21st Century Marketplace Vision - Issues - Part II

The Issues

The accelerated deployment of Artificial Intelligence across the corporate landscape is creating unprecedented mechanical and intellectual leverage. The potential expansion in productivity and value creation across society is substantial. In the oil & gas industry, however, the primary challenge is not technological. The transition is structural, architectural, organizational, and cultural.

Over the next twenty-five years the scale of transformation will be profound, likely exceeding conventional expectations. Producer firms remain the central economic actors within the energy sector and therefore carry the responsibility to lead and finance the development and implementation of the People, Ideas & Objects Synallagi. Without deliberate institutional design, the transition will occur in a fragmented and inefficient manner. With it, the North American oil & gas industrial complex can adapt in a coordinated and coherent fashion.

The realization of Artificial Intelligence’s promise is inseparable from energy availability. The capacity to build, operate, and sustain next-generation infrastructure—while simultaneously meeting broader economic demands—depends entirely on reliable, abundant, and profitable energy production. It is here we now “toss the cat amongst the pigeons.”

The industry presently faces one of the most difficult periods in its history. Operational discipline has weakened. Financial credibility has deteriorated. Political capital has eroded. The service sector, once a central pillar of technical capability, has been materially damaged—largely as a consequence of the conduct of producer officers and directors. Major service providers in North America are increasingly diversifying away from oil & gas in search of more stable opportunities in other industries.

The origins of this condition are structural. Four decades of systemic unprofitable production and persistent overproduction, combined with leadership insulated by financial abstraction rather than operational reality, have produced an industry sustained more by appearance than by performance.

Against this backdrop, several advanced and material issues become evident. Each is structural in nature. Each is correctable through disciplined institutional redesign of the type contemplated in Synallagi.

21st Century Markets

Throughout the 2026 series of People, Ideas & Objects papers, we advance the view that the oil & gas industry will become increasingly dependent on markets as its primary organizing mechanism. Producer firms will gradually retreat from many of their traditional functions. The Internet enables hyper-specialization, deeper division of labor, and the shared use of critical Information Technology resources and supporting infrastructure. These forces weaken the competitive position of hierarchical organizations. Markets outperform hierarchies not only in cost efficiency, but also in speed, capacity, and capability.

Within this environment, the depth of knowledge inside any single organization must concentrate on its genuine competitive advantages. In oil & gas, these advantages lie in engineering and geological expertise. In a hyper-specialized ecosystem, producers will obtain most operational capacity from the market while focusing their internal resources on high-level scientific and technical work. This concentration will define the basis of competition among producer firms.

Capabilities that are generic across the industry should not be replicated internally by every firm. For example, building proprietary cybersecurity infrastructure for cryptocurrency and stablecoin transactions within each producer organization would be inefficient, duplicative, and consume capital resources. Markets will supply these services more effectively when required.

Participation in a market-based economy requires adherence to certain structural attributes. Objective, standardized, timely and accurate centralized approaches to oil & gas accounting and administration represent a significant efficiency gain. Synallagi, proposed by our user community and service providers, establishes such a framework. Beyond cost savings, it provides a collective understanding of what the industry is—and what it is not. 

Our architectural direction implies a structural shift: the ERP platform ceases to function primarily as an internal enterprise control system and instead operates as a market coordination engine. In this configuration, the ERP becomes the infrastructure through which hyper specialized participants—human and / or AI—execute transactions or Synallagi’s in a coordinated, policy-governed manner.

Market coordination is then wrapped in our Marketplace Interface for the three markets of Synallagi. The Petroleum Lease, Resource and Financial Marketplace modules. Providing the oil & gas, service industry and other market participants with the means to engage in commerce within the industry on a stable-coin, crypto enabled, Autonomous Asynchronous Transaction Orchestrated environment. 

Within Synallagi, seven organizational constructs have been identified that support both producers and the broader industry:

• the Joint Operating Committee

• Markets

• Intellectual Property

• Information Technology

• Innovation

• Professor Paul Romer’s theory of Endogenous Technical Change (sharing)

• Hyper-specialization and the division of labor

Markets function as a defined and supported organizational construct that also imposes constraints on operations. They significantly influence the framework (what, how, where, when, and why) for conducting business. 

