are good at storing data and processing information. People are good at making decisions, collaborating, innovation, ideas, planning, creativity, design, leadership and problem solving to name only a few. This new specialization and division of labor between computers and people will be the base that a service provider will use in this new oil & gas environment. It will be one of the things that is used to enhance the service to ensure that the oil & gas producers continue to achieve the most profitable means of oil & gas operations. A new specialization and division of labor that will provide better services and lower costs to the producers and reveal new ways in which to do business that can add value to their organizations. 

Participation in our user community will continue for the service provider principals as a result of People, Ideas & Objects establishing the software development and user community as permanent capabilities in the North American oil & gas industry. The need to make changes in the specialization and division of labor has to be initiated in the software first and foremost. Society in general is now defined and supported, and constrained by the software systems that we use, particularly ERP software. Any change that we make in our organizations must first be made in the software. As the principal members of the service provider sub-industry our user community will continue to ensure there is the ability to affect the changes necessary through the People, Ideas & Objects software development capability and our user communities commitment and vision. This feedback from the service providers is one of the primary reasons that there will be constant development work being done on the systems and services provided by this sub-industry. All to the benefit of the oil & gas producers enhanced profitability based on the user communities charter. 

In terms of how People, Ideas & Objects will determine the allocation of specific service provider licenses to which member of the user community. The user community members' contributions that are made during the development process will be the determining factor. No one is going to go through all the submissions and be able to allocate the appropriate license to the right individual. That would be a superhuman exercise and not possible. It is however well within the scope of what Artificial Intelligence is able to determine. The AI algorithm might review the Final Specification and determine the key attributes and the contributions made to the system and by whom. It might then be able to go back and determine the first mention of these key ideas and the individual who originated it. It might then review the sum of all of the users contributions, compare those with the other users and their areas of specific idea generation. Then apply the known processes under management within the Final Specification and award the licenses for the management of those processes to the highest and most valuable contributor of each individual process in terms of the ideas and contributions that were made. It sounds easy when I put it like this, however, we will have a budget set aside for the development of this algorithm the moment People, Ideas & Objects are funded. That way by the time we have to apply the AI to the situation it will be tested and the bugs worked out. The user community license provides each user community member with the exclusive right to manage the domain of a process as a service provider. There may be multiple owners of a service provider and user community members with interests in multiple service providers. These AI recommendations and algorithm development will fall within the domain of our user communities responsibility.

It is on the basis of changing the relationship of how the producer accesses their administrative and accounting capabilities that we are able to enhance the profitability of North American producers. This will be done through the Preliminary Specifications decentralized production model. This model provides the capability of producers to implement a “price maker” strategy that will be a key competitive capability in this shale based era. This is enabled by the producer shutting in any unprofitable production. Reducing the amount of the commodity on the marketplace and therefore ensuring the commodity is valued at its marginal price. At the same time, during the period that the production is shut-in, the reserves are held for a time when they can be produced profitably. The producer will not incur any production or storage costs as the reserves provide a much lower cost solution for them. The property records a null operation as there are no revenues, royalties, operating costs or overhead costs. The producer records the highest possible level of corporate profitability when unprofitable properties no longer dilute the profits of their profitable properties. The lack of overhead costs being incurred on shut-in production is a feature of dealing with the administrative and accounting capabilities through these service providers on an industry wide basis. When the property is shut-in a service provider will receive no data or information from the People, Ideas & Objects task and transfer network in the Preliminary Specification that will cause them to incur any administrative or accounting task or generate a billing to that Joint Operating Committee for their services that month. 

The task and transfer network is a part of the Preliminary Specification that will be developed in a variety of different modules. It provides the high level automation that is necessary for the service providers to efficiently process the oil & gas producers operations. The task and transfer network provides for the automation of the processes and a key toolset of the service provider. Just as specialization, the division of labor and cloud computing are key toolsets of the service providers in establishing and providing their Cloud Administration & Accounting service for oil & gas. It is the application of these tools, and others, that are the focus of the service providers in providing the oil & gas producers with the most profitable means of oil & gas operations. It is the service provider that resides at the point of discovery and conflict of the producer's administrative and accounting operations. It is there that they can improve and enhance the process through the substantial toolset that they have at their disposal. Key within that toolset is the People, Ideas & Objects software development capability and the service providers direct participation as a user community member. And it is in that way they can affect real change to ensure that their producer clients are provided with the most profitable means of oil & gas operations. 

Producer bureaucrats as we call the officers and directors of the producer firms are well versed in developing viable scapegoats to justify not implementing the Preliminary Specification. Their most successful argument has been the price maker strategy is collusion. What has been standard business practice in all other industries since the time of the great depression is deemed to be collusion by said bureaucrats. The results of each property's operations for the month are presented to the producer in a complete set of actual, factual financial statements. This is enabled through the fact that service providers will be charging their costs of administration and accounting directly to the Joint Operating Committee. Monthly allocations for depletion on the basis of the needs that oil & gas needs to begin competing in today's capital markets. Determining which properties are profitable and shutting in any unprofitable ones. Why would anyone in any industry continue to produce any asset unprofitably? To refute the claims made in the Preliminary Specification bureaucrats have come up with many excuses and reasons why they can’t, won’t and will not ever proceed with the development, implementation and reorganization of the North American oil & gas industry on the basis of profitability everywhere and always. The destruction they’ve authored is now permanent and in 2022 we began to see that the rest of the global industry is active whereas North American producers seem to have been forgotten. However, bureaucrats only wished their actions could be forgotten. It’s not that they’re being forgotten, it's that everyone remembers what they’ve done.

