Our Oil and Gas White Paper, Part I
The following series of blog posts represent People, Ideas & Objects Position Paper with respect to the overall achievements the oil and gas industry must strive for in the next three decades. These are what we seek to provide the North American producer through the development of the software and services defined in the Preliminary Specification. Enhanced capabilities that enable producers and the industry to undertake a strategic and tactical business approach that provide a dynamic, innovative, accountable and profitable footing. Software is the enabling technology of the 21st century. When organizations are supported and defined by the software that is consistent with the industry and producers objectives, strategy and tactics, then success and profitability will be the outcome. When organizations are not supported or defined by the software that they use they’re limited and constrained in achieving any results that are competitive in the marketplace for capital, labor and the support of the public. People, Ideas & Objects Preliminary Specification is the result of our research based on what we’ve determined is necessary in order to make the change from using the corporation as the key organizational construct of the producer, to use the Joint Operating Committee as the key organizational construct of the dynamic, innovative, accountable and profitable oil and gas producer. It is a fundamental reorganization of the industry and the producer firm in order to deal with the issues that are prevalent today. Enabling a dynamic change based organizational capability throughout the producer and industry. Positioning the producer and industry for the challenging and difficult future that we all agree will be the most dramatic and exciting the industry has ever experienced.
To execute the necessary changes to build, implement and operate the Preliminary Specification doesn’t exist in the oil and gas industry. Based on the work that we’ve done in this market we also believe that it will never exist in the current configuration of producers. This is due to the response we’ve received from the industry in our attempts to market our product. Their response has led us to the conclusion that they can’t, won’t and will not ever change from the status quo. And that now creative destruction is a necessary and valuable tool to eliminate the unproductive and most particularly unprofitable elements of a poorly performing industry. People, Ideas & Objects are therefore now taking an active role in the preparation of what we see as the new oil and gas industry, based on the vision of the Preliminary Specification, where profitability is achieved throughout the industry everywhere and always. We believe the nature and characteristics of these resources can not currently justify our use of oil or gas to future generations if it is not used in a manner where it was at least produced profitably. We therefore can ensure that because it wasn’t produced unprofitably it wasn’t used wastefully and provided its full value to society. In summary then, we are focused on rebuilding the industry on the vision of the Preliminary Specification. We are unable to provide any value to the current producers as the forces of creative destruction have been put in play through bureaucratic neglect. The time in which they should have acted was many years ago. There is nothing that People, Ideas & Objects are able to do for them in the short term, and we are of the belief that the long term is beyond the grasp of the current producers as their situation is terminal.
The common sense approach of the Preliminary Specification is in dispute by the producer bureaucrats who are challenged by the Information Technologies disintermediation that we represent. They know instinctively this would be the end of their reign of control and power over the commanding heights of the oil and gas industry and are unwilling to give up what has provided them with untold riches at the expense of the shareholders, employees of the producer, the service, secondary and tertiary industries that depend and support the oil and gas industry. It is this conflict and the constraint of the ways and means in which they approach the industry that has created the ongoing tragedy that is playing out over this past decade. Shale has been an exceptional endowment of value across North America. Due to the chronic mismanagement by the bureaucrats the only benefactor of the shale reserves is the energy consumer who realizes a substantial discount on their energy consumption as a result of the specious accounting that has been used in the industry over the past four decades. Outside of this, shale has been an absolute failure from a business point of view. The commercialization of shale is not a topic of concern of the oil and gas bureaucrats, yet is the primary concern of the oil and gas investors who have now withheld their capital from the industry in excess of three years. There are no plans or strategies in place to deal with these difficulties or how to approach the future demands. The financial capabilities of the producers are close to collapsing as a result of the investor and banker strike that began over three years ago.
It is People, Ideas & Objects belief that through a fundamental accounting change that occurred in the late 1970’s. When producers were forced to change to Full Cost accounting and the associated ceiling test regulated by the SEC. A methodology that determines what the capital assets recorded in property, plant and equipment are. This enabled producers to record “assets” that equalled, with some adjustments, the total of their reserves times the current commodity prices as the upper limit of their property, plant and equipment account. If these assets exceeded the reserves “value” then they would be subject to the dreaded ceiling test write down that corrected any asset overvaluation. What was quickly discovered in the high interest rate environment of the 1980’s was that interest was a key attribute of the asset value and therefore interest expenses were capitalized. Someone then asked about overhead with the resulting policies today that see approximately 85% of all overhead in the industry capitalized to property, plant and equipment. Slowly the culture of the industry became a spending frenzy fueled by what came to be the annual share offering. This culture has grown over the past four decades to know no difference in terms of what and how the industry generates value and what destroys value. The belief is that drilling wells releases the oil and gas reserves that are tremendously valuable and that is how the game is played. Until People, Ideas & Objects began arguing that profitability was necessary, the industry did not care whatsoever about profits, it was about cash flow, not profits. We believe these reserves are of no value if they can’t be produced profitably and profitably considering an appropriate accounting of all of the costs, including capital, in a capital intensive industry.
The Preliminary Specification, our user community and service providers provide for a dynamic, innovative, accountable and profitable oil and gas industry with the most profitable means of oil and gas operations. Setting the foundation for profitable North American energy independence. People, Ideas & Objects Revenue Model specifies the means in which investors can participate in our future Initial Coin Offering (ICO) that will fund these user defined software developments. It is through the process of issuing our ICO that we are leading the way in which creative destruction can be implemented within the oil and gas industry. Users are welcome to join me here. Together we can begin to meet the future demands for energy. And don’t forget to join our network on Twitter @piobiz anyone can contact me at 403-200-2302 or email here.