Additionally, Trust is currently being evaluated as a potential eighth foundational institutional construct.

Whose Problem is This?

These issues belong squarely to the 21st century. How they are interpreted will vary according to individual perspectives on the oil & gas industry and the strategic choices people make regarding their future.
Several questions naturally arise:

• Are conditions in the industry today accurately represented?

• Will those conditions persist in the future?

• How secure is long-term energy independence in North America?

• Will producer officers and directors intervene to address structural deficiencies?

• How much of the calculated $5 trillion in natural gas losses can be mitigated going forward?

• Is there sustainable profitability in oil & gas?

• Can the industry compete effectively in dynamic North American capital markets?

• If not, why not?

These questions frame the strategic challenge.

Resistance is Futile

The primary response of large producers has been consolidation. Combining balance sheets has allowed firms to withstand volatility, expand political influence, and strengthen their independence within that arena. However, when assessed from a financial performance perspective—and in terms of broader industry progress—the results are less compelling.

In many cases the underlying issues appear to have intensified. Institutional resistance has deepened, and the capacity for meaningful change within these organizations appears limited. Accordingly, expectations that these firms will drive structural reform in the short or medium term should remain restrained. This reality complicates the development of new institutional initiatives.

Markets, however, continue to evolve. As this 2026 paper series will demonstrate, the pace and scale of change is accelerating. Organizations resistant to adaptation may struggle with the velocity of the transformation underway. These developments are not optional features or incremental improvements; they are structural requirements for continued participation in the industry.

The contrast with earlier technological transitions is instructive. Few organizations today operate on dial-up connections or 56k modems. Likewise, transaction flows should be architected, automated, and available for executive review rather than processed sequentially through inbox-based, manual workflows. These examples represent technological transitions that are under completion and demand much more than the other technological changes that came before them.

Looking ahead, far more sophisticated mechanisms will emerge. Autonomous and asynchronous micro-transactions, settled in stablecoins and tied to crypto-securitized ownership interests within a Joint Operating Committee, may become routine in only a few years. Even this scenario may represent a modest example of the commercial infrastructure required to support future markets.

For engineers and geologists pursuing exploration opportunities, securing capital, conducting research in a working group, or restoring production from shut-in properties, the focus must remain on science and technical decision-making. The underlying infrastructure—transaction processing, digital coordination, and financial settlement—should operate seamlessly in the background. When markets provide this infrastructure effectively, technical professionals are freed to concentrate on the work that creates value. We believe they should have a greater interest in the application and development of scientifically-focused Artificial Intelligence frameworks. The choice they have is infrastructure to support their business or if it's not available, their business being consumed.

Downsides of Decentralization

In the choice between consolidation (hierarchical firms) and decentralized, market-dependent structures, the latter carries several inherent disadvantages rooted in transaction cost economics. Professor Ronald Coase showed that firms exist precisely because organizing activity through markets incurs real costs—searching for partners, negotiating and writing contracts, monitoring performance, and enforcing agreements—that are often higher than issuing internal directives. Even when technologies lower some of these frictions, the trade-offs remain material.

The principal downsides relevant to our situation are provided by Grok 4.2:

• Elevated transaction costs and administrative friction — Arm’s-length market dealings require ongoing due diligence, legal safeguards, and dispute resolution that internal hierarchies avoid through simple authority.

• Coordination and integration difficulties — Complex, interdependent activities (shared infrastructure, large-scale capital projects, or rapid industry-wide responses) are harder to orchestrate when participants remain independent.

• Inconsistency and fragmentation — Standards for safety, environmental compliance, data reporting, and operational quality can diverge across autonomous entities, increasing regulatory burden and investor confusion.

• Greater exposure to volatility — As we have discussed, “markets are messy.” Smaller, market-dependent organizations have fewer internal buffers against price swings, capital-market shifts, or boom-bust cycles.

• Risk of opportunism and hold-up — Independent actors may exploit asset-specific investments or incomplete contracts to their own advantage, a classic problem identified by Oliver Williamson.

