OCI Service Providers

 Members of the 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 manages an individual process within the Preliminary Specifications software. Service providers administer and account for North American oil and gas producers. People, Ideas & Objects Cloud Administration & Accounting for Oil & Gas software and services will be delivered to producers in combination with our user community members' role and direct involvement in their service provider organization. Therefore these service providers will be able to innovate and iteratively change their managed processes software and services to keep up with the changing needs of producers. 

Cloud Administration & Accounting for Oil & Gas is the sub-industry we provide 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. Firstly, service providers make producers' costs variable, based on profitability. Enabling them to shut-in any unprofitable production and ensuring profitability everywhere and always. Service providers are therefore the means to generate the critical elements of the Preliminary Specifications value proposition. Making producer overhead expenses variable. Variable based on profitable production. When each producer is tasked with building, maintaining and operating the exact, 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 can more effectively deal with the complexity of these environments when they are done on a shared basis.

An operational service provider will manage 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 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,” “how” and “why” of a service provider in the People, Ideas & Objects Preliminary Specification. 

Managing the entire North American producer population as the process domain would initially be challenging. The approach to the process would be fundamentally different from that currently done by a junior oil & gas company or ExxonMobil. Even they don’t come close to the scale of the proposed volume of transactions for a service provider. Therefore the need to design the process within our user community on the basis of this revised organizational method will have been determined. This is due to the service provider's early participation in the People, Ideas & Objects user community. Our user communities research will determine the level of specialization and division of labor for the people involved in each process. It will also determine the tasks to be done. Both individually and from a global perspective in terms of application functionality.

Participation in our user community will continue for service provider principals. This is due to People, Ideas & Objects establishing the software development and user community as permanent capabilities in the North American oil & gas industry. Society in general is now defined and supported, but also constrained by the software systems we use, particularly ERP software. Any change in our organizations must be made in software first. 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. Feedback from service providers is one of the primary reasons for constant development work on the systems and services provided by this sub-industry. To the benefit of oil & gas producers enhanced profitability, everywhere and always. 

In terms of how People, Ideas & Objects will allocate specific service provider licenses to a specific member of the user community. The contributions of the user community during the development process will be the determining factor. No one can look through all the submissions and allocate the appropriate license to the right individual. That would be a superhuman task. It is however well within the scope of what Artificial Intelligence can determine. The AI algorithm might review the Final Specification and identify the key attributes and contributions made to the system and by whom. It might then be able to look back and determine the first mention of these key contributions and the individual who originated them. 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 service providers licenses for their management. We have set aside a budget for the development of this algorithm from the moment People, Ideas & Objects are funded. The user community license provides each user community member with the exclusive right to manage a process domain 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 our user community.

It is on the basis of changing the relationship of how the producer accesses their administrative and accounting capabilities that we can enhance North American producers' profitability. 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. Unprofitable production is shut-in by the producer. Reducing the amount of the commodity on the market to ensure that the commodity is valued at its marginal price. At the same time, during a period that production is shut-in, reserves are held for a time when they can be produced profitably. Reserves costs don’t have to carry the cost of additional losses. The producer will not incur any production or storage costs as the reserves provide a much lower storage cost alternative. Due to the absence of revenue, royalties, operating costs or overhead costs, the property records a null operation. Then producers record the highest corporate profitability when unprofitable properties no longer dilute profitable properties' profits. Profitability is the only fair and reasonable method of production discipline. The lack of overhead costs on shut-in production is a feature of dealing with the administrative and accounting capabilities through these service providers. When the property is shut-in a service provider will receive no data or information from the People, Ideas & Objects task and transfer network. Without data the service provider will not be triggered to perform any tasks. Causing them to not render any administrative or accounting billing to that Joint Operating Committee for their services that month, as no services were rendered. Providing producers with a standard and objective accounting that ensures the evaluation of profitability was the same as all other properties.

The task and transfer network is a part of the Preliminary Specification that will be developed in a variety of different modules. It offers the means to introduce the levels of automation necessary for the service providers to efficiently process the oil & gas producers' operations. The task and transfer network enables automation of the process and is a key tool set for service providers. Cloud Administration & Accounting for Oil & Gas provides service providers with tools such as specialization, the division of labor, standardization, objectivity, and cloud computing. It is the application of these tools, and others, that service providers focus on in providing 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 in the producer's administrative and accounting operations. It is there that they can improve and enhance the process through the substantial toolset at their disposal. Key within that toolset is the People, Ideas & Objects software development capability and service providers' direct participation as user community members. And it is in that way that they can affect real change to ensure that their producer clients are provided with the most profitable means of oil & gas operations. Automation will be invoked at high levels to ensure that the most effective and efficient operations are provided to those producers participating in these developments. Relieving administrative and accounting resources to pursue higher value added opportunities. Reduction of costs in this sense is a worthwhile pursuit, not from the point of view of the reduction of costs itself. Cost reduction requires high levels of automation. Automation does not just reduce costs directly it does so indirectly through error reduction. Error reduction reduces time.

Producer officers and directors are well versed in developing viable scapegoats to justify not implementing the Preliminary Specification. Their most successful argument is the price maker strategy is collusion. What has been standard business practice in all other industries since the great depression is considered collusion? 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 by the fact that service providers will charge their costs of administration and accounting directly to the Joint Operating Committee. Monthly allocations for depletion based on oil & gas needs to compete on today's capital markets. Determine which properties are profitable and make the decision to shut-in any unprofitable ones. This is not collusion, but can best be described as business. Why would anyone in any industry continue to produce unprofitable assets? To refute the claims made in the Preliminary Specification producers 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 caused is now permanent. In 2022, we saw that the rest of the global industry is active whereas North American producers seem to have been forgotten.

I raise this point as many of their arguments on the details regarding the Preliminary Specification might be valid if we did not consider them. Their arguments are specious on their face and in theory could provide them with an endless supply of reasons not to do anything. This seems to form part of their overall “do nothing” business model. The Preliminary Specification is derivative of the research I conducted and the experience I gained working in oil & gas. No one 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 development, and our user community members are the principles behind each service provider. The same pencil analogy applies to each user community member, however collectively we aim to cover the full spectrum of producers administration and accounting needs with broad industry 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 be motivated to participate by putting some skin in the game. And therefore prove to their shareholders and bankers that profitability is critical to the industry. 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 failed culture we see today. So producers must 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 decrees to those with a simple thumbs up or down gesture. However when people bring solutions to problems that they observe in producers' business it might be a better approach to show them the respect they deserve. This will enable them to see what they have. Share the producer's concerns and work together to resolve them. In an innovative industry the final solution is rarely found on the first iteration. It demands work, and most of all the difficult 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 producers in 2022 when the industry is profitable, possibly, and they're offered nothing. Much like investors today only believe in producers' dividend checks. This will demand efforts and financial commitments from producers and the belief in the status quo is unjustified. 

To call 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 within each producer involves many individuals. And in terms of costs it is estimated that producers annually incur over $10 billion in G&A costs across North America. This amount would be reallocated as revenues to the service providers. A significant change in the oil & gas industry. Incremental value is generated based on the ability of service providers to exercise real economic growth through the toolset of specialization and the division of labor. Providing enhanced performance throughput from the same $10+ 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 in-house.

Arguments against this change are self-serving in nature. Suggesting People, Ideas & Objects software and services scope and scale is too broad. However, the scope is well within their internal domain of what they can provide? Through the compliance requirements of the various government agencies, the sophistication of society and the needs of oil & gas producers partners? Individual producer budgets can manage this in a limited IT resource space?

The redundant, unshared and unshareable building of administrative and accounting requirements of an oil & gas producer is the secondary cause of the lack of real profitability in the oil & gas industry. They were instrumental in eliminating startup and small oil and gas producers from commercial operations long ago. Producers succeeded because of their capacity to raise capital, not because of their geological or engineering capabilities. We’re not far from the point where these demands on all producers exceed the expectation of reasonable overhead costs. The high throughput production model, the business model the industry is structured under, demands producers to produce at capacity at all times to cover their fixed overheads. Production at capacity leads to commodity price collapses since the first oil price collapse in July 1986. These collapses are creating systemic losses that will lead to the demise of the industry soon. Why do they destroy commodity prices just to cover overhead if overhead is not a material issue?

The lighter weight of producer organizations under the Preliminary Specification enables them to be dynamic, innovative, accountable, and profitable. Having the administrative and accounting handled by the service providers has left the C Suite executives, the engineering and earth science resources of the producer firm. In addition, it has left the land, some legal and support staff. With this smaller footprint, no matter the size of the production profile, the producer firm can focus on their key competitive advantages of their land & asset base and coordinate the market's earth science & 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 profitable production. Accessing this industry-wide Cloud Administration & Accounting for Oil & Gas capability will free each individual producer from the onerous and costly tasks of building the unshared and unshareable administrative and accounting capabilities they've created in-house. 

This will enable producers to focus on their business of generating value for shareholders. Why we need to focus on generating value and profitability for shareholders should be evident to everyone now that we've witnessed the performance of the status quo establishment's 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 producers' changes. Through user community participation and the People, Ideas & Objects software development capabilities the service provider can enable change in the software and processes. This will increase the producer firm's productivity and throughput. Changes made within the oil & gas producer itself, and changes to enhance the producers' key competitive capabilities can be handled by the service provider. This is to ensure their adoption into producers' processes. Enabling further specialization and division of labor within earth science & engineering disciplines. Something we suggest is necessary to address these critical resource shortfalls over the 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 

People, Ideas & Objects are undertaking a comprehensive project. That we would aspire to accomplish 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 due to what producers have done. Houston can barely decide which business they’re in. They were once the center of the global oil & gas industry. It's difficult to determine how they fit in today.