I raise this point as many of their arguments on the details regarding the Preliminary Specification could be valid, if we were to not consider them. These arguments are however specious on their face and in theory could potentially provide them with an endless supply of reasons not to do anything, which seems to form part of their overall “do nothing” business model. The Preliminary Specification is derivative of the research I conducted and the experience that I’ve gained in working in oil & gas. No one individual in the world has the wherewithal to make a pencil. The same I would assume is the case in oil & gas. That is why we are user community based, and our user community members are the principals behind each of the service providers. The same pencil analogy applies to each of the individual user community members, however collectively we aim to cover off the full spectrum of producers administration and accounting needs with the assistance of producers input. We’re offering the solution to the problem we’ve identified as a lack of a dynamic, innovative, accountable and profitable North American oil & gas industry. When producers fund People, Ideas & Objects they’ll have the appropriate motivation to participate by having put some skin in the game. And therefore prove to their shareholders and bankers that profitability is important to the industry, after all. Then ensure that the efforts they make are what are needed to resolve oil & gas exploration & production related issues and opportunities. We are developing the Preliminary Specification, not a remake of the failure that we see today. Therefore it’s necessary for producers to bring us their issues, not their solutions. 

We’ve seen this behavior throughout the producer population these past four decades in how they’ve worked with the service industry. Sitting high atop the industry on Caesar's throne and issuing their decrees to those with a simple thumbs up or down gesture. However when people are bringing solutions to the problems that they see in producers business it might be a better approach to show them the respect they deserve and see what it is they have. Share the producer's concerns and work together to have them solved. In an innovative industry the final solution is rarely found on the first iteration. It demands work, and most of all the hard work of solving problems that others are doing and bringing to producers about the issues and opportunities they see in the producers business. To continually cast them aside with a thumbs down is the kind of treatment that will eventually be shared with the producers in times such as 2022 when the industry is profitable, possibly, and they’re being offered nothing. Much in the same way that investors today only believe in producers' dividend checks. This will demand efforts and financial commitments by producers and it's here that the belief in the bureaucracy is proven to be unjustified. 

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 & gas industry with the most profitable means of oil & gas operations, everywhere and always. Setting the foundation for profitable North American energy independence, everywhere and always. 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? We know we can, and we know how to make money in this business. 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. Please join our community on Twitter @piobiz. Anyone can contact me at 713-965-6720 in Houston or 587-735-2302 in Calgary, or email me here.

Industrial Command & Control

I'll begin today with a few paragraphs that I've added to the Preamble of the Preliminary Specification.

Preamble.

Producer bureaucrats have a propensity to race into the “next big thing” in terms of their capital investments. Abandoning their prior “next big thing” investments with little thought or concern that they’ve never attained commercial success. Just as sheep they move from failure to failure in lockstep with one another. 2021s declaration that shale would never be commercial was quickly followed by their new focus and direction on clean energy. This after decades of low oil and gas prices being justified by the excuse that it was necessary to ensure alternatives didn’t get a competitive foothold. Only to shift the producers oil and gas revenues, generated by prior oil and gas investors, to clean energy as they would have run out of “next best things.” Today the landscape is littered with the destruction and damage that has been authored by bureaucrats and comments such as clean energy is their future does nothing to support a robust industry. It should clear out the last remaining holdouts who were firmly committed to petroleum engineering and geology at the university. Any possible new investments in drilling rigs or frac capacity will have added just one more to the thousands of reasons never to invest in the service industry when producers are this abusive. And shown those trapped in an oil and gas career not to start a family or take on a mortgage in such an insecure economy. The positive from all of this is the bureaucrats are fine and they thank you for asking. With high commodity prices their day has arrived which will continue to provide them with the healthy compensation they’ve been able to “earn” over these past decades. That bureaucrats are the only ones who have benefited from oil and gas is a feature, not a bug. 

I’ll only point out here that overproduction was the root cause of the Great Depression. Oil and gas overproduction has been the method of bureaucratic destruction for four decades. The first of maybe dozens of resulting price collapses occurred in the summer of 1986. This Preliminary Specification was originally published in August 2012 and deals specifically with oil and gas overproduction. And on July 4, 2019 People, Ideas & Objects published our White Paper “Profitable, North American Energy Independence — Through the Commercialization of shale.” Which was widely distributed and received the thumbs down from our good friends the bureaucrats. Their absolute response came nine months later in the form of negative $40 oil prices. Our conclusion is the only conclusion one can discern from this. The bureaucrats don’t understand business, and they don’t know what business it is they’re in. 

Industrial Command & Control

Throughout the Preliminary Specification we've discussed our solution to one of the premier issues the oil & gas industry faces. That being the demand for earth science and engineering effort per barrel of oil is increasing with each barrel produced. This is best represented in the steep escalation of the costs involved in the exploration and production of oil & gas. At the same time the critical earth science and engineering resources are somewhat fixed and difficult to expand in the short or medium term. Add to that an anticipated retirement over the next twenty years of the current brain trust of the industry and the problem becomes a critical concern.