• Slower knowledge transfer and public-goods underinvestment — Tacit know-how spreads less efficiently across organizational boundaries, and collective investments in R&D, training, or industry standards suffer from free-rider problems.

These disadvantages are substantially offset by the structural realities of the North American oil & gas industry. Operations span a vast continental domain, with each region displaying unique geological and technical characteristics in addition to the advanced expertise required for field operations. Producers retain full operational control through the Joint Operating Committee. Decentralization of the service sector is therefore not a radical departure but the continuation of a model that has existed throughout the industry’s history.

Moreover, administrative and accounting functions do not constitute competitive advantages for producers. Shifting these responsibilities to the market instead delivers clear benefits: material cost reduction and the elimination of bureaucratic overhead that has long acted as a drag on performance.

That said, many of these downsides are not fixed. Advanced accounting systems, real-time performance visibility, blockchain-enabled contracting, artificial intelligence, and a new class of specialized service providers can dramatically reduce transaction costs and coordination frictions. This is exactly the framework Synallagi is designed to deliver—turning what has traditionally been a decisive argument for consolidation into a competitive advantage for decentralized, market-driven organizations.

21st Century Marketplace Vision - Issues - Part I

 People, Ideas & Objects is commencing the publication of our 2026 papers as a series of verbatim individual blog posts. This initiative caters to those who prefer consuming information in consistent, daily installments, a request we are happy to accommodate.

Our schedule includes four weekly updates released every Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday. Each post is designed to cover a single section of the research, ensuring the content remains manageable and can be read in under thirty minutes. We begin this series with our initial paper, originally released on March 27, 2026.

A 21st Century Marketplace Vision for Oil & Gas:

Part I: Issues

We begin.

During the preparation of this document, the scale and intricacy of our 2026 project have grown substantially. The incorporation of Artificial Intelligence has fundamentally redefined the work's architectural scope and overall objectives. Consequently, what was previously known as the Preliminary Specification is now formally designated as the Preliminary Specification with Autonomous Asynchronous Transaction Orchestration. Throughout the remainder of 2026, People, Ideas & Objects will release papers dedicated to enhancing this framework; these contributions should be viewed as incremental updates to the original Preliminary Specification.

Abstract of the Issues

In preparing this paper, it has become evident that the scope and complexity of the project we undertook for 2026 has expanded significantly. The integration of Artificial Intelligence has altered both the architecture and the ambition of the work. What was once framed as the Preliminary Specification is now more accurately described as the Preliminary Specification with Autonomous Asynchronous Transaction Orchestration. Through 2026 People, Ideas & Objects will be publishing papers focused on upgrading the Preliminary Specification. Everything in these papers should be considered incremental to the Preliminary Specification itself. 

Implementing such a comprehensive system today would exceed the capacity of most current producer organizations. However, we are currently in the crucial architectural and planning stage, where precision is decisive. And continues with design and development through our user community. However, during implementation, there will be limited opportunity to redesign foundational elements. Furthermore, mandatory producer participation is required for financial considerations.

A core foundational element, which will be emphasized across all our 2026 papers, is a shift toward greater reliance on markets rather than producer firms. This fully acknowledges the Joint Operating Committee and the industry's three essential markets: Petroleum Lease, Resource, and Financial.

Our user community will have the chance to expand upon these foundational elements and details once their design and development is underway—a topic we will explore in the second paper of this series.

The breadth of the field and topical discussion has expanded to a degree that makes a single comprehensive document impractical. The interdependencies between Artificial Intelligence, Information Technology, accounting, operations, governance, and oil & gas market structure cannot coherently be addressed in one volume.

Accordingly, we have adopted a serialized method of publication. A series of focused papers will be released throughout 2026. Each paper will address a discrete domain within the overall architecture. Complexity will be layered incrementally. Concepts will be introduced, reinforced, and extended over time. This approach is necessary to preserve clarity and obtain greater conceptual uptake.