Now is the time to act. Time has been wasted and there are consequences of actions and inactions by good people that have much broader implications than we realize when they occur. As much as I belittle the status quo it’s obvious to everyone that inaction is in their DNA. We can't and shouldn't expect anything from them. They’ll continue to deny People, Ideas & Objects the development resources necessary. However that is not a reason to sit and watch this tumble further downwards. There should be no doubt about the need to rebuild the industry in my opinion. It will be far easier to rebuild than compromise and deal with today’s failed organizations. Compromising would enable us to get something that would not work. 

I have defined the market for our user community and their service provider organizations to fall within the domain of 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 operational, exploration, land, IT and traditional administration areas of the producers. And of course the accounting and regulatory processes associated with these. This is a data rich environment and the need to capture these in an ERP system is paramount. Today’s process of feeding multiple systems with the same data is due to the fact that these systems bridge different domains and conflict between the various 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 by our user community.

Oracle CloudWorld 2022 Conference

People, Ideas & Objects, our user community and their service provider organizations focus on the North American oil & gas producer marketplace. It is here that we have developed significant value through disintermediation and innovative business models. Covering the scope of what the unique aspects of oil & gas producers demand in North America. Oracle Cloud ERP provides a solid foundation of tier 1 ERP, which provides generic business process management. What our service providers are implementing is a microservices architecture which we won’t define here other than to say it is consistent with Oracle's overall product offerings. During 2022s Oracle CloudWorld conference it became clear that similar perspectives regarding the introduction of service providers have been adopted by Oracle. These perspectives are now applied by them to generic business processes. Just as People, Ideas & Objects have a number of interfaces in the Preliminary Specification entitled “Gap Filling," Oracle is now filling gaps within their generic business processes with a variety of service providers offering services with Oracle’s software. As a result, these generic business processes create significant value for dynamic, innovative, accountable, and profitable oil and gas producers. 

One example used at the Oracle CloudWorld 2022 conference was the agreement between Oracle and J.P. Morgan Chase. Where the bank's credit card can be used in conjunction with Oracle Cloud ERP to process the business related charges of employees on the basis of policies that determine if the cost incurred is eligible for reimbursement or not. If eligible, Oracle processes the employees' expense report based on the eligible charges for the month. It files it based on the company's policies, charges the employee for any unauthorized charges, pays the credit card, and posts the costs to the general ledger. Taking just milliseconds to file company wide expense reports. This will reduce the time and costs of thousands of man hours of filing, approving, recording and paying these for each employee. This is for even the smallest of firms. These types of service providers are now being actively developed by Oracle and will enhance the dynamic, innovative, accountable and profitable oil & gas producer on these generic business processes in the same way that People, Ideas & Objects our user community and most particularly their service provider organizations have been designed to do for oil & gas processes. 

An additional clarification of the distribution of oil & gas service providers is that we’re providing software and services to all of the oil & gas production produced in North America. Whether that is from Exxon or a startup it will not concern us. Just as it would not concern Oracle or J.P. Morgan Chase as to the size of the firm using their credit card or Oracle ERP software. 

Gap filling is the means of specialization and labor division. When a gap between two market offerings is seen, an entrepreneur can provide a product or service to fill that gap, thereby increasing productivity in society. In today’s advanced society we are constrained by softwares capabilities and the ability to fill gaps is the appropriate role that our user community, their service provider organizations and our software developers need to fill. One of the inherent benefits of this codification of oil & gas and Oracle’s generic business process management within Oracle Cloud ERP is that these processes become standardized and objective. A deviation from the firm's policies regarding expense report eligibility is clearly understood by the employee. The responsibility for any unauthorized costs will be undertaken by the employee based on that knowledge. On a larger scale People, Ideas & Objects, our user communities and their service provider organizations will undertake the full scope of accounting of the oil & gas producers' properties. When the property is determined through actual, factual accounting data that it is incurring a loss, the producers owning that property will know that property was assessed on the same standard and objective basis that all other properties were in North America. They will therefore be able to decide to shut-in that property with the clear understanding that they’ll enhance their corporate profits by not diluting them from that specific property losses, in addition to the many other benefits we’ve noted in the Preliminary Specification.

Another attribute discussed at the Oracle CloudWorld conference that benefits the oil & gas industry is the large Oracle community that exists and is growing through these initiatives. Oracle Cloud ERP is one of three tier 1 ERP solutions and is considered the premier system in many evaluations. Sales of their product these past few years have accelerated. The Installed base of users and service providers in that marketplace will benefit oil & gas producers and all those associated with People, Ideas & Objects. We are not reinventing the wheel. We are applying the appropriate tools that have been tried and tested across other industries and throughout the globe that have built value. We are becoming part of a much larger user community and service provider population. There are substantial benefits to being a dynamic, innovative, accountable and profitable oil and gas producer as a result of this. Safra Catz the CEO of Oracle was quoted as saying.

• Bold is the winning strategy.
• Moving slowly is dangerous.
• Innovation is scary but not risky.
• Oracle focuses on its customers.
• Culture and performance move together. 

Sentiment that matches 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 areas of concern under the SaaS delivery model. 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 how they will support producers within this model. Starting at the bottom and working our way up, we will 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 traditionally considered Information Technology domains. What People, Ideas & Objects consider to fall under the administrative role in the administration and accounting of our user community and their service provider organizations. From the book “IaaS for Dummies” page 8, John Wiley and Sons.

Data Centers, Networking, Storage and Servers

These form part of the Oracle Cloud ERP offering and are supported by their regions around the world. We have discussed briefly the method of incorporating the Preliminary Specification into the Oracle Cloud ERP offering. We will state that at this point we are implementing Oracles recommended method. We write 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. This is without impacting one another's code. Using Java's inheritance, polymorphism, and most importantly, encapsulation. 

These four base elements of a SaaS are determined by definition by the Oracle Cloud ERP user. Select the data center, processor, storage type and all configurations available. People, Ideas & Objects employ a microservices architecture that maps the service provider's single administrative or accounting process to the domain of concern. In the employment of specialization and division of labor we do not expect the service provider to conduct 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 manage elements of the SaaS offering on behalf of the population of other service providers.

Hyperspecialization demands that these types of service providers be created to support the community of service providers in IT and other areas of specialized needs. What is also demanded in this overall community are service providers that will coordinate the output of other service providers and deliver additional services. Consider for example how the month-long process, level of detail and broad scope of the Material Balance Report must come together. 

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 has published. The service provider may use these for managing or deploying the "month-end" processes, etc., as needed. Virtualization is a way of life in the cloud. It is evolving at a remarkable pace with future configurations and architectures of systems being derivatives of these technologies in some form or another. The core of Oracle Cloud ERP, including the modules in the Preliminary Specification, will be run on centralized servers in a more traditional sense. This is where microservices access their data and defer heavy processing. 

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. 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 a main server 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 needed. Using machine learning technologies, Oracle is taking their Linux operating system and most importantly their Database in an automated direction. By reviewing the logs of the database, changes can be made to the configuration and tune the database as necessary without human intervention. The work of our user communities service provider organizations 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. This is to ensure the most profitable oil and gas operations. They’ll have the motivation, the tools by way of access to the Preliminary Specifications Intellectual Property and our developers, but also exclusive access and attention to 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.

Reducing our Timelines for Commercial Release

 People, Ideas & Objects strives to reduce the time it takes to deliver the Preliminary Specification to North American producers. Chronic unprofitability is their largest cost. We recommend the following method for implementing Tier 1 ERP systems across North American oil & gas producers. As a result of this revised method, a producer will be closer to achieving the dynamic, innovative, accountable, and profitable footing to which we, our user community, and service providers are committed. In addition to reducing timelines, this change also improves quality. Increasing North American producers' ability to adapt to the radical changes in the Preliminary Specification. By switching to a two-step implementation process, IT infrastructure, such as People, Ideas & Objects, will be expanded to facilitate producer profitability.

A blog post on February 10, 2023 by People, Ideas & Objects highlighted Oracle Cloud ERP's Joint Venture Management module as an outstanding product. In my opinion, it was the best I had ever seen in oil & gas and something I recommend to producers. This post expands on that recommendation and suggests that all North American oil & gas producers begin integrating and implementing Oracle Cloud ERP. Implement and integrate Oracle Cloud ERP within the current fiscal year and complete it within the next 24 to 30 months. 

This is due to the following reasons. 