There are few short term solutions to the status quo volume of geologists and engineers over this period. It takes the better part of that time to train them to operate in the industry. Our resolution in the People, Ideas & Objects software applications modules involves what we’ve developed and called “Industrial Command & Control” (ICC) and application of specialization and the division of labor. Specialization and the division of labor are well known as principles of economics that bring about greater amounts of economic productivity from the same volume of resources. Given that the volume of earth science and engineering resources are known for the foreseeable future, specialization and the division of labor will provide us with a tangible means in which to potentially increase the capability, capacity and productivity of the oil & gas industry, yielding multiples of today’s performance over the long term. With software defining and supporting organizations, today’s producers must approach a heightened level of specialization and division of labor through the use of software in broadly dispersed North American markets.

People, Ideas & Objects ICC involves the implementation of specialization and the division of labor in the fields of geology and engineering. Currently the necessity is that each producer firm acquires all the earth science and engineering capabilities to deal with the needs of their “operated” properties. Which creates capacities and capabilities for these scarce resources that are deployed “just-in-time” for the full scope of these sciences in-house. When each producer within the industry pursues this same strategy, inefficiencies of these critical resources are introduced as a result of the method of organization built into the industries overall capacity and capabilities. Leaving resource utilization rates lower due to the volume of unused and unusable resources locked in each producer firm. 

What is proposed through the People, Ideas & Objects software application modules ICC is that the producer's operational strategy avoids the “operator” concept and begins “pooling” these technical resources through each of their partnerships represented in their Joint Operating Committees. That way the inefficiencies that would have been present in the industry can be made available and used through an industry wide, producer focused, advanced and advancing specialization and division of labor. Where many of the lower end processes are offloaded to service providers who specialize in that basic skill on behalf of many producers, a geographical area or other specialization. And each individual producer focuses on a specialized element of the science as it develops and they innovate upon that. It is People, Ideas & Objects belief that producers will soon be unable to commercially support the full scale of engineering and earth science disciplines tasks and responsibilities as they have, in house. This will be due to the shortages of resources, the cost escalation of these resources in the market due to their shortages, the expansion of demand from higher production volumes, the demands for more science in each incremental barrel of oil produced, the anticipated, substantial expansion of the sciences and the need to innovate upon that expanding science.

What these concepts demand is what the Security & Access Control module is designed to provide through the ICC. The People, Ideas & Objects system must provide access to the right person at the right time and the right place with the right authority and the right information. With the ICC there will also be a manner in which the technical and all the resources that have been pooled from the producers, interact with the appropriate governance, compliance and industry standard chain of command.

Before the hierarchy which was a commercial development of the 20th century, there was only the military structure in terms of large organizations. The main difference between the two is rather subtle but significant. A military structure is much broader and flatter than the hierarchy. That is one of the ideals that we are seeking, but the more important feature is the ability for the chain of command to span multiple internal and external organizational structures and to move resources from different areas of the military through standardization.

The nature of the people working through the industry standard chain of command layered over the Joint Operating Committee will include all of the disciplines involved in oil & gas. The contributions of staff, financial and technical resources will include all those that are employed by the industry today. I could foresee many of the office buildings being refurbished to accommodate the staff of a single JOC of a large property. There the staff from the different producers may be seconded to work for the JOC, working at a single JOC or more, not at any particular producer firm.

As background we should recall that each individual would have different access levels and authorizations in terms of access to People, Ideas & Objects ERP systems. Assuming different roles and responsibilities would impose different access levels to data, information, processes and functionality. On top of that, the Security & Access Control module is the key module for imposing the Industrial Command & Control throughout the People, Ideas & Objects application modules. This structure, particularly in a Joint Operating Committee, would work to weave the multiple producer firms under one industry standard chain of command. It also provides an interface to ensure the coverage of all the processes were “manned” to ensure compliance, governance and overall completeness of the process.

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 & gas industry with the most profitable means of oil & gas operations, everywhere and always. Setting the foundation for profitable North American energy independence, everywhere and always. 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? We know we can, and we know how to make money in this business. 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. Please join our community on Twitter @piobiz. Anyone can contact me at 713-965-6720 in Houston or 587-735-2302 in Calgary, or email me here.

Revisions to the Executive Summary Part 5

Analytics & Statistics and Performance Evaluation

The Performance Evaluation and Analytics & Statistics modules have similar interfaces, the Performance Evaluation is focused on the Joint Operating Committee and the Analytics & Statistics module is focused on the producer firm. Essentially these are user based tools that enable analytical and statistical calculations run against the data and information that are contained within the People, Ideas & Objects ERP systems and other unstructured data they either manage or wish to access. Providing their users with the ability to analyze data in new and innovative ways in seeking value for their firm or Joint Operating Committee. They will be used predominantly by the people who are in the oil & gas producers, the Joint Operating Committees and People, Ideas & Objects user communities service providers on a daily basis. Although the service providers will have access to a very small number of data attributes, only those data elements associated with the individual process they manage, they will have access to the entire industry's population of that data.

The types of data and information that are prepared and presented in these modules is dependent on the individual users and will in most instances be unique, based on their needs and interests, their scope of authority and the type of work they do. When it comes to who will come up with the next great innovation we should expect that it will come from anywhere. Part of the process of innovation is discovery of the problem and we all see the situation from different perspectives. Therefore the point of view and the innovation will depend to a large extent on those different perspectives. Someone working in the trenches may find innovations that affect their work materially, which may not interest others and vice-versa. This process of discovery should be assisted by the types of tools that include the Performance Evaluation and Analytics & Statistics modules. Professor Giovanni Dosi notes.