This initial paper outlines the principal structural issues within the oil & gas industry that the Preliminary Specification addresses. It does not attempt to exhaust the subject. It establishes context. It identifies systemic failures. It anticipates how emerging technologies, when integrated, will reshape the industry’s administrative, accounting, and operational foundations. The scope of these issues are within the domain of markets.

Each paper will remain within a defined length threshold. The objective is to present substantial concepts without overwhelming the reader. Discipline in scope is required to maintain coherence. The common theme is the development and use of “21st Century Markets.”

This series will also represent my final substantive contributions to the project’s architectural and design development. From inception, the design contemplated a transition to our user community and their service provider organizations. Their mandate includes architecture, design, development, implementation, daily management, and ongoing sustained refinement of the software and services supporting accounting and administration in oil & gas.

The structural configuration of that community remains intact. What changes now is responsibility. Stewardship of the Preliminary Specification must transfer to our user community. It is neither feasible nor desirable for a single individual to extend this architecture past 2026. The transition being undertaken in this series of papers is necessary.

That necessity is itself confirmation of the model’s persistence. Just as with the issues in oil & gas, the Preliminary Specification, our user community, and the associated service provider organizations were designed for institutional continuity beyond individual authorship.

The transition will not be without difficulty. Structural and cultural change in a mature industry rarely proceeds smoothly. There will be resistance. There will be uncertainty. There will be institutional friction. Our user community will be the ones industry must look to for administrative and accounting leadership in this transition. 

Engineers and geologists face a choice. They can continue with the status quo: being absorbed in the minutiae of administrative and accounting processes, dealing with countless transaction exceptions, and attempting to navigate the fast-paced world of crypto, AI, and Agentic AI using archaic ERP systems.

Alternatively, they can opt for a supportive, deliberative, accountable and valuable system that efficiently manages daily operations and provides meaningful guidance on the performance of their actions. Achieving this, however, demands making the changes prescribed in this and our subsequent 2026 papers.

For those prepared to engage constructively—those who recognize the current framework is not functioning—the Preliminary Specification with Autonomous Asynchronous Transaction Orchestration represents either a significant opportunity or a necessary solution. The publication of this series marks the point at which that choice becomes explicit. If an area interests you as a prospective member of our user community, if you feel the current implementation is flawed and you have a superior understanding or alternative idea or you want to be part of something substantial consider this your invitation to join and contribute. 

Notice

The naming of our product has evolved into a matter requiring resolution. Continued reference to the “Preliminary Specification” has become increasingly impractical, and the extended form—“Preliminary Specification with Autonomous Asynchronous Transaction Orchestration”—is not operationally viable as a working name.

Accordingly, a formal naming process was undertaken.

We have selected Synallagi. (Please note the unique spelling, it’s different for a reason, synology means something other than what we’re looking for.)

While there may be initial unfamiliarity, the name proves to be both pronounceable and memorable with minimal exposure. The domain synallagi.ai has been secured and will serve as the operating environment for our user community and their service provider organizations.

In evaluating naming alternatives within an already saturated landscape, attention turned to foundational terminology. The Greek terms for “market” and “transaction”—Agora and Synallagi—were considered. A review of the United States Patent and Trademark Office confirmed that Agora was not a viable option.

Synallagi Definition

Synallagi, the Greek term for “transaction,” is therefore adopted as the product name of People, Ideas & Objects.

Definition (Google):

"Synallagi" (συναλλαγή) is a Greek term meaning transaction, exchange, or deal, commonly used in business and banking contexts, such as in Dynamic Currency Conversion.

Most appropriate for our purposes. 

A transaction is a Synallagi, but Synallagi’ are not just transactions. The difference is in this definition.

Traditional Transaction	Synallagi
Recorded after the fact	Defined before execution
Partial information	Fully specified structure
Aggregated profitability	Immediate profitability
External audit required	Embedded verification
Isolated system event	Cross-system state transition

In business there are transactions and in oil & gas there will be Synallagi’. When thinking of a Synallagi, actors understand it consists of the transaction, its agreement, its regulatory environment, its participants, its stable-coin being used and the property involved… 

I Always Have to Ask Why, Part II

 Our user community and their service provider organizations will benefit from Synallagi through a materially different treatment of overhead. Tuesday’s blog post addressed how overhead is predominantly treated in oil & gas today, and how that treatment has become one of the underlying causes of the deterioration authored by producer officers and directors.