• By implementing Tier 1 ERP systems, producers will enhance compliance and governance and satisfy shareholders and potential investors. A specific demand from their investors. 
• Preliminary Specification. 
• While our software development begins, we will integrate Oracle Cloud ERP. Consequently, the time required for the Preliminary Specification to be released commercially will be reduced.
• The Oracle Cloud ERP configuration will be mapped to the Preliminary Specifications. Creating a phased approach to integration in two steps. 
• Reducing the trauma of radical cultural change.
• Subsidiary processes can be incorporated and data scrubbed in anticipation of their ultimate definition in the Preliminary Specification. 
• Implementation and use of higher level, generic business functions such as Oracle and J.P. Morgan Chase credit card examples that I’ve highlighted. Both Oracle and People, Ideas & Objects' user communities will reduce overhead and change costs to variable characteristics, so producers will benefit.
• Oracle
• Increased IT resources and focus allocated to oil and gas business issues.
• Building a residual infrastructure that supports and services producers more efficiently and effectively.
• Major pitfalls
• There is no change in producer budget costs. This process does not result in any savings. Industry difficulties can not be resolved through a cottage industry approach.
• Assuming full funding has been secured for the Preliminary Specification.
• Development of our user communities and their service provider organizations.
• Integration is the responsibility of our user communities service providers. 
• Producers are responsible for 100% of the costs of service providers.
•  The construction of redundant service provider infrastructure for replacement by our users' community service providers seems futile.   
• This may result in Oracle Cloud ERP being deemed satisfactory by producers and the Preliminary Specification incorrectly assumed to be redundant.
• In order to alleviate this problem, the Preliminary Specification should be fully funded as the first step of this process.

Officers and directors of producer firms have not accepted the enhanced value proposition of the Preliminary Specification. They claim our decentralized production model's price maker strategy is collusion, which it’s not. The worst case scenario is its overt collusion, which is legal. However most would consider it business as why would you continue to produce assets unprofitably for decades at a time? The majority of North American producers' annual reports have achieved a "Critical Audit Matter in Depreciation, Depletion, and Amortization of Proven Oil and Gas Properties."

People, Ideas & Objects have always restated the well known fact that overreported assets produce equal amounts of overreported profitability. Overreported profitability attracts investors seeking returns. When overinvestment leads to overproduction, the price of a commodity that is a price maker collapses and remains below the break even price for the long term. Even so, the producers failed to report these highly unprofitable operations, and their auditors failed to raise a "Critical Audit Matter" before the horse bolted. Oil & gas producers can report profits everywhere when overhead, interest, and in PennWest's case, as they are the only firm investigated by the SEC, operating costs are all capitalized.

Furthermore, they claim that enhanced profitability is nothing more than opportunity costs of the business and that businesses shouldn't pursue them. One of us may be misunderstanding the term "business" if selling natural gas at 40 to 1 when its traditional heating value basis is 6 to 1. When OPEC+ can take 1% of the oil from the market which raises the price 6%, one of us is misinterpreting what an economic "price maker" is. Due to their belief in opportunity costs, how many trillions of dollars in revenue have gone unrealized over the past four decades?

The situation in both oil & gas commodities today proves the principle of economic price-maker commodities and the ineptness, or perhaps uncaring, of the North American producers. The scapegoat of opportunity costs is viable for this fiscal quarter. The annual general meeting season for producers begins this week. Passing through the AGM unscathed is their only challenge. Once achieved, bureaucratic clear skies will be seen for another nine months of inaction.

OCI User Community Vision, Part IV

 Our User Community Tasks

As a group, our user community has specific tasks to complete in the first iteration of our development. These only apply to our initial development and will change once the software is operational in the marketplace. If we look at these tasks from a global perspective we are taking Oracle Cloud ERP, applying the vision of the Preliminary Specification, developing, integrating, servicing and supporting that across North American oil & gas. Technical risk is moderate. We use proven technologies on a large scale. In terms of business risk we see the North American producers failing in their primary objective of profitably supplying abundant supplies of affordable energy to the consumer. A failure on many levels and therefore our level of business risk has to be none. We must complete this successfully, in my opinion. Ditto for market risk. Our vision within the Preliminary Specification is comprehensive and unifies our user community in the appropriate direction for successful implementation. And most importantly we are user community driven and therefore quality software.

The first step in this initial development phase is therefore to implement the model which is the Preliminary Specification. This vision provides a broad outline of what and how applications need to operate. Our user community handles the details of how each individual's work needs to be handled. They fill in, define and ensure that our developers provide producers with the systems that they want and need. For example, if a user community member was working in an area where the Material Balance Report was part of the domain of their efforts. They'll collaborate with others to determine what is required, ensure that it’s correct and iteratively, and innovatively develop the functions and processes in ways that meet the overall vision that will be managed by the software and their service provider organization. We are capturing the manner in which the industry needs to operate profitably everywhere and always which includes everything that is on the table, exceptions noted below. Ensuring it is the operational, administrative and accounting manner for the future we’ll need and redefining it around the Joint Operating Committee, the other six Organizational Constructs and the vision of the Preliminary Specification. 

What we don’t need in this first iteration of the Preliminary Specifications software is any innovation on its business model completed by our user community. What exists today in the vision works in terms of its global perspective. It may appear that in some small areas it might be better to change an element of the business model to accommodate another condition. What we may not know is if this change upsets the global perspective and puts the overall vision out of sync in terms of its operational capabilities in other areas. The first development iteration is not a time in which to innovate on the business models contained within the Preliminary Specification. This may be introduced in the second phase of development, when the software is operational on the market. There will be substantially more that needs to be done that is incremental to the traditional software development process that we need to ensure we don’t bite off too much of a task to begin with. I would point out that our initial needs will include such one-time events as familiarity with Oracle Cloud ERP and the other people involved in our user community and initiative which would be demanding much of our time and energy. Focusing on what works from a business model point of view would provide consistency in terms of understanding throughout the industry.

Once we have the software fully operational in the marketplace, we’ll be able to innovate on the model. We'll also be able to determine further interactions and implications within the various domains of our operation. We are focused on providing the oil & gas industry with a dynamic, innovative, accountable and profitable oil & gas producer everywhere and always. This requires that constant change will be part of our developers, user community and service providers' operations. People, Ideas & Objects Revenue Model is structured to generate revenues based on changes in the software that we provide to oil & gas. Services revenues fall under the domain of service provider organizations individually and are managed by our user community members who own and operate those concerns. That is the dynamic that keeps this community moving forward. Otherwise software has the effect of becoming concrete to an organization as is the case today. Turning it into an unchangeable beast. If an organization needs to change, it is the software that needs to change first. And in order for the software to change, our user community or producer firms will initiate the changes through the mechanisms we provide to affect that change. And in People, Ideas & Objects our user community has obtained that power through this user community vision.

What we can do, and what brings about the greatest value from the model is exploring, innovating and implementing the interactions and implications of our model. When we move to the Joint Operating Committee and the other Organizational Constructs of the producer and industry we change every aspect of their operation, administration and accounting. Including within the service industry. Not much will be left unchanged in terms of the effects of implementing the Preliminary Specification. The interactions and implications are where the dramatic value will be generated for the various stakeholders in our targeted market. It is here that I expect to see the value of the model be at the forefront of our user community's search for delivering tangible value. Upon commercial release we’ll have a solid foundation on which to innovate on a known - known in terms of the Preliminary Specifications business model.

Who Will Work Within Our User Community

It's true that not everyone qualifies to work within our user community. This applies to both their leadership team and the general community. We’ll look for certain individuals that are unique in their skills and knowledge of the oil & gas industry. That is a given. And the diversity of those skills will make up the entire scope of the oil & gas industries administrative and accounting needs. It is these skills and understanding that are the primary concerns that need to be addressed in the work done by our user community. The ability to analytically break down the processes and design new innovative and effective ones that are consistent with the Preliminary Specification is not something that will be easily done. That is why we have priced this work into our budget at the $345 / hour rate for our user community participants. We are looking for people of that calibre. Recently Mr. Tom Hood, CEO, Maryland Association of CPA's published a list of 7 skills that clearly identify what is required.

As I noted the primary concern is that our user community participants be trained and experienced in the disciplines that fall within the administrative and accounting areas. Their work experience falls under the greater oil & gas economy. However, we expect that their skill set will include a strong element of Information Technology aptitude. Particularly in the two areas we mentioned before, relational databases and Java. Having a good working knowledge of these two specific technologies will make the design and development of the software, which will be the job of a user community member and service provider, that much easier and more successful. The importance of this IT aptitude will make a significant difference in the quality of the People, Ideas & Objects Preliminary Specification in many different ways. Today Oracle provides an "Always Free" tier of their Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI). This is available to everyone and anyone and I would encourage user community members and prospective members to sign up to be familiar with the basic structure of our systems offering. 

First it will permit users to better understand the issues and opportunities that these technologies provide. What is possible for users as a result of the Oracle database, its deployment in a cloud computing environment and Java, which now includes Oracle Fusion Applications. To add these to a users tool kit and be able to employ them, either to use them as a service provider, or to ensure that the producers who use them are provided with the most dynamic, innovative, accountable and profitable means of oil & gas operations, should be of concern to all within the community. There will be no demand here to write code at any time. That is not what we specify. It is the conceptual framework of these technologies that needs to be addressed.

Secondly the ability to communicate with People, Ideas & Objects developers in their primary skill set will be necessary to enhance the communication between our user community and developers. It is easier for users to understand the basic elements of these concepts in relational theory and Java than it is for them to comprehend the understanding of the oil & gas industry as represented and understood by the entire user community. Therefore to enhance the communications between the developers and our user community it is by far the easiest for our user community to speak at an elementary level of the language of the developers. As there is no way each developer can fully comprehend the scope and scale of the oil & gas industry contained in our user community. Particularly since no one else carries that body of knowledge around individually. 