Thus, I shall discuss the sources of innovation opportunities, the role of markets in allocating resources to the exploration of these opportunities and in determining the rates and directions of technological advances, the characteristics of the processes of innovative search, and the nature of the incentives driving private agents to commit themselves to innovation.

Irrespective of the source of the innovation the fact that it materially affects someone's work should indicate that it should be followed through. These opportunities are hard to discover and we need to be able to evaluate them and assess them based on their impact and their ability to build value. What sometimes appears to be a good idea can also sometimes become an area where the firm could be exposed to unnecessary risk or loss. Having access to the historical data available is necessary, however, in the 21st century it is also necessary to have these advanced analytical tools available to analyze that data.

In the Preliminary Research Report, People Ideas & Objects determined two important findings. One was the process of innovation can be reduced to a quantifiable and replicable process. Analytical tools are part of that process. The Preliminary Specification sets the industry, producer firms and Joint Operating Committees on this foundation of a dynamic, innovative, accountable and profitable industry. And two, that the Joint Operating Committee is the key organizational framework for innovation in the oil & gas industry. Therefore having analytical tools in the Joint Operating Committee and producer firm are critical.

Within the Preliminary Specification we have also identified that many of the data elements within the Joint Operating Committee are public in nature. Production volumes and how wells were drilled are generally released into the market soon after they’re obtained. In terms of proprietary data there is less of an issue with respect to the data contained within the Joint Operating Committee. It is not to suggest that this removes the need to have the highest levels of security on all aspects of this data. Only to identify that the data within these two distinct organizations are fundamentally different. Within the producer itself there are many attributes that are unique and considered the proprietary technologies and understandings that make them what they are. The value discussed within the Preliminary Specification of the treatment of data and access builds significant value for all concerned. Participation is necessary throughout the industry. The issues and opportunities are not resolved here and won’t be resolved until such time as the user community studies and determines the manner in which it is handled. Today’s existing producers, should they survive their own self-inflicted destruction, may want to relate their concerns and also participate with the user community to ensure that their concerns are considered.

Work in the 21st Century will be different. The tools that people will use will need to be different as well. The Performance Evaluation and Analytics & Statistics modules are the beginning of these new era tools for the way in which people need to work. We frequently speak of specialization and the division of labor in the Preliminary Specification. There is also a specialization and division of labor between what the people and computers will be doing and that is reflected here in these two modules. Computers will be responsible for the storage and processing, and people will be responsible for the leadership, problem solving, issue identification, research, thinking, ideas, design, planning, decisions, creating, negotiating, compromising, collaborating, the innovation and the many other things we do well. Much of these things are generated based on the facts that will be determined through the use of the Performance Evaluation and Analytics & Statistics modules.

Compliance & Governance

Compliance & Governance, the module everyone loves to hate. It is my hypothesis that it is here, at compliance and governance, that everything went wrong. What I mean by that is in the 1960’s when the first computers were being introduced into oil & gas companies. The question was asked what we will do with them. And of course one of the answers was accounting. Then as they became ever more powerful and more capable they began to add more tasks to their duties and added the natural follow-on concerns of tax, royalty and compliance. Soon the culture became focused on those “compliance” requirements of the “firm” and the Joint Operating Committee became something that was used over there. Soon after this, engineers and geologists began speaking a different language to the “business” types. Divisions grew and the business of the business was focused on the corporation and its need to file the appropriate paperwork to the appropriate agency in the appropriate time frame on the appropriate colored form.

Anyway the real business of the business, the Joint Operating Committee somehow survived and if we align its legal, financial, operational decision making, cultural, communication, strategic and innovation frameworks to the compliance and governance frameworks of the hierarchy everyone can start speaking the same language as the engineers and geologists and start to get some real business done. And as People, Ideas & Objects research has shown this would provide the oil & gas producer with greater speed, innovation, accountability and profitability.

Compliance & Governance is the eleventh module in the thirteenth module Preliminary Specification. It’s also no accident that I added Compliance & Governance as one of the last, as the question that should be asked is. How are we going to ensure compliance to all the regulations for all the module specifications that we have discussed so far? And I would assert that is why these are user based developments. But seriously, one thing governments seem to be fond of today is regulations on oil & gas companies. With Information Technology enabling various governments to issue technical business rules, technical specifications, XBRL syntax’s and other technological frameworks for these regulations. The ability to write these “frameworks” only seems to have encouraged them to write even more regulations. The larger point is that these frameworks do provide software developers with distinct advantages in enabling the regulations within the software.

As we’ve indicated earlier regarding the user communities determination of the scope of the People, Ideas & Objects application. Part of that determination of scope will include which regulations it will need to be in compliance too. With so many jurisdictions requiring compliance, each transaction may need to be assured to be in compliance with multiple jurisdictions. Add to that the transaction may be generated through a Joint Operating Committee owned by a variety of producers. And those producers may be composed from an international background and the Compliance & Governance module takes on an enhanced importance.

From the point of view of a producer, maintaining the database and applications for all of the compliance frameworks that you have to be concerned with is a difficult task. The number of people you need to have to keep your applications up to date is significant. However, People, Ideas & Objects, as one software developer acting on behalf of the industry as a whole, the job becomes much more specialized and therefore manageable. Then again if we were building these applications with the purpose of serving an industry we would use the division of labor and specialization to manage these tasks in a way that would significantly lower the costs of compliance, and increase the quality of the producers compliance.