The comparison with the methodology prescribed in Synallagi is stark. It will, by itself, become a major contributor to the ability of producer firms to achieve and sustain profitability. Today’s post addresses the Synallagi methodology and explains how People, Ideas & Objects can claim what may appear to be a ludicrous reduction in overhead costs across the industry—to potentially single-digit percentages of what is incurred today.

The highlights are straightforward.

First, through the unique configuration of the industry’s accounting and administrative resources into our user community and their service provider organizations, producer overhead becomes variable and tied to profitable production. If Synallagi produces financial statements with the granularity of each Joint Operating Committee, and a property reports an actual, factual profit, production continues. If the property is unprofitable, it is shut in and since all costs are variable it creates a null operation: no production means no profit and no loss.

Second, even the largest producers are now reaching the limits of specialization and the division of labor within their own organizations. Their internal structures cannot support increasingly specialized positions with sufficient transaction volume. Where throughput is inadequate, any theoretical efficiency gained from further internal reorganization is lost.

Synallagi resolves this constraint by defining and supporting the reorganization of accounting and administrative work through our user community and their service provider organizations. Because each service provider process applies across broad industry-wide activity, the necessary throughput exists. That transaction volume supports hyper-specialization, the division of labor, automation, and autonomous intellectual leverage. The result is a level of productivity and cost reduction that producer firms cannot replicate internally.

Since 1776, economic growth has been driven by the expansion of specialization and the division of labor. Adam Smith’s work on the pin factory, published in The Wealth of Nations, demonstrated that reorganizing work into specialized tasks produced a dramatic increase in productive capacity. That example also benefited from the mechanization of physical labor. Today, oil & gas faces an equivalent opportunity in administrative and accounting work: hyper-specialization multiplied by automation and autonomy.

As our third consideration of how overhead is different in Synallagi. People, Ideas & Objects adopted its corporate name in 2008, drawing from Professor Paul Romer’s New Growth Theory. We applied that theory by examining the producer resource configuration and asking a practical question: which administrative and accounting needs could be performed more effectively by firms whose actual business is accounting and administration?

Producers do not claim competitive advantage from accounting prowess. Their competitive advantages are their land and asset base, and their engineering and geological capacities and capabilities. It therefore makes little commercial sense for every producer to build and maintain duplicate accounting, administrative, Enterprise Resource Planning, and Information Technology infrastructure.

A consolidated, standardized, objective, actual, and factual accounting infrastructure, shared across the industry through Synallagi, eliminates that redundancy. The infrastructure is built once and used across the industry on a variable cost basis tied to profitability.

This produces two critical benefits that directly address deficiencies in the current model.

First, if a property is shut in due to poor performance, none of the associated variable overhead costs are incurred for that month. Producer cash is preserved. 

Second, if the property produces, those variable overhead costs are included in the commodity price of the profitable production. The cash incurred to pay the overhead cost is then returned to the producer within approximately sixty days for reuse. A cash float is created. Again, producer cash is preserved.

Under Synallagi, overhead needs to be financed for approximately sixty days. That is all. Once financed, the system provides the financial resource to replenish itself each month.

Contrast that with the current industry methodology discussed in Tuesday’s blog post. For reasons that remain unexplained, producer overhead continues to be treated under the same legacy methodology despite the existence of this solution. The result has been the loss of substantial liquidity each month, the loss of support for producer capital structures, and wholesale damage to the value of the industry, including its secondary and tertiary industries.

That does not mean producers' current methodology is without advantage to someone. What remains unknown is what is contained within capitalized producer overhead that makes officers and directors continue such a damaging practice. Until that is known, the persistence of the methodology remains a material question.

People, Ideas & Objects has been able to reasonably estimate natural gas revenue losses arising from chronic shale overproduction this century. Those losses now total approximately $5.0 trillion and continue to build at roughly $33 billion per month. Oil overproduction would likely represent a similar order of value, although there is no practical, objective method to measure or quantify it with the same precision.