This understanding of technology may take four or five university level courses to acquire the type of understanding I think is necessary. We seek to communicate effectively with developers. Think of it as a career investment. Oil & gas producers need the most dynamic, innovative, accountable and profitable means of oil & gas operations. Is that the user will be able to provide our substantial value propositions. And therefore, everyone within the greater oil & gas economy will benefit monetarily.

Some Technical Points of Interest

Now for the relational database geek in all of us, I provide the videos of the last number of keynote presentations by Larry Ellison founder of Oracle Corporation. These are technical. Understanding the basis of relational databases and the Java Programming Language at a high level will provide any participant in our user community with a better knowledge and understanding of how the system is put together. And the best place to get that understanding is from C. J. Date, An Introduction to Database Systems

Here are Larry Ellison’s last number of years keynote addresses. All are must-see viewing for our user community.

OCI User Community Vision, Part III

 Our User Communities Business Leadership in the North American Oil & Gas Industry

The questions to be asked are how does the North American oil & gas industry avoid the continuing disaster it has become? Why did business leadership fail? Why hasn’t it been corrected? Did producer firms adopt the cultural, IT, and organizational changes demanded? If not why not, and what motivation stopped these changes from happening? Has business leadership in oil & gas changed? Has it taken on a broader industry focus and away from the individual organization? Or is it that producers today have lost the script on business performance? What is business leadership and why has its loss been so devastating for all concerned? Why hasn’t the science and technological leadership of the industry expressed their dissatisfaction with all the others? Or are they satisfied with doing enough to get by?

A quotation from one of my favorite authors Victor Davis Hanson in his recent book The Second World Wars.

Thucydides’s ancient warning that “it is a habit of mankind to entrust to careless hope what they long for, and to use sovereign reason to thrust aside what they do not desire.”

It seems that I have not been able to get to the beginning of the discussion on the difficult topic of leadership. What I know is that Information Technology has made oil & gas organizations sink into a comfortable, fixed configuration. This works for one small group of people at the expense of everyone else. Producers' decision makers are conflicted and self-absorbed to the point of being caricatures of responsible, accountable and authoritative business leaders. Unable to make the necessary changes due to the conspiracy of the Greta Thunbergs, their investors, Joe Biden's and the monsters under the bed… They’ll “muddle through” as they always have, which has proven to be lucrative, for themselves, and somehow acceptable in the past. For them there is no demand for change as there are no issues.

Will our user community as configured be the means to provide business leadership in terms of the governing business model for North American oil & gas? We’re suggesting here that producers have difficulties making changes to deal with their organizations due to ERP software constraints. When ERP software defines process management, the only way to make changes is to change the software first. This knowledge has been used in current producer firms to ensure that nothing can challenge their management methods and ensure their positions remain secure. It is therefore essential to change the software used in the industry to deal with business issues and opportunities as they arise. 

What People, Ideas & Objects recommend in the Preliminary Specification is that a permanent software development capability for our ERP system. This is in addition to our permanent user community and their service provider organizations. Our business model is based on change and discards ERP software firms' traditional means and methods of revenue generation. Post commercial release of our Preliminary Specification, we will see People, Ideas & Objects generate the revenues necessary to support our developers and our user community. This will be done through the changes we make to these systems. These will be funded through an assessment made to the producers based on the prior quarter's costs etc.

This change in funding brings about fundamental differences between our offering and what is traditionally undertaken. The first is that our user community remains independent. They will not, and never will be “blind, sleep-walking agents of whomever feeds them.” They will be driven by what is necessary to ensure that the industry and all of its secondary and tertiary industries are provided with the most profitable means of oil & gas operations everywhere and always. Capital markets will then be able to evaluate a producer's performance based on its knowledge and implementation of engineering and geology science and technology. Producers who cannot perform financially will fail, much like today’s producers. Secondly, People, Ideas & Objects itself will not be constrained by what we believe to be the two major ERP software providers' funding constraints of code and customers. As the customer base becomes larger over time, scale becomes more of an issue, as a result, software code becomes exponentially more complex and difficult to manage. Neither of these costs are fully covered in the Service Level Agreement from the point of view of support costs. And they leave nothing in terms of financial resources for changes, and certainly nothing for innovation or improvements. If our user community determines that some software process is redundant through a higher level of specialization, they’ll have only moderate to no vested interest in supporting it. Therefore, they will implement the change. 

Producers will generally be unaware of any of these transactions. The People, Ideas & Objects cost model distributes these costs across the producer population based on the North American production profile that participates. Otherwise, as they do today, each producer firm will face these same costs of changes individually, within their own Information Technology empires. Producers' independently replicated, unshared and unshareable overhead costs are the secondary reason for their lack of profitability. By introducing our Cloud Administration & Accounting for Oil & Gas, we are enhancing the cloud computing paradigm. Taking a highly complex and difficult process that is capital intensive to build and maintain, that is costly to operate, which is not a producer's competitive advantage. Turning it into a shared and shareable variable cost. Variable based on profitable production.

We have been fortunate at People, Ideas & Objects to quantify the differences between our organizational method and current bureaucracies. Documenting the $25.7 to $45.7 trillion in our value proposition over the next 25 years makes our case for change. These differences are made up by having the $20 - $40 trillion in capital expenditures funded internally through an appropriate business model instead of the current expectations that investors will be available to continue to “build balance sheets,” and “put cash in the ground.” The $5.7 trillion is the differential between our determination of “real” profitability and the definition of profits used in the historical base case. The ongoing, never ending cash crisis, which will be resolved in our model, is included in those figures. 

Another area that is just as material in terms of the scope of change that we’re unable to quantify or qualify. Are the differences that are attributable to the toolset that we employ within the Preliminary Specification, our user community and their service provider organizations of automation, specialization and the division of labor, and the sharing model introduced by Professor Paul Romer's non-rival costs. These will add value to the dynamic, innovative, accountable and profitable oil & gas producer. Potentially of greater value than those benefits we can quantify today. It's interesting that producer officers and directors expect investors to invest in them when they themselves can't invest in their own organizations to enhance their own profitability. After the producer's financial records reveal a comprehensive disaster!

Recently we learned during Oracle’s 2022 CloudWorld conference that many of the same developments and features have become Oracle's focus. Finding “gaps” between offerings and filling them with automated processes is the direct application of enhanced specialization and division of labor that our user community is using and will apply in this community. Oracle Cloud ERP has accelerated these same principles across the generic business function and process landscape. This has brought about even higher levels of value to North American producers. Those producers who opt in to the Preliminary Specifications development will therefore have our user community developing this value adding process to the specific North American oil & gas and general business attributes and therefore covering the majority of a producer's accounting and administrative needs. 

To suggest that administration and accounting in the oil & gas industry are static is disrespectful of the word static. These are the foundation of an organization where business leadership is derived and exercised and is therefore static too. People, Ideas & Objects do not understand engineering or geology and don’t pretend to. Leadership in these areas is constrained by the lack of effective business leadership in these producer firms and the industry. Relegated to complaining that investors won’t let them do this or that. If effective business leadership was enabled and permitted to flourish, where would the industries scientific research and technology be today? What would North America’s production profile be? Would they constantly look behind them as they seem to always do now? Why is this acceptable to them when it’s destructive to what they’ve built and leaves them with inadequate resources to do what is necessary and more? Would the development of profitable oil & gas operations everywhere and always provide them with the resources, capacities and capabilities to apply their sciences and technologies in a more competitive manner? Instead of dealing with this situation they’ll vilify and ostracize those that seek to provide them with the very solution! People, Ideas & Objects are not the enemy.

Let's add a bit more of the dynamic nature to our user community and their service providers overall structure that differentiates them from the static business environment that somehow became so acceptable. We believe, and it is our opinion, that the lack of investment in ERP systems over the past decades has left oil & gas companies with very poor systems today. And this has nothing to do with those ERP providers who have worked miracles in impossible financial conditions as producer officers and directors felt the need to ensure nothing threatened their status quo franchise. With IT developments over the past decades unrealized we can imagine how it stands today. However, the most accurate description that I can offer is that people are busy working for computers. We believe the shoe should be on the other foot and computers deployed to manage storage and processing. The work that is unique to humans is the work that involves these distinct competitive advantages.

Leadership, Issue Identification & Resolution, Creativity, Collaboration,

Research, Ideas, Design, Planning,

Thinking, Conflict & Contradictions, Observation, Reasoning,

Judgment, Application of Implicit & Tacit Knowledge, Quality,

Automation, Specialization & Division of Labor, Innovation, Integration,

And I’m certain there are many more. It will be up to our user community to ensure that we employ this advanced tool set in the development of the Preliminary Specification. This will be done through their service providers. This will be a challenging aspect of their work in terms of its execution. With the reorganization of the industry and the reduction in size of the prototypical producer, the service provider becomes a specialized provider who uses their division of labor to approach the entire oil & gas industry as their client base. This of course is an entirely different way of organization and perspective on how things are done. We actively recognize the industry culture through the Joint Operating Committee, not based on the producer's corporate compliance and governance culture. The scope of the change is tremendous. The size of the G&A resources being shifted in this reorganization is therefore estimated to be $10+ billion per annum. 

It is these topics and areas of focus that will be the domain of business leadership within our user community. Very high level, once in a century type of work that an individual can highlight their career and establish a business in. The changes we are making are dramatic. They will have a material effect on the performance, makeup and manner of how North American oil & gas operates for the next 20 to 30 years. Foundational work that affects how the producer performs financially. Since all our organizations are a critical part of our society, healthy organizations lead to healthy societies which lead to healthy individuals. 