I foresee just the royalty compliance requirements of these applications potentially including many dozens of different jurisdictions. To approach this from a software engineering point of view as a sole producer is not cost effective in the least. To consider these costs are replicated across each producer firm, then we begin to see the costs of compliance escalating to the levels that they are today. There is another way, and that is what is being proposed here in People, Ideas & Objects and referenced earlier as Professor Paul Romer’s “Endogenous Technical Change” paper where he introduced non-rival services and sharing. Along with the many other innovative ways we’re proposing to deal with the issues of the oil & gas industry such as the service providers Cloud Administration & Accounting for oil & gas offering.

Here we have the beginnings of compliance and governance for the innovative oil & gas producer and Joint Operating Committee. What we need to do is to deal with the compliance of an innovative oil & gas producer with the tools of the 21st century. Those include automation, specialization and the division of labor. And in terms of governance, we can begin to provide the producer firm with the appropriate operational governance that is consistent with the demands of innovation. For we’ve learned that innovation does not arise from sloppy compliance and governance.

Blockchain Module

We were able to write our twelfth module into the Preliminary Specification in 2018. It is the first module that is technologically focused. All of the other modules, including the Security & Access Control are focused on the business of the oil & gas industry and producer, as viewed through the Joint Operating Committee. Therefore the Blockchain module provides the blockchain technology to all the other modules of the Preliminary Specification. Included within the Blockchain module itself there is detailed discussion of how each of the other modules is affected by this technology and how I expect it will be implemented. This will be in its initial implementation and it would be expected to become more robust as the years pass. I see blockchain as a must have Information Technology that will need to be the base of the ERP systems that industries will require. I also expect and anticipate throughout the development of the Preliminary Specification our user community will be able to define the use of the technology in a more effective and efficient way. This is due to the relatively “new” aspects of the technology and its current rapid developments and adoption.

In terms of understanding this new Information Technology Don Tapscott, who has been a leader in the field of businesses adoption of Information Technology. Has taken a leading role in the understanding and implementation of blockchain technology. He is a co-founder of the Blockchain Research Institute who’s participation includes most of the companies that are involved in business and Information Technology and has robust support from all industries. Here’s an introductory video that we used in the Preliminary Specifications Blockchain module.

See "Understand Blockchain in Under 7 Minutes: Don Tapscott" below.

The key takeaway from this video is the concept of a “shared network state.” Which accurately describes the perspective and point of view that People, Ideas & Objects have created with the Joint Operating Committee as the key organizational construct of the dynamic, innovative, accountable and profitable oil & gas industry and producer. As a result everything within the industry becomes a shared network state based on the glue that holds it all together, the Preliminary Specification ERP software. The producers themselves are stripped down versions of what they are today. Their earth science and engineering capabilities, and land and asset base are highlighted and focused upon as their key competitive advantages. Their working interests in the Joint Operating Committees are supported through the service industry through our three marketplace modules and have a far more involved and appropriate relationship with the producers and Joint Operating Committees. Bringing the service industry in as partners in terms of the development of how the field operations will develop from here. The administrative and accounting resources are reallocated to service providers that are established by the People, Ideas & Objects user community members, who have the power and control over how the Preliminary Specification’s software is developed, and are therefore also involved in the day-to-day of the service providers who provide our software and their services to the producers and Joint Operating Committees. Trust, transactions, agreements, vision and direction are understood and implemented throughout this “shared network state” and the industry is therefore able to move forward into what is unquestionably the most difficult future in a dynamic, innovative, accountable and profitable manner.

What we are finding is that the People, Ideas & Objects approach to the oil & gas marketplace is becoming the more common sense approach as each day passes. Our approach being that we provide the software and indirectly the administrative and accounting services to the entire industry with one solution, or as we’ve described it as Cloud Administration & Accounting for oil & gas. Our approach is to mitigate the software development costs that are incurred today by each and every producer to conduct the same non-competitive attributes of accounting and administrative tasks as the producer across the street. These costs are replicated across the industry to develop the same capabilities at each and every producer. Costs and capabilities that are not shared and are unshareable. These software development costs, in addition to the overhead incurred in accounting and administration, are a major detriment to the industries ability to be profitable and maintain some measure of control over their costs.

The difficulties that Information Technologies and their infrastructures are presenting are new challenges that each producer has to face. There are now business challenges, which the Preliminary Specification addresses, that are also presenting issues where the administrative, accounting and Information Technology costs are escalating further for each and every producer. Don Tapscott calls the “shared network state,” which is appropriate, that a producer as an island unto itself is no longer functional in a world where the future oil & gas industry needs to be. We had always argued that the costs of the Preliminary Specification would be lower than what the industry would incur collectively as individual producers. What we have to undertake from an industry point of view will increase our costs, however the base functionality of our applications would need to be put together and maintained by each and every producer. The push back from industry on our thinking here has been that the scope and scale of the application was too large to be successful. If that were the case, then how do they propose to build the same functionality within their organization with the budgets that a profitable producer can allocate? People, Ideas & Objects issues arise from scope and scale in terms of implementation. Administration, accounting and Information Technology may be claimed to be a competitive advantage of a few producers, but it shouldn’t.