The consequences of overhead treatment belong in the same category. They represent a major component of Synallagi' value proposition.

These are only three of the many tangible ways Synallagi can create substantial value for oil & gas producers. Producer officers and directors may dismiss these matters as opportunity costs and continue to say they will simply “muddle through.” We disagree.

These are not abstract opportunity costs. They are tangible forms of value that any real business would identify, measure, and remedy.

Drill and produce is not a business model.

And if these losses are merely opportunity costs, as producers suggest, then why did Shell and others sue Venture Global last year in an unsuccessful attempt to recover some of these natural gas revenue losses?

21st Century Markets - Our User Community, Podcast # 36

 As I mentioned in Tuesday’s blog post, the two Artificial Intelligence hosts distance themselves from the content of the paper I published, largely due to the direct criticism directed at the officers and directors of producer firms.

Over the next few years, the scale and depth of the destruction authored by these individuals will become increasingly apparent. What will also become clear is the inadequacy of the industry’s response. Under normal circumstances, when an industry is called upon to step up its effort and deliver, it would be expected to leverage the value accumulated over prior decades. That accumulated value would provide the foundation from which new opportunities could be pursued and incremental value realized.

The difficulty with oil & gas is that there is no remaining value available to leverage. It has been squandered, dissipated, and leaked out of the industry.

Producers appear to believe they will simply resume normal operations once investors back the money trucks up to the loading dock again. What they do not appear to understand is that investors now expect profitable organizations. How profitability is achieved, why it is necessary, and how it is sustained still seems to escape them. Confident in their existing outlook, producers continue to believe that changes to their overhead methodology or organizational structures are unnecessary. The language of “building balance sheets” and “putting cash in the ground,” along with other less offensive variations of the same thinking, will likely experience a resurgence in popularity.

Synallagi’s position is different. In a capital-intensive industry such as oil & gas, capital should be the predominant cost passed to the consumer through the commodity price. If a producer’s Property, Plant, and Equipment balance were reduced to $0.00, that would not only be regulatorily compliant; it would also indicate that the producer had become highly competitive. There would be no remaining capital cost to price into the commodity. All production would be profitable. And a producer would have the independence of thought to pursue their own direction.

People, Ideas & Objects believes it is in producers’ best interests to ensure their capital performs on a basis competitive with the North American capital markets. When capital is properly costed into the commodity price, the cash incurred to secure the asset is returned to the producer. That capital can then be redeployed repeatedly, pay dividends or retire debt. Profits are the hard work of determining what performs, how to make it perform, and what does not perform. In other words, actual, factual accounting is a tool for engineers and geologists to commercially tune their projects performance.

The other aspect of the podcast that requires clarification is how Synallagi treats capital. At 19:18 in the podcast, the female voice states:

“Capital must be recognized, passed through to the token holders and recouped quickly so it can be redeployed back into the economy.”

If I were rewriting that script, it would read:

“Capital must be recognized, passed through to the consumer, and redeployed back into the producer firm for capital expenditures, dividends, and the retirement of debt.”

The distinction is material. The capital cost is ultimately borne by the consumer, who pays the full replacement cost of the commodity. Token holders, as described in the podcast scenario, would not incur that cost. Nor would they be interested in an investment structure that required them to pay twice, only to receive the 1% return described by the presenter. The actual return to token holders would depend on their skill, judgment, understanding of oil & gas, and historical costs.

Those are the podcast errors that should be noted.

The practical difficulty with NotebookLM is what I would call the 95% rule. It may get 95% of the material correct on the first run. However, when a second version is generated, the system often assumes the first version needs to be reinterpreted. It then moves in a different direction, where the error rate can increase rather than decline. For that reason, it is often necessary to accept the initial run, correct the material points manually, and recognize the immense value of the tool despite its limitations.

Pod up

🎙️Podcast

📝Synallagi

📚Index

I Always Have to Ask Why

 One of my preferred sections in yesterday’s publication was the comparison of overhead costs and their treatment under current industry practice versus the treatment proposed in Synallagi.