Intellectual Property

Back in the late 1990s I was trying to determine what asset would be the most valuable in the future. I’d always put my efforts into software and was wondering if that was adequate for the future or was there something more? While contemplating the next stage of this adventure I realized that Intellectual Property was the only real asset in the 21st century. It was the only real asset that provided owners of any asset with value. Today the economic environment does not offer anything of the type of reward that Intellectual Property does, in my opinion. This is most particularly one that is inflation and interest rates desensitized. In the future all business will be based on some form of Intellectual Property.

At People, Ideas & Objects we believe that in order to obtain gainful employment people will need Intellectual Property to do their work. To better define this, have the right to do their work. This would be acquired through education and experience, but one would also have to have one of three levels of IP access. The first is outright ownership of their own Intellectual Property which is commonly known as copyrights, trademarks, patents and to a lesser extent trade secrets. Secondly, an individual or company is licensed access to others' Intellectual Property through a contractual arrangement. And the last will be as an employee of a firm that either has the IP or is licensed to use it. These three tiers of IP are distributed throughout People, Ideas & Objects, our user community and their service providers in the following ways. 

I myself am the beneficial owner of the underlying copyright to the Preliminary Specification and its derivative works. I have licensed People, Ideas & Objects to commercially develop the ERP application, communities and all its associated needs. Our user community members are direct license holders of People, Ideas & Objects, either as individuals or as representatives of their service providers. They are licensed to prepare derivative works. They also sub-license on a run-time, read only basis the Intellectual Property that our user community member has licensed access to, which is unencumbered, to the staff they employ in their service provider organization. 

To ensure this IP is held and developed in pristine condition. Our user community members are paid by People, Ideas & Objects for their contributions to the development of the Preliminary Specification and other derivative works. These include software code and binaries. It is in the process of this payment that we are purchasing the IP from each of our user community members in order to ensure that the entirety of it remains whole, and most importantly, available to our user community to prepare derivative works. If this was not done we would have an unworkable model. Due to the claims of individuals and trolls who hold up oil & gas producers' profitability for their own monetary purposes by withholding their IP. If you have your own Intellectual Property and feel that it should be recognized in oil & gas, the market is available for you to do so. 

There are a number of conditions that must be met in order to participate in the People, Ideas & Objects user community. To begin with, we aim to provide the most profitable means of oil & gas operations to North American oil & gas producers everywhere and always. A task that enables others to rebuild the industry and sub-industries themselves. That is our objective. We are not providing producers with clean energy systems in any way. Our user community and their service providers earn revenues from oil & gas production. Therefore the license precludes user community members and their service providers from operating outside of the oil & gas realm. 

It also precludes them from working in any area other than oil & gas ERP systems of People, Ideas & Objects. This includes our user community and their service provider organizations. Our user community is our primary competitive advantage and is therefore not accessible to our competitors or others in the broader oil & gas software industries or anywhere else. Maximizing producer profitability is an unending task that demands our focus.

We need to consider the possible contamination of this IP in a scenario that disrupts this community. If a licensed user community member or its service provider used this IP, and augmented their efforts with other software providers or vendors' products from outside of our community. This would be a can of worms that would demand People, Ideas & Objects terminate our user community license. This would enable us to protect ourselves from any allegation or potential claim of contamination. In a world where Intellectual Property is the domain where all value is generated, in situations such as we have, where it’s not enough to own the oil & gas asset anymore, it’s also necessary to have access to the software and services that make the oil & gas asset profitable. The basis of this industry-wide profitability is derived from Intellectual Property produced in this community. Value of this magnitude needs to be protected from incidental and minor actions that would appear non-consequential. However, it could be based on the actions of others outside the community who wanted to leverage the community's work in an unproductive manner. Our safeguard here is to state the risk to the community of a participant that may innocently fall prey to these actions. We advise them of the consequences in advance. That the loss of the license could be communicated to our user community members staff within their service provider organization. Those within that organization would be wise to consider the risk and consequences and ensure they and their service provider did not fall down that path. Sabotage by an employee is a different criminal act that has its own remedies and would not fall under these provisions. 

With respect to Artificial Intelligence and its use. What the user community and their service provider organizations are doing are preparing derivative works of the Intellectual Property they are licensed for. Therefore, derivative works produced by Artificial Intelligence cannot be claimed as Intellectual Property of the developer of the Artificial Intelligence algorithm. And can therefore be used as productivity tools for the user community and service providers.

Membership in our user community will be maintained during the initial development period as a privilege and not a right. We need an environment within the community where community performance is maintained at the highest levels. If we have the solution for the greater oil & gas economy, a matter of opinion, then we have a commensurate obligation and hence the need to build a highly performative community. We therefore need to start by establishing the means by which our user community's performance is the overriding requirement. Methods will therefore be implemented to ensure that a lack of contributions, free riding, trolling etc is dealt with effectively. What I am suggesting is that in either of these or other possible scenarios, licensing and management of the IP in the structure of our user community allows that the community’s leadership can manage who contributes. If the community member is not able to do so, or is implementing a value proposition inconsistent with the overall objective, our user community leadership, under the license provisions will have the means to terminate the license. With the right to "cull the herd," our user community will be in a position to ensure quality and performance in every aspect of their work. Vetting cannot always determine the most qualified candidates. Successful implementation of IP and software in the industry is necessary for our user community and their service provider organizations to succeed as organizations.

Those that contribute are compensated appropriately and need to perform to ensure producers can rely on quality ERP systems. Members of the community themselves will know with certainty that they will not have to tolerate the inappropriate behaviors and antics of those that haven’t fully participated. They’ll also not have to carry any “dead weight” with them. If you want to belong to a high performance community, these are the methods used to establish other high performing organizations. Success must be a priority when the stakes are this high and the dependence is wholly upon our user community's performance. The mitigating strategy for our user community members is part-time participation during initial development and prior to service provider organizations. We are building upon the depth of industry knowledge necessary to ensure the full scope and scale of the application is conducted correctly and in innovative ways. There is an opportunity to determine if you qualify, can participate, if this arena is your calling. This is where you can make a contribution and a difference. There are risks, and I have worked to ensure that none are incurred unnecessarily. However, we should all agree the responsibility we have is substantial and the role our user community members have in this task is critical. 

This is a challenging and difficult environment where the task appears impossible for many. And then it will attract exactly the kind of people who thrive in an environment like this. One of People, Ideas & Objects' first tasks is to establish the leadership group, which are full time positions. Then they can take our existing user community members and recruit the many, many more that will be needed. This will cover the entire scope and scale of the Preliminary Specification.

OCI User Community Vision, Part II

 User Community Charter

Our user community seeks the right solution for the most profitable means of oil & gas operations everywhere and always. We’ve now seen what happens when profits are overlooked in the industry. Oil & gas are experiencing the most difficult issue they’ve ever faced. Collaborations with our user communities are not intended to build consensus or compromise. On the contrary, we have many issues to resolve and some of the most complex ever approached. Resolution lies at the point of conflict and contradiction. It’ll be our user community's job to find those conflicting attributes and contradictions, and resolve them to build industry software for the next generation, to lead and build the dynamic, innovative, accountable and profitable energy industry we now need in North America.

Historically, North American oil & gas has not been profitable. We therefore understand why profits are so critical and should always be the focus of everyone involved in the industry. In Canada our former Prime Minister Stephen J. Harper, whose background began with a Masters degree in Economics states in his book, Right Here, Right Now.

Of all the advice I want to convey here, this is the most important: a company must not lose sight of its central mission. The core value proposition of the commercial sector is its ability to make money by creating products, services, jobs and growth. Social contributions should not be diminished, but business must not go too far down the path of social affirmation. Profits need to be made. And provided that laws are obeyed and ethics practiced, profits are a good thing.Businesses that stray too far from this fundamental purpose will fail regardless of their image. The saying that “the business of the business is business” is ignored at one’s peril.

“Real” profitability as I state throughout these writings, is the accurate measure of the earned, incremental value generated by the business. Cash flow that the industry believed was all that mattered is nothing more than the return of previously invested capital. The money needed throughout the broader oil & gas economy must now be generated through the real profitability and prosperity of the oil & gas producer firms. Without these real profits there is and will be no money for the actions and activities that need to be undertaken. Oil & gas is a primary industry where revenues are earned due to secondary and tertiary industry efforts. Service industry revenues are not generated outside of the oil and gas industry. Without profits we’ve seen capacities and capabilities decline and the industry ground down to the bureaucratic malaise we find today. Investors and bankers do not exist to fuel an industry except during its formative years. Eventually a viable industry will benefit those who took the risk to establish the opportunity and those that made it a reality. Today in North American oil & gas we have an industry that is not profitable in the “real” sense. It has ruined the value developed by those before them and those that were led to believe otherwise. An industry that has degraded to the point where it cannot operate profitably or satisfy its customers' demands. Profitability will be the only source of value the industry can use to generate its future. The current officers & directors historical performance record is not trusted by anyone. Besides, other than profitability there is no other source of capital large enough to even begin to approach the capital needs of the industry.

It is therefore incumbent upon our user community to take a leadership role in establishing “real” profitability in North American oil & gas. Producer engineers and geologists often say that accounting has nothing to do with industry profitability. “There is no way accounting will make the basin profitable.” The fact that they have lost what former Prime Minister Harper stated, “the business of the business is business” is apparent and obvious. Although oil & gas is a complex and challenging science and technologically based business, it is a business and must be run as a business on the basis of “real” profits. 