Artificial Intelligence

There are those that demand we add a module to accommodate the new technologies around the initiatives of Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence. I’m a proponent of Machine Learning as it has been applied throughout the Oracle product line to add value for their customers. People, Ideas & Objects et al will be a benefactor of those products and services as they are features of their core products such as the operating system and database. I am not enamored with the ideas around Artificial Intelligence and do not see much value being generated from it. However, it is early days and there will be innovations in both the technology and those that will employ it here in this module against the producers ERP systems, data and information. In that sense this module will provide the Security & Access Control features and functions for those that expect to build value from these areas. We will provide the frameworks and tools necessary for them to do their work and will have these develop in their natural fashion. 

One of the reasons that I have a negative perception about these technologies is another quote from Winston Churchill when he was asked in 1942 what he thought should be done in terms of post war planning. 

I hope these speculative studies will be entrusted to those on whose hands time hangs heavy, and that we shall not overlook Mrs. Glasse’s Cookery Book recipe for jugged hare -- ‘First catch your hare.’

We have much to do to rebuild the oil & gas industry brick by brick, and stick by stick. Focusing on that and ensuring the efforts that are necessary to do so are secured is our first priority. This module is therefore placed here to ensure that we will benefit from anything these technologies may offer during the rebuilding process.

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 & gas industry with the most profitable means of oil & gas operations, everywhere and always. Setting the foundation for profitable North American energy independence, everywhere and always. 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? We know we can, and we know how to make money in this business. 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. Please join our community on Twitter @piobiz. Anyone can contact me at 713-965-6720 in Houston or 587-735-2302 in Calgary, or email me here. 

Revisions to the Executive Summary Part 4

Accounting Voucher

We now shift our attention to the Accounting Voucher module. The interactions between the Accounting Voucher and the Partnership Accounting modules of the Preliminary Specification are naturally quite significant. Both being accounting modules, it’s natural that they have high levels of integration. The Accounting Voucher is unique in that it brings to the producer the ability to design transactions and the Material Balance Report. These are not innovations that the producer will use to become more innovative but are provided to ensure that the innovative producer's processes are actively defined and supported throughout the People, Ideas & Objects application modules. When the business is a science, as it is in oil & gas, it is in the producer's interest to remain open and flexible in both its scientific and business approach. The Accounting Voucher and Partnership Accounting modules provide that organizational flexibility. The manner in which these two modules operate is the Accounting Voucher captures the transactions. Partnership Accounting reports on the transactions. Accounting Vouchers remain open for one accounting period and are subject to the same closing process that is familiar and traditional in the accounting world. A Joint Operating Committee will have many Accounting Vouchers each month. Examples include both the Material Balance Report and Work Order. The Material Balance Report and others will also form templates for subsequent months with persistent memory of the prior months fixed variables.

We’ve noted in the summary of the Partnership Accounting module how the Work Order enabled producers to form and participate in working groups. Providing flexibility in participating and accounting for these working groups. This flexibility is what is being sought after in the rest of the producer firm and Joint Operating Committee from both of these accounting modules. Elimination of the bureaucratic inertia that impedes these activities today makes these modules critical to a producer's innovation as much as the Research & Capabilities or Knowledge & Learning modules will.

The People, Ideas & Objects Accounting Voucher Module will provide the means for the application to “manage the disparate inter-dependencies of modularity theory and Transaction Cost Economics.” That is a summary application of Professor Baldwin's comments and theories. And therefore this Accounting Voucher is one of the key cross roads to all other modules in the People, Ideas & Objects Preliminary Specification. What this means is that it's necessary for people to cease, by way of automation, in just processing and recording transactions and move toward the definition and design of transactions to optimize the business of the producer and Joint Operating Committees performance. Designing transactions is best described in the Preliminary Specification as coordinating the marketplace.

As a result of the pooling concept that is a basic assumption that was developed for People, Ideas & Objects Preliminary Specification. Some of the Accounting Vouchers will be open to charges from multiple producers represented in the Joint Operating Committees that a producer firm is a participant in. The revenue, capital and operations of each of the Joint Operating Committees accounts are open to the direct debit and credit charges of all of the participants in the Joint Operating Committee. The pooling concept has been developed as a replacement to the “operator” designation that currently exists. This is a necessity as a result of the ability for each producer, as a properties designated operator, to have the just-in-time capabilities available for all the properties they operate, demand that they have a surplus capacity, or as we describe them as unused and unusable earth science and engineering capabilities and capacity. The ability to pool these critical resources from participating producers of the Joint Operating Committee enables each producer to use specialization and the division of labor to expand the industries capabilities and throughput capacity and releases these hoarded unused and unusable capabilities. This pooling concept also implies that producers will provide resources to the property in disproportionate amounts to their working interests, with any over or under participation equalized monthly. 

Producers need to contribute the skills, knowledge, experience and ideas that they have in an innovative oil & gas industry. Each of these producers within a Joint Operating Committee will have the ability to charge their earth science and engineering capabilities to the joint account. Opening a secondary revenue stream for all producers, being the deployment of their earth science and engineering capabilities to their Joint Operating Committees and to other producers who may be looking to augment their specialized capabilities. All charges are subject to the AFE, lease, budget and cost control requirements which remain the domain of the producers participating in the Joint Operating Committees.