In a soon-to-be-released Artificial Intelligence-generated podcast, the two simulated presenters criticize the level of animosity I display toward producers, officers, and directors. They make a point of stating that they had nothing to do with the paper and that they are not endorsing either position.

I regard that as something of an achievement. When Artificial Intelligence qualifies its own output based on the intensity of my criticism toward producers, it suggests the argument has been presented with sufficient force to require contextual distance.

My reasoning is straightforward. My frustration arises from the scale of the disaster authored by producer officers and directors, and from the fact that these consequences were foreseeable. They had ample warning. The investment community’s actions and communications in 2015 made the problem explicit. A market-based remedy, Synallagi, was available. Yet the issues were not addressed.

The following is some of the allegedly offending text from the paper. Given the scale of the financial and operational damage involved, I have to ask: why is civility still presumed to be the appropriate standard?

Comparing Our User Community to Today’s Overhead Structure

People, Ideas & Objects has raised the industry’s overhead problem many times. We have documented it extensively. At one stage, we also identified capitalized interest and stock-based compensation as costs receiving similar treatment. Notably, interest and certain related costs were later removed from this reporting method under discussion and, soon afterward, from broader industry practice. We first noted this development on our blog on November 10, 2008.

What remains materially unchanged in 2026 is the capitalization of overhead. Why has gross overhead continued to be reported in the same manner? The discussion that follows suggests this is one of the principal mechanisms through which cash continues to bleed from the industry and their accountability reporting distortions continue to persist.

The relevant question is why capitalized overhead has not been corrected. Is there a specific intent behind the desire of officers and directors to continue reporting overhead in this manner? If so, what is that intent? Why has it persisted? And why were some related costs remedied while overhead remains untreated eighteen years later?

People, Ideas & Objects maintains that, under Synallagi, our user community and their service provider organizations would operate at single-digit percentages of today’s fixed gross overhead. If there is a chronic and systemic source of overproduction in oil & gas, it lies in the fixed gross overhead carried by producers. That is where the problem begins to reveal itself. Capitalization is the mechanism that makes the issue less visible. It creates a distinct cash flow problem while also distorting reported financial performance.

The argument begins with two observations.

• First, overhead costs at any point in time amount to roughly 10 to 20 percent of revenue.

• Second, at any point in time, approximately 85 percent of gross actual overhead is capitalized.

A related issue concerns overhead charged to Joint Operating Committees. Those charges are based on estimates agreed through the Council of Petroleum Accountants Societies. In the broader industry picture, those overhead allowances are effectively zero. Any amounts charged are earned by the operator. Any net recovery merely reduces post-capitalization overhead costs. Under Synallagi those overhead allowances are replaced by the actual, factual overhead costs.

The core issue is straightforward. When overhead is capitalized, those costs are recovered over the life of the reserves. Producers allocate capital costs across all proven reserve volumes reported by their independent reservoir engineers. The cash spent on overhead in a given month is therefore returned in small increments each month over the life of the property.

That creates a structural cash problem. Each month, each producer must find new cash to fund the next month’s overhead. No cash float is created because overhead is not priced into the commodity, is not passed through to the consumer, and is therefore not returned to the producer in the current month to fund the next month’s overhead.

The materiality of overhead in oil & gas therefore creates a persistent drain on cash. This was masked when investors were subsidizing the majority of producer capital expenditures, which included capitalized overhead. Once that support disappeared, producers turned after 2015 to every available source of capital to sustain operations and overhead.

Today, with working capital diminished and in many cases negative, producers are financially and operationally impaired. They are barely able to fund the capital spending required to sustain production. Each year becomes more difficult as their competitive position depreciates further. Their prior conduct toward the service industry has compounded the damage, leaving trust, motivation, capacity, and capability far below what the service industry now requires.

People, Ideas & Objects therefore asks why a policy that has been in place for decades, and that is demonstrably destructive to producer cash requirements, has remained unchanged after more than a decade of industry discussion. What is it about capitalized overhead that makes it so necessary?