Our User Community Charter is as follows.

As a user community, we provide North American oil & gas producers with the most profitable means of oil & gas operations. That is our focus and drive. To ensure profitability is at the forefront of the industry activities. Oil & gas consumers value proposition is 10 to 25 thousand man hours of mechanical leverage per barrel of oil equivalent. Oil & gas have no substitutes. We owe it to future generations to ensure these resources are managed appropriately and nothing is wasted. Unprofitable production is waste and we have an obligation to future generations to ensure we can prove we have managed the resource appropriately. It is therefore through our user communities charter that we pass a profitable, prosperous, and healthy industry onto the next generation. And provide consumers with affordable, reliable, abundant and independent sources of oil & gas supply.

Leadership in Our User Community

Our user community's first need is leadership. Effectively our user community is a separate organization independent of both People, Ideas & Objects and the industry itself. It is driven by its own vision, purpose, community and leadership of providing oil & gas producers with the most profitable means of oil & gas operations. Although our user community will have People, Ideas & Objects as its sole source, by license, of part-time user community participation revenue, user community members are the principals of service provider organizations who provide accounting and administration process management through the delivery of our software and their services. Our user community members will have their service provider(s) as their primary source of income and value generation. People, Ideas & Objects focuses on our organizations competitive advantages of our user community, research and Intellectual Property. Therefore, leadership in our user community is an aspect that needs to be developed by those who commit to the overall vision of the Preliminary Specification. Those that desire to provide oil & gas producers with the most profitable means of oil & gas operations. 

Our user community will provide two types of leadership. There is organizational focused leadership that focuses on our user community's needs. Secondly there will be overall industry leadership in relation to the oil & gas business model. This is discussed in detail in the next section. Our user community will include the necessary organizational support demanded of it. This includes approximately thirty Product Owners who are responsible for either a specific module of the Preliminary Specification or an element of its development. Involving the difficult work of developing an organization that meets the needs of the software, the industry, the service providers and most importantly the people in the industry. Anyone with the money can build an application on Oracle Cloud ERP. Adding a vision as compelling as the Preliminary Specification to the mix adds value to the process. However, building a user community to define and support both Oracle Cloud ERP and People, Ideas & Objects software with the vision of the Preliminary Specification will ensure that this environment succeeds for all concerned. These software applications will deliver explicit knowledge captured by our user community and codified in the software they develop. Their service provider organizations will deliver that software in combination with their tacit knowledge as a service offering to the profitable oil & gas producer. Providing oil & gas producers with the most profitable means of oil & gas operations. 

McKinsey Consulting published an article on leadership entitled “Change Leader, Change Thyself.” And within it they have an exhibit that I can’t reproduce. You can download the article and view the exhibit for yourself. It's the one that details the CEO, CFO and COO roles and responsibilities. Their focus of attention, their source of power and their sweet spot. It is these roles that need to be filled in our user community leadership as an organization. 

Other roles to fill are the approximately 30 product owners we mentioned earlier. These are intriguing roles that take a prominent seat on the software development team. They are the ultimate representatives of our user community within the development team's authority. Therefore, for the team developing the Partnership Accounting module, the Partnership Accounting Product Owner would ensure that our user communities' needs were understood and implemented in the software. Having expert knowledge in the area, in this case Partnership Accounting, the Product Owner can read our user communities' needs and preferences. This will increase communication between our user community and the development team. Ensuring that no misunderstandings or confusion between the groups causes delays or faulty software. These are just some of the obvious leadership roles in our user community. As we proceed we will begin to put more elements of what is required and how we expect things to develop. 

We have consistently asserted that we provide added value to dynamic, innovative, accountable and profitable oil & gas producers. A substantial amount more than what officers & directors provide today. The primary focus of our work is to develop the user community, its leadership, and the associated service providers. We do this as we strive to offer an alternative means of organization to the oil & gas industry in order that the oil & gas investor, and the people who work in oil & gas can choose the status quo or People, Ideas & Objects Preliminary Specification, our user community and service providers as the method to manage their industry. Organizations don’t change, people do. Therefore without alternatives we are stuck with the status quo. If we don’t work towards building an alternative, nothing will change. And this is the place where people can begin the process of improving the oil & gas industry from a tired, poorly performing, muddling along behemoth to a dynamic, innovative, accountable and profitable industry. 

There are many benefits that are and cannot be quantified from implementation of specialization and division of labor tools. Ours is an innovative way of operating the oil & gas industry, and as we’ve stated here before, even if the officers & directors could park their self interests and wanted our project to begin, we would not begin software development until our user community is fully formed. The Preliminary Specification is a fine vision of what the industry can do in the future. In the absence of our user communities' involvement in our software development, it will be a great vision without the appropriate implementation. There must be robust user community involvement in the Preliminary Specification software development. It is mandatory, and as I have pointed out, user community development is our number one focus and priority. We are an existential threat to officers & directors challenged by the Preliminary Specification. They are eliminated from the landscape by it and don't want to be part of it. Therefore they have not and will not support us. And we'll have to build our user community brick by brick and stick by stick. And that takes time, which we have and producers don’t.

The ultimate configuration of our user community leadership positions will be determined by those within the community. Industry after industry is disintermediated by Information Technology. And that is what's being done to oil & gas through the Preliminary Specification, our user community and their service provider organizations. And it is timely from a business point of view. The prolific nature of shale reserves demands a new business model be developed for oil & gas. A business model that deals with the resource abundance and price-destroying nature of producers over-producing unprofitable production. A business model that allocates production fairly across the industry, based on profits, without affecting a producer with excessive G&A costs when unprofitable production is shut-in. A business model that defines and supports innovation in the producer firm, Joint Operating Committee and industry. This is to ensure consumers receive abundant energy at reasonable costs. There are significant opportunities ahead for the leadership team and our user community in general. They will help develop an organization that defines the manner in which the oil & gas business model is defined and supported. 

The opportunity to take today’s prototypical producer firm and convert it to one that operates under the Preliminary Specification and our user community doesn’t exist within today’s cultural configuration. The scope of change necessary is beyond what's humanly possible for us to do. The forces of cultural inertia from the bureaucracy would need to be fought at every step and our energy would be wasted in such battles. We’ve chosen not to concern ourselves with such battles and instead rely on the forces of creative destruction to make the choice between the performance that the bureaucracy provides. We prefer the solution we present here with the Preliminary Specification and our user community. 

The transition from the bureaucracy to the Preliminary Specification may be due to successful producers buying out laggard firms that refuse to change, or their assets. That is the normal course of change due to creative destruction. We don’t know and don't care how the industry configuration ultimately changes. What we are concerned with is providing the most profitable means of oil & gas operations. And with the Preliminary Specification we already have a material difference in our value proposition. This will be the focus of the development of our user community and its leadership. One area of our value proposition that we can't quantify is the value we'll be able to provide to the dynamic, innovative, accountable and profitable producer. This is due to the toolset we implement in the Preliminary Specification. And that toolset currently consists of items such as business process automation, specialization and the division of labor, and the principle of non-rival goods developed by Professor Paul Romer.

Looking at the overall scope of what can be accomplished by the leadership team and our user community. It is critical to remember they have the wherewithal to make this happen. This is documented in the three structural components of our user community vision which include the money and power needed to complete their tasks. It is one thing to define broad strokes of a vision of what is possible. It is another to provide that community with the means to realize that vision. And I think those mechanisms are provided to our user community. 

The Preliminary Specification provides a solid vision and workable framework of what an alternative organization method could be for the oil & gas industry. It works in that there is no major flaw or defect where logic or implementation breaks down. It is the result of my vision of what could be, and a decade of research. It is also incapable of providing the industry with the ability to implement it as it stands today. It needs the input of thousands of others who work and know what, how and why the industry operates. It is now time for these people, our users, to contribute to the process. They should build on the Preliminary Specification framework and vision.

OCI User Community Vision, Part I

 People, Ideas & Objects User Community Vision

The lack of profitability has decimated all oil & gas business value generated before the 1980s. The subsequent investment capital and all the revenues earned were fruitless when the business stands today without the ability to support commercial operations or meet consumers' energy demands. This damage extends to service industries' capacities & capabilities. And includes the fact that the oil & gas and service industries capital structures are incapable of reviving commercial operations. People, Ideas & Objects has documented throughout the Preliminary Specification our approach for the current lack of profitability. The source of our software product quality, oil & gas industry leadership and profitability is our user community and we have configured it in a manner that enables it to address the scope of this issue, formulate the solution based on the Preliminary Specification and deliver that to the North American producer marketplace. Our user community differs greatly from any other user community created to develop ERP systems. This is to ensure they succeed in their task and make the transition from today’s culture of failure. Instead, they will be part of a dynamic, innovative, accountable and profitable oil & gas industry and producer. Where oil & gas production in North America is profitable in the real sense of the term, everywhere and always. Able to address the most challenging future we’ve faced before.

Quality ERP software is achieved through user driven software development. This has been proven and became the foundation of the agile software development methodology. An understanding of the oil & gas administration and accounting can only be gathered through the direct involvement of those who are familiar with the processes, data, issues and opportunities. This understanding is captured and defined for our software developers by the People, Ideas & Objects user community. To expect that our software developers who are specialized in their software skills will be able to comprehend the full understanding of the accounting and administration needs of the industry, without user involvement, is a foolish expectation of a by-gone era. 