Professor Dosi (1988) states that profit motivated agents must involve both “the perception of some sort of opportunity and an effective set of incentives.” (p. 1135) Professor Dosi introduces the theory of Schmookler (1966) and asks “are the observed inter-sectoral differences in innovative investment the outcome of different incentive structures, different opportunities or both”? (p. 1135) Schmookler believed in differing degrees of economic activity derived from the same innovative inputs. It is People, Ideas & Objects assertion that the “different incentive structures” and “different opportunities” are facilitated or constrained by the administrative ease in which the producer operates. If the producer is confident that the deal that was conceived is accurately captured in the Accounting Voucher and associated modules of the Preliminary Specification. And the operation is subsequently reporting a substantial, actual profit. Then they know that their innovations are working, their systems are working and the alignment of the legal, financial, operational decision making, cultural, communication, innovation, strategic, compliance and governance frameworks is achieved. This is in addition to the other four Organizational Constructs inherent in the design of the Preliminary Specification. 

Research & Capabilities

The Research & Capabilities module enables the producer firm to structure a division of labor between those people that develop the research and innovations within the producer firm (Research & Capabilities), and those that will implement the innovations within the Joint Operating Committees (Knowledge & Learning). This is one of the major processes of innovation that are carried out in the Preliminary Specification. Another major process is that it provides the innovative oil & gas producer with the ability to move the knowledge and capabilities to where the decision rights are held. This module is at the core of the innovative oil & gas producer. Identifying and supporting the key elements of “what” and “how” innovation requires. The Research & Capabilities module is the focus of the producers' competitive advantages of how they are able to develop and deploy their earth science and engineering capabilities. What we’ve learned about capabilities is that they are the “knowledge, skills, experience and ideas.” And that “knowledge begets capabilities, and capabilities beget action.” This being part of the cure that People, Ideas & Objects, our user community and their service provider organizations are applying to resolve the producers chronic inaction.

There are a variety of interfaces in the Research & Capabilities module that enable and encourage innovation, and develop the capabilities of the producer firm. These capabilities are ultimately captured in the “Dynamic Capabilities Interface” which is the key to both the Research & Capabilities and Knowledge & Learning modules. What the “Dynamic Capabilities Interface” does is capture, document and enable the deployment of the capabilities of the producer firm. These are the knowledge, skills, experience and ideas of the firm. The deployment of these capabilities is by way of their pertinent geological zone, or geographical area, etc. and as a result these capabilities will be populated into the various Joint Operating Committees that meet that criteria in the Knowledge & Learning module. It will be each of the producers within the Joint Operating Committee that will be populating the Knowledge & Learning module in this manner. It is important to note that the information that is documented is the explicit knowledge that has been developed regarding that producer's capabilities and innovations. The tacit knowledge is the capabilities and capacities that are inherent in the producer's competitive advantage. 

The far more valuable tacit knowledge can not be captured by any medium. It is resident in the earth science and engineering resources of the producer firms that are referenced and documented through the explicit knowledge of their Research & Capabilities module and form the distinct competitive advantage of the producer. Just as our user community has the ability to capture the explicit knowledge of the oil & gas industry and codify that in the Preliminary Specifications ERP software. It is their tacit knowledge they’ll deploy through their service provider organizations. Offering People, Ideas & Objects software and their services as the comprehensive explicit and tacit knowledge solution that producers and Joint Operating Committees require. Ensuring the producer is dynamic, innovative, accountable and profitable everywhere and always on the North American continent.

An objective that we are fulfilling in the Research & Capabilities and Knowledge & Learning module is we are moving the knowledge to where the decision rights are held. The Joint Operating Committee is the operational decision making framework of the industry. With the current method of designating one of the producers in the Joint Operating Committee as the operator there is an attempt to move the decision rights of the Joint Operating Committee to where the knowledge resides. In the Preliminary Specification we have eliminated the concept of operator and replaced it with the pooling concept and therefore we are able to align the legal, financial, operational decision making, cultural, communication, innovation and strategic frameworks of the Joint Operating Committee with the compliance and governance framework of the producer firm. Providing us with a speed, accountability and profitability that is missing and unavailable in the current organizational structures. This therefore will require that we move the knowledge to where the decision rights are held. By doing so we eliminate a major point of conflict between the partnership represented in the Joint Operating Committee and the producer designated as operator.

The Research & Capabilities module of the Preliminary Specification provides the means in which the producer is able to take their inventory of shut-in wells, which are those wells that have been shut-in as a result of their inability to produce a profit. And determine if there are means within the capabilities of the producers earth science and engineering resources to move the property back into profitable production. It is also a testing ground where the focus is on the issues at hand. Where the testing and application of new ideas can be developed and determined, if they are successful. Where those successful ideas can be developed fully within the producer's earth science and engineering resources capabilities in order to successfully replicate the new methods across the entire producer's production profile. Test, prove, develop then deploy. Making mistakes will always occur in an innovative process. And if the innovations were to have failed, which is the precursor to success, these will be documented in this interface so as to provide the organizational learning from that failure, not replicate it. The division of labor between the Research & Capabilities and Knowledge & Learning modules ensures that these new procedures are fully proven, documented and deployed successfully. And the producer doesn’t have everyone attempting to be innovative in an environment where things may be learned over and over again at great cost and disruption. It is these processes of innovation that are captured throughout the Preliminary Specification, based on the primary research of those listed in our bibliography, that will ensure that the costs of oil & gas exploration and production remain cost effective for consumers.