For all practical purposes, capitalized overhead has been a root cause of the loss of support for producer capital structures. That loss of support began in 2015, when investors withdrew because of poor performance and a fundamental lack of accountability. 

Nothing meaningful has been done to address either issue. How, then, does this critical cash problem remain in place in 2026?

There must be some continuing intent, motivation, or institutional desire to preserve the practice despite the absence of liquidity, the loss of capital structure support, and the existence of alternatives such as Synallagi.

This leadership has taken shale, one of mankind’s greatest endowments of wealth, delivered to the greatest economy known to man, and for the sake of whatever remains concealed in overhead accounts, destroyed its present value.

21st Century Marketplace Vision for Oil & Gas - Our User Community

I am pleased to present the second paper in our 21st Century Marketplace Vision series. This paper addresses our user community: People, Ideas & Objects’ primary competitive advantage, operational focus, and ultimate customer.

A 21st Century Marketplace Vision for Oil & Gas

Synallagi with Autonomous Asynchronous Transaction Orchestration

Part II: Our User Community

The value contained in this paper is substantial. It should be read by anyone with an interest in Synallagi, and by those concerned with the financial and operational performance of North American oil & gas producers. It sets out why our user community is central to rebuilding the industry around dynamic, innovative, accountable, and profitable operations.

When There Is Money on the Table, the Fight Begins

 People, Ideas & Objects will publish a short series of posts over the next few weeks addressing producer Annual Reports, First Quarter 2026 results, and Annual Meetings. These events provide a useful point of reference for an issue that has remained largely unspoken for decades. It has not been addressed by those with the responsibility, accountability, and authority to resolve it. The consequence is now visible in the market as a serious and developing crisis.

Faith, trust, and confidence in producer officers and directors have continued to erode since 2015. In our April 7, 2025 paper, Oil & Gas Arbitrage: The Market Finds a Way, People, Ideas & Objects described a method by which investors could participate directly in oil & gas. The paper noted that higher commodity prices would not only increase the value of those investments, but would also expand the volume of commercial reserves classified as proven. On that basis, strategic investment in oil & gas becomes especially attractive if commodity prices rise.

There also appears to be a material increase in institutional ownership of oil & gas producers, with some reports placing ownership above ninety percent. Producer officers and directors may therefore face a more difficult Annual Meeting season if oil & gas prices move higher. Rising prices create value. Value attracts attention. And when there is money on the table, the fight begins. Few parties object when there is nothing left to contest. People, Ideas & Objects being one of the few exceptions.

The current gas-to-oil price ratio of 35.2:1 remains in unacceptable territory, as it has since the beginning of commercial shale production. On that basis, People, Ideas & Objects estimates that natural gas losses could potentially be running at $52.5 billion per month. These losses are not inevitable. They are the product of decisions, structures, and the continued absence of an effective operating system. Synallagi was designed to address precisely these issues.

People, Ideas & Objects has repeatedly identified the structural causes. One example is the continued dumping of large volumes of highly differentiated, and at times negatively priced, Permian natural gas into Henry Hub, the continental reference point for natural gas pricing. This is not a minor technical issue. It reflects a disqualifying leadership failure. It also reflects an apparent indifference by producer officers and directors to the value being destroyed.

Producer officers and directors have had fourteen years to consider Synallagi as a remedy for the industry’s fundamental problems. Over that period, the cumulative natural gas revenue loss now exceeds $5.0 trillion. Objectively evaluated, those funds could have supported the service industry, enhanced dividends, strengthened competitive organizations and people, expanded liquefied natural gas export capacity, and financed pipelines or other critical infrastructure.

Instead, the standard response has been excuses, blame, and the manufacture of viable scapegoats. Many producers have gone silent once their prior statements proved unreliable. Inaction remains the preferred strategy. “Muddle through” continues to serve as the operating doctrine.

Yet something appears to be changing. The market is beginning to see the issue more clearly. Institutional ownership, commodity price movement, Annual Meetings, and sustained underperformance are converging. Producer officers and directors may soon discover that their period of silence, deflection, and unaccountable control is nearing its end.