It is therefore People, Ideas & Objects' obligation to ensure this initiative succeeds. Quality software is developed through user community software development. This is where we’ve focused our efforts since March 2014. We have made our user community one of People, Ideas & Objects' three competitive advantages. These consist of Intellectual Property and research to round out our offering. Our user community is our primary focus and highest priority organizationally. It is the area of our offering in which we can effectively implement the level of organizational change, cultural change and product quality necessary. 

One of the solutions proposed by oil & gas producers was consolidation which occurred a few years ago. Centralized control of interactively complex systems is not effective and lead to failure. There needs to be decentralized control with markets able to make the necessary changes. Interactive complexity is one of the challenges facing producers today. The ability to deal with the issue as it arises through a structured hierarchy, with excessive regulatory oversight governing the producers' actions and operational decision making authority being governed by the Joint Operating Committee has created paralysis and inaction. 

It is the configuration of our user community that makes it unique. We have licensed our user community members with the authority and responsibility of what is expected of them as an independent, decentralized resource. They’ll have the authority to affect the changes they need to make. They are, and will be for the long term, the ones that the industry will turn to to resolve their ERP software related issues and opportunities. It will be our user community members who are authorized to initiate the necessary changes and only our user community members. The structure we have provided has three components which will enable them to build the appropriate oil & gas ERP software from the vision of the Preliminary Specification.

• Only our user community is licensed to make changes and prepare derivative works to any underlying Intellectual Property of the Preliminary Specification. 
• People, Ideas & Objects licensed developers can only look to our user community for input. Our developers are blind, deaf, and dumb to others.
• Our user community has their own budget. They are independent business people. Not "blind sleepwalking agents of whomever feeds them."

User community members are the only individuals and / or groups who can change the Preliminary Specification and its derivative works. People, Ideas & Objects' business model is based on a fundamentally different method of developing ERP software. Therefore our user community will always have the exclusive use of People, Ideas & Objects software development capabilities to affect the changes they need and want. Our user community members will be the only ones who can configure the software. It will not be driven by technical architecture, business cycle or other criteria. Their license to amend the underlying Intellectual Property is exclusive to our user community. Providing a single point of contact for producers to have their issues and opportunities resolved. Whom do they go to today? Enabling a dynamic, innovative, accountable and profitable oil & gas industry.

Second, our user community has the oil & gas industry's business model. Use of the Joint Operating Committee and the six other Organizational Constructs is a strong model that solves the administrative, accounting and operational issues. This enables the producers to realize opportunities in the industry. This business model and its future development are in our user community's hands. Included with user community members participation is the granting for development and operation of a service provider organization that is licensed for an exclusive process domain to manage on behalf of North American producers. The service providers are a reallocation of the administrative and accounting resources of the producers. They are the critical change enabling much of the value proposition realized by producers from People, Ideas & Objects et al. Providing oil & gas producers with industry-based, variable administrative and accounting costs, variable based on profitable production capacity and capabilities.

If producers want to have elements of their organization included in the People, Ideas & Objects Preliminary Specification they will have to involve themselves with our user community. To attempt to define the risks, performance, responsibility and accountabilities within the parameters of a service level agreement would belittle the producer's demanding role in this development. This would also belittle their overall relationship with our user community. This is what makes the People, Ideas & Objects user community so effective. It is how People, Ideas & Objects build quality software. Our user community members are involved in development part-time. They will each generate revenues for their work as users. Their service provider organizations will be the primary source of personal value generation. People, Ideas & Objects budgeted $1.67 billion for users in the initial development phase. We expect approximately 3,000 users. These members will use their budget allocation to research, collaborate and determine the needs of producers and industry. They will communicate, oversee and ensure the software is developed in the manner necessary to ensure profitable production is produced everywhere and always. Individual users will be able to specialize in their contribution to a specific process based on the expertise individual community members provide. They're independent business people developing solutions for oil & gas, not employees of producers checking boxes off in the role of "user." Therefore comprehensive and dedicated involvement by industry and individual producers is necessary to make sure that their needs are understood and what it is they specifically require in our software and services. Ensuring that what is created on the producer's behalf is accurate. Not relegating a definition contained within a service level agreement. This is where the producer seeks to delegate responsibility and accountability to the agreement agent.

Participation is imperative for producers if they want to proceed with the Preliminary Specification developments.Developments include the decentralized production model, the Joint Operating Committee and six other Organizational Constructs, three marketplaces and fourteen modules. To achieve the most profitable means of oil & gas operations, everywhere and always. Non-participation in our user community would preclude producers from the benefits of the software, our user community and their service providers. But there's more. Non-participation would also mean that producers' particular requirements, distinctive ways of administration, accounting and operations are not accommodated or considered. That none of the software is built for the situations that the company experiences. This means that the premier asset of theirs would not have the software to handle the particular nuances of how it needs to make money. Producer officers and directors will say they have all of this covered under their current administration. And we all know how profitable they've reported themselves to be.

There is also the fact that the producers would not participate and interact with our user community itself. I expect our user community to be dynamic and fast paced with significant iterations over the business model that uses the Joint Operating Committee etc. Non-participating producers won’t know what these changes are and what the implications are to their firm's assets. They weren't there when decisions were made. An ineffective strategy. Shareholders will be wise to these actions and wonder why their producer firms are not participating? Is profitability optimization not an issue? Or is the company unaware of the technical progress in the past 25 to 35 years? Investors will have many questions and producers will need to provide the answers. 

One answer might be that it's most beneficial to wait and see how things develop with People, Ideas & Objects et al. For any producer, sitting on the sidelines will be tragic. They should choose to be in or out and have their reasons for non-participation, but sitting on the fence will be the poorest choice of all. When our user community iterates on the model after the first phase of development, the software will be quite advanced. More advanced than the producer organization can handle or understand if it did not participate earlier. Our user community and developers will never stop iterating on the model. The ability to catch up at that point may not exist. Once integrated into the participating producers, subsequent software development will bring in updated concepts and features on top of the features previously built. Non-participating producers did not participate in, and therefore can’t understand or implement. Leaving them unable to transition. Permanently degrading their performance standards and competitiveness. Financially, in terms of the producers cost to develop the Preliminary Specification, People, Ideas & Objects believe there are no free lunches.

What People, Ideas & Objects, our user community and their service provider organizations are doing is disintermediating the oil & gas business. Putting an end to the outdated business model and culture that no longer serves its users' needs and no longer generates value for any of its stakeholders. Disintermediation is necessary and timely. No industry will be immune. We have not scheduled the commencement of our software development, however we have spent our time since the publication of the Preliminary Specification developing our user community. There are no large technical issues to resolve. I believe everything we need to build the Preliminary Specification can be done with today’s technological infrastructure. Taking it as far as to assert that we have no technical risk in the People, Ideas & Objects business. Review of Larry Ellison's keynote addresses at his Oracle conference's reflects this. Although there are no large database issues to resolve, Oracle has moved their technology forward in significant ways. This will make our work faster, smarter and better. I mention this as this technological infrastructure is enabling industry disintermediation. 

It will be a completely different oil & gas industry. One that is limited to what our users can imagine. One based on the Preliminary Specification and developed further from there. This is the opportunity we have in front of us. Our user community has the power in the three critical criteria we've documented in their licensing and founding. A vision being that they are the only ones with the ability to change the underlying Intellectual Property. They are the only people our developers concern themselves with. But let's not forget about their budget as well. Our goal is to provide oil & gas producers with the most profitable means of oil & gas operations, everywhere and always. Those are our limits. 

To say that I’m looking forward to the future would be an understatement. The issues we identified many decades ago have manifested themselves in a worthless industry. The demand for cash to support the long-term destruction of the industry continues and fewer sources of support are realized each day. Serious action is needed now. I would suggest one of the dynamic changes as a result of the shale era will be that the industry leadership will not be sourced from the engineering and earth science disciplines. But its future lies in the hands of leaders who can make the industry profitable. Oil & gas industry leadership will therefore be regenerated and exercised through our user community. This will be the means by which the industry regenerates itself, profitably, not as an out-of-control spending machine. If that appeals,people should act. Actions based on individuals working collaboratively, driven by an overall vision of real profitability such as the Preliminary Specifications are how we’ll solve this. However, remember that the losing side is the most dangerous just before collapse. Don't expose yourself to them unnecessarily.

OCI How to Join

 We prioritize and focus on members of the People, Ideas & Objects user community. They are one of our three distinct competitive advantages. Quality ERP software can only be developed when users are involved. Through an innovative user community license, our user community members gain the authority, responsibility and means to affect the necessary changes in the oil & gas business model. This will provide North American producers with the most profitable means of oil & gas operations, everywhere and always. 

Individuals interested in making the much needed changes to deal with oil & gas issues are welcome to join People, Ideas & Objects as user community members. Our users are compensated for part-time work while involved in these software developments. We are establishing permanent oil & gas ERP software development capacity & capability to accommodate the changing needs of the industry. In addition, our user community members are licensed as the principal owners of a service provider in the reorganization of the administrative and accounting resources of the oil & gas industry. Their service provider organizations will deliver the People, Ideas & Objects software and their services through our Cloud Administration & Accounting for Oil & Gas software and service we are building. The scope and scale of the Preliminary Specifications modules are well beyond what could be expected of a volunteer community. North American oil & gas producers are a $800 billion industry. Our budget supports our user community in this difficult task and will fund them through to a successful conclusion. At which time they’ll form part of a permanent ERP software development capability. It will also fund them to transition to their operational service provider organizations. 