Please note the proprietary information contained within these documents is copyrightable and the process of putting them within the Research & Capabilities module is an act of publication. The Research & Capabilities module from a technical perspective is implemented using blockchain technology. It is in that way that the control of the information can be managed. Any additions or deletions to the information will be aggregated in the interface as a result of reading subsequent blocks in the chain that amend the information. 

Knowledge & Learning

We now move onto the Joint Operating Committee focused Knowledge & Learning module of the Preliminary Specification. This module shares many similarities to the Research & Capabilities module, and in fact is populated with the capabilities from the “Dynamic Capabilities Interface” as its base of information. Recall that one of the objectives that we’re working to achieve is to move the knowledge to where the decision rights are held, the Joint Operating Committee. As noted, the Research & Capabilities module organizes each of the producer's knowledge based on geologic zones, geographical areas, etc. This is so that the information that is pertinent to each zone can be separated into its own “packaging” within the Knowledge & Learning module. Additional ways in which data may be sorted in the Research & Capabilities module might include vendor geographical location, conventional or unconventional, drilling, completion, etc. 

With each Joint Operating Committee being concerned with one or a handful of geologic zones. The focus of the Joint Operating Committee can be limited to just those specific areas and or capabilities. What is particularly different about the Knowledge & Learning module, however, is that the information that is contained within the module is aggregated from multiple producers. Any of the producer participants within that Joint Operating Committee who have pertinent information contained within their Research & Capabilities module will have that data and information for those geologic zones, geographical regions etc, of that specific Joint Operating Committee populating the Knowledge & Learning module for that property.

With the potential to have multiple companies' contributions of research and capabilities about that zone. It is important to have the information organized within the Knowledge & Learning modules in a manner that when the multiple producers data is merged, use of the data is possible. Each capability contains the knowledge, skills, experience and ideas of the people who are part of that producer firm and the service industry representatives. People, Ideas & Objects have developed the football analogy where the operational decision makers are presented with a list of these capabilities in the "Dynamic Capabilities Interface" and can select and deploy them in much the same fashion as the head coach in a football game.

As we have learned “knowledge begets capability, and capability begets action." Quotes are from Professor Richard Langlois book “The Dynamics of Industrial Capitalism: Schumpeter, Chandler and the New Economy.”

Indeed, the job of the entrepreneur is precisely to introduce new knowledge. The “Circular Flow of Economic Life” is a state in which knowledge is not changing. Economic growth occurs at the hands of entrepreneurs, who bring into the system knowledge that is qualitatively new – knowledge not contained in the existing economic configuration. p. 27

Here we begin to see the role that people take in the makeup of the oil & gas industry. And to sum it up is to state that it’s everything. One also needs to consider the role of computers in these “actions” and that it amounts to not very much. People, Ideas & Objects divides the jobs between what people do well, the thinking, generation of ideas, leadership, collaborating, deciding learning, etc and leaves the memory and processing to computers.

There has to be a mechanism by which new knowledge enters the system. And that mechanism cannot be rational calculation, for as David Hume (1978, p. 164) long ago observed, “no kind of reasoning can give rise to a new idea.” p. 27

There is much to be done in the oil & gas industry and a lot of it involves blazing new trails. The hard work is what the people will need to be involved in doing. The challenges and opportunities are of historical significance and will require the dedication of a lot of people.

What has been done already has the sharp-edged reality of all things which we have seen and experienced; the new is only a figment of our imagination. Carrying out a new plan and acting according to a customary one are things as different as making a road and walking along it. p. 27

The Research & Capabilities and Knowledge & Learning modules work hand in hand to provide the producer firms and Joint Operating Committees with an innovative footing. One that does not replicate errors continuously and learn what was already learned last year, and the year before or just over there. Providing a structure that ensures that innovation is the focus and results of the activities that drive not only profitability across the continent, but ensures that costs are managed in a manner that provides consumers with the lowest possible costs of oil & gas exploration and production.

People, Ideas & Objects appreciate industries' concern with documenting, publishing and adopting this method of operation. The conclusion regarding the Research & Capabilities and Knowledge & Learning modules is that the producers “knowledge begets capability, and capability begets action.” It is in the successful implementation of the exploration and production processes upon their land and asset base that producers will be competitive. The point of operational excellence is the producer's focus and concern. Ownership of the recipe or music doesn’t make anyone a world class chef or conductor. Just as ownership of the methods and means of how and what the field, engineering or earth science vendors disciplines and offerings are does not provide for a profitable oil & gas producer. What is necessary is to be able to effectively, efficiently and successfully coordinate these resources in the manner that are necessary for the dynamic, innovative, accountable and profitable oil & gas producers to compete. The evidence of this is in the fact that the service industry extends the producer firms geographical and technical capabilities, using their latest innovations and dynamic resources and are active in their marketplace which provides for the oil & gas industry. Where those that provide producers with their products and services are from the most innovative and dynamic providers where there are thick and prosperous markets available for those providers to compete and satisfy their customers, the oil and gas producers. The choice is quite simple, producers can participate in these markets or extend their internal domain to provide for all that they need. This is not to suggest to the producer bureaucrats that would be a viable business model. 

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 & gas industry with the most profitable means of oil & gas operations, everywhere and always. Setting the foundation for profitable North American energy independence, everywhere and always. 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? We know we can, and we know how to make money in this business. 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. Please join our community on Twitter @piobiz. Anyone can contact me at 713-965-6720 in Houston or 587-735-2302 in Calgary, or email me here.