To become a member of this community, please review the following.

Review the Preliminary Specification.

Gain a strong understanding of the differences between using the Joint Operating Committee and six other Organizational Constructs in the Preliminary Specification. The differences between this system and traditional ERP systems. How these differences are captured in the Performance Evaluation, Analytics & Statistics, Research & Capabilities, Knowledge & Learning, Operations Management, Compliance & Governance, Financial Marketplace, Resource Marketplace, Accounting Voucher, Partnership Accounting, Petroleum Lease Marketplace, Blockchain, AI and Security & Access Control modules. 

Review Oracle Cloud ERP

People, Ideas & Objects Preliminary Specification is an “addition” to Oracle Cloud ERP. Oracle's additions reflect they are deeply embedded in their offering and not application modules that sit on top of the Oracle offering. Prospective members of our user community should pay close attention to the 2022 CloudWorld Conference Oracle held in October 2022. There you’ll find the focus of Oracle’s and People, Ideas & Objects et al’s desire to engineer the generic (Oracle) and oil & gas related (People, Ideas & Objects et al) processes to deliver the ultimate value for the oil & gas industry.

To enhance our understanding of the dynamic and innovative nature we are seeking to build in oil & gas, I recommend downloading and studying Professor Giovanni Dosi's "Sources, Procedures and Microeconomic Effects of Innovation."

Sign the Copyright License. 

I own the copyright to the ideas presented in the blog, wiki, and overall software development. This Intellectual Property must be maintained and held in pristine condition for these ideas to help the industry. It must also be published for the benefit of all participants in this user community, their service provider organizations and the broader oil & gas economy. Therefore it is necessary that our user community members involved in these software developments have unencumbered access to all of these concepts to prepare derivative works. Both for software development purposes and for their own service provider organizations. The Copyright and End User License Agreement both provide this. And assign the derivative work done by each User, Developer and Project Manager etc. It will remain available for use by all other licensed users to prepare further derivative works. The fees paid to our user community members for this development work are the act of purchasing their Intellectual Property.

Members of our user community are compensated for their time and should consider this software development project a cornerstone of their service provider organization's future revenue and income. And particularly those Users that wish to establish their service provider organizations based on this software offering.

Management of copyright in this manner focuses the energies of the industry on one solution. The industry cannot have multiple software developments at the same time. The scope and scale of these developments and the critical nature of the industry's issues demand a comprehensive focus for success to be achieved. 

• Submit up to 2,500 words on how and what you could provide to this developing community. What are your business plans for yourself and your service provider? What area of focus will you be looking at to build value in the industry?

What are your experiences in oil & gas, where you believe the industry could be more innovative if it had the software to define, support and enable it? What would that software look like and how could you contribute to its making? This will begin a discussion around membership within our user community etc. These summaries will be posted in the People's wiki and enable user search and discovery of like-minded people and resources. (Once our budget is secured, until then there will be absolute confidentiality to ensure people are protected from the producer's officers and directors potential retribution.)

Disintermediation through Information Technology is the process being applied through these developments. Where structured hierarchy cannot meet market demands, more efficient organization methods must be provided to meet consumer needs. It will be through the distinct competitive advantages of our user community members and their service providers that these more efficient methods are obtained in the software and services they develop. Competitive advantages such as the application of specialization and the division of labor, automation, innovation, leadership, integration, identification of conflict and contradictions, issue identification, issue resolution, creativity, collaboration, research, ideas, design, planning, thinking, negotiating, financing, observation, reasoning and judgment. People, Ideas & Objects values the contributions our users make to increasing the value of the greater oil & gas economy. Not the contacts you have. Proving it’s a different business world than today. Please join us by submitting your information here.

OCI Executive Summary, Part V

Operations Management

Producers in oil & gas are faced with a challenging dichotomy. One in which profitable operations are the only acceptable means of production everywhere and always from this point forward. Much has been wasted in the past decades and producers' capital structures are unsupported. Damage and destruction are extensive. Only a comprehensive rebuild of the industry and its secondary industry based on the Preliminary Specification resolves existential organizational issues facing producer officers and directors. Continuation of “muddling through” does not appear to be capable of dealing with these issues or resolving the most difficult future the industry has ever faced. In addition to providing profitable oil and gas operations everywhere and always, the consumer requires reliable, secure, abundant, and affordable energy. With North American energy independence, a necessity for the 21st century. With 10 to 25 thousand man hours of equivalent manpower contained in each barrel of oil equivalent. The supply of oil and gas is essential for civilization.

We’re unable to get there with the chronically unprofitable production of the past four decades. Investors have bowed out and the only source of capital large enough to fund these capital demands is industry profitability. In other words the oil & gas business in North America must be operated as a going concern. Only the Preliminary Specification has the plan to make that happen. We have no right to pass an industry on to the next generation until we can prove we produced the resource responsibly. Which means all of it was produced profitably. Each barrel of oil equivalent should be profitable in the “real” sense from this point forward as the resource is irreplaceable and is the blood of our economy. If we lose the script now it would not be difficult to foresee foreign sources of oil & gas demanding North America to play second fiddle to China, Russia or others in terms of our supply demands? 

People, Ideas & Objects Operations Management module is designed to provide producers and Joint Operating Committees with a means to monitor and control their operations. Establishing a sound base of data and information necessary to ensure decisions and actions are conducted with precision and profitability in mind. Where the financial, operational and technical data of the producer or property are available for use. Technologies involved in the Internet of Things are deployed and operational to benefit these users. And resources are deployed based on budgets and plans generated and set through this module. The Operations Management module is the aggregation of and accumulation of the efforts undertaken in the Preliminary Specifications other 13 modules. It is presented in a format where information can be used effectively for profitable decision making.

Blockchain Module

We wrote our twelfth module to the Preliminary Specification in 2018. It is the first module that focuses on technology. All of the other modules, including the Security & Access Control module, are focused on the business of the oil & gas industry and producers, as viewed through the Joint Operating Committee. Therefore the Blockchain module provides blockchain technology to all the other modules of the Preliminary Specification. Included within the Blockchain module itself is a detailed discussion of how each module is affected by this technology. I also discuss how I anticipate it will be implemented. This will be its initial implementation. And become more robust as the years pass. I see blockchain as a must-have Information Technology that will be the base of ERP systems that industries will require. I also expect and anticipate that 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 "recent" aspects of the technology and the rapid pace of technology development and adoption at present.

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

Understand blockchain in under 7 minutes: Don Tapscott with Lloyds Bank

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 & engineering capabilities, and land & asset base are highlighted and focused upon as their key competitive advantages. Their working interests in the Joint Operating Committees are supported by the service industry through our three marketplace modules. They have a far more involved and appropriate relationship with producers and Joint Operating Committees. Bringing the service industry in as partners in field operations development. 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 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". The industry can 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 more common sense as each day passes. Our approach is to provide software and indirectly administrative and accounting services to the entire industry with one solution, or as we’ve described it, Cloud Administration & Accounting for Oil & Gas. Our approach is to mitigate the software development costs incurred today by every producer. This is to perform the same non-competitive accounting and administrative tasks as the producer across the street. These costs are replicated across the industry to develop the same capabilities at every producer. Costs and capabilities that are unshared and 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.

Information Technologies and their infrastructures present new challenges for producers. There are business challenges, which the Preliminary Specification addresses where administrative, accounting and Information Technology costs are escalating further for each and every producer. This is what Don Tapscott calls "the shared network state," which is appropriate, because producers cannot function as islands unto themselves in the future oil and gas industry. 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. Industry has pushed back on our thinking here, saying the application scope and scale is too large to succeed. If that were the case, how do they propose to build the same functionality within their organization with a single producer budget? People, Ideas & Objects issues arise from the implementation of scope and scale. There may be a few producers who claim an advantage in administration, accounting, and information technology, but it doesn't make sense to claim such advantages.

Artificial Intelligence

There are those that demand we add a module to accommodate 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 will benefit from those products and services as they are features of their core products such as the operating system and database. I am not enamored with Artificial Intelligence, and do not see much value being generated. However, it is early days and there will be innovations in both the technology and those that employ it here in this module. Artificial intelligence we will use focuses on ERP systems, data, and information for producers. In that sense this module will provide Security & Access Control features and functions for those that expect value. We will provide the frameworks and tools for them to grow organically. 

Thomas Siebel of C3.ai has a fascinating background. He is the founder and principal behind Siebel Systems which was sold to Oracle earlier this century for $5.8 billion. This is the foundation Oracle used to build Oracle Fusion Applications, Oracle Cloud ERP and the base of the Preliminary Specification. He states that 99% of AI initiatives fail. Using Professor Paul Romers' "Endogenous Technical Change" and what we have established as an Organizational Construct, these costs can be minimized through the People, Ideas & Objects shared infrastructure model. An initiative that Thomas Siebel started for C3.a1.

One of the reasons I have a negative perception of these technologies is another quote from Winston Churchill. This quote is from when he was asked in 1942 what should be done for 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 efforts 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. Building the foundation, instead of the roof, may be the best place to start.