Would've, Could've, Should've

The only thing necessary for evil to triumph in the world is that good men do nothing.

- Edmund Burke

It’s times like these that People, Ideas & Objects message will be getting confused. What we’ve provided the industry is an understanding of our business model and its application to the oil & gas producers. Nothing in that business model or our approach has or will change. We see the level of damage that has been realized in the industry as devastating. Higher commodity prices are a reflection of the inability of producers to meet the needs of consumers. Officers and directors destroyed their capital structures, forcing their investors and bankers to stop funding their excessive and highly specious demands. They highly abused the service industry to the point where all the value has been hollowed out of that industry and the ability of the producers to function today is at a level that is woefully inadequate and they are unprepared to meet consumers future needs. Excuses, blaming and scapegoating as to who’s responsible has always been their solution, only now do the officers and directors realize they’re not being trusted, believed or listened to. What we find today is the chronic complaining that’s occurred over the past decades continues. Now it’s that investors need to provide them with “more,” again, in the form of relief of having to pay them dividends. That they “could do better, if only…”

Our message has been directed at the officers and directors and that is due to the fact they have the responsibility, authority and are theoretically accountable to act. Our message is not fit for public consumption and we’ve never considered that it would be part of that arena. Since the producers are now bringing their investors in to be the scapegoat we can see the writing on the wall that their ways are permanent and they’ll grasp at anything. We have asserted that they were never operating profitable operations. If they were operating profitable operations they would have been providing their investors with far greater returns than what has occurred in the past year, every year for many, many decades. The cash flow they’re receiving today is impressive when it's used to fill the officers and directors pockets. There are far more uses for this cash beyond just the personal needs of those in power. The cash being generated today is woefully inadequate to deal with what I would call “normal operations” and certainly nothing in consideration of the rebuilding effort ahead of them. In terms of dealing with the situation at hand and taking constructive steps towards resolving it, it's now the investors fault? I can see the day when I’m sure it would be our turn “for making prices higher.” These beginning paragraphs are my attempt to capture my message in a two second sound bite to counter these points.

For decades I’ve been vilified and ostracized by these officers and directors who felt that my message of making them profitable in the real sense, everywhere and always made me the devil incarnate. If only they weren’t obstinate and stuck in their ways they might begin to think to themselves “what could have been?” I’ve put the November 24, 2022 deadline for them to act to fund the Preliminary Specification. What happens after that doesn’t concern me when I’m potentially the next viable scapegoat as to why the industry is charging such high commodity prices. They’re not providing leadership in a competitive market, they’re fools.

Third quarter 2022 financial statements of the producers reflect a somewhat shocked revelation beginning to come over the officers and directors that making money as a business is a little more exciting and interesting than beating drilling companies up for using too many bits on the last well. Cost control is not a business model and to break out of that miniscule mindset has been the consequence that society has the pleasure of experiencing this winter. I’m sure the officers and directors will be expecting an appreciative thank you note for putting everyone in this situation. The business today is not healthy and they’re beginning to see how unhealthy it really is. No one is answering the phone and everyone else doesn’t care what they do. Others have been burned too many times before. The irony I see is that they’re catching a wisp of what it is that I’ve been talking about as the business begins to perform at about 2% of where it should have been all this time. They’re realizing they messed it up and could have had it much better all this time. They’ll be thinking it’s time to find a new batch of scapegoats.

Whom is it that has the understanding of the issues that affect the North American oil & gas producers? Whom is it that has “a” solution that directly deals with these issues and makes the oil & gas industry the most profitable means of oil & gas operations everywhere and always? The last question reflects who on November 25, 2022 is not answering their call. I’ll hold to my deadline of the 24th but the probability that they fund our budget in the next 2 weeks is as laughable as I can suggest. I’m not going to set myself up for a public relations mess by individuals who can’t take responsibility for anything or do anything outside their own personal concerns. I see now that there’s a different approach, although limited, that has the implementation of the Preliminary Specification as it stands today, with our user community and their service provider organizations configured with Oracle Cloud ERP as Cloud Administration & Accounting for Oil & Gas. I’ve decided to pursue that instead while the consequences of the officers and directors destruction is played out in real time this winter.  

What I do know is that it is these same “officers and directors” that claimed to have innovatively developed the shale technologies. It was these “officers and directors” who claimed to have created the great shale revolution. We know now that’s not true. It was those in the field who fought for a decade or more to have the coil tubing and packers accepted as technologies. They too were ostracized and vilified for their efforts. We do know now that it was the producer “officers and directors” that frittered and wasted what was a spectacular endowment of shale wealth and destroyed it with nothing to show for it now. Took an industry that created great value in the past and trashed it to a level where it’s useless at the most critical time that society needs energy. Those shale reserves were produced unprofitably and these officers and directors had the audacity to say they’d never be commercial 18 months ago in order to shift their business focus to clean energy. Shale’s deliverability appears to have started its inevitable decline due to this abuse. It can’t be augmented in the short term due to the service industry's destruction, authored by producers. There are no plans to deal with these issues. And to paraphrase producers response “consumers shouldn’t look to us to solve this.” They absorbed hundreds of billions of investor dollars over the decades to “build their balance sheets” that today are just as susceptible as any other paper is to the shredder. A time when our enemies thank them for providing them with the ultimate weapon of war. The producer officers and directors who took the investors billions on top of all this other wastage and used it to replace the custom marble in their homes and villa kitchens each quarter. (Just couldn’t get that color quite right.) These are the consequences of their claims of innovativeness, profitability and the quality of their management. This is their legacy.  

Here’s a hint for those officers and directors of the producer firms. This is only what I feel the next step will be and it is well beyond what a new business model such as the Preliminary Specification can do. After the 25th of this month People, Ideas & Objects can’t and won’t help producers with the consequences of their actions over these past decades as the acceptance in the market goes from what’s called obedience to revolt. 

The only thing I can and will do is make sure that people understand that I was here looking to provide a solution to the exact problem they’ll be facing this winter. And it was producer officers and directors who laughed, kicked me out of the industry and tried everything they could to silence me. That it was they who were endowed with the authority and responsibility to ensure this didn’t happen and now need to be held accountable. That they had every opportunity from August 2012 to November 24, 2022 to resolve what was clear to them yet chose to do nothing out of personal self interest. I’ll consider this my reward for these efforts and be satisfied with the work that I’ve done to stop this foolishness and thankfully did not participate in the making of this disaster. 

OCI Revised User Community Vision, Part III

 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 asking 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 that would exist in the 21st century and the only real asset that would provide owners of any asset with any value. Today the economic environment that exists doesn’t offer anything of the type of reward that Intellectual Property does, in my opinion, and most particularly one that is inflation and or interest rate 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 to have some form of Intellectual Property in order to do their work, or to better define this, have the right to do their work. This can begin to be acquired through the education and experience one obtains, however they’ll also have to have one of three levels of access to IP. The first is the outright ownership of their own Intellectual Property which are commonly known as copyrights, trademarks, patents and to a lesser extent trade secrets. The second is a contractual arrangement where access to others Intellectual Property is licensed to the individual or firm they’re responsible for. And the last will be as an employee of a firm that either has the IP or is licensed to use the IP. 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 of 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 from People, Ideas & Objects, as either individuals or as representatives of their service providers and 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. 

In order to ensure that this IP is held and developed in pristine condition. Our user community members are paid by People, Ideas & Objects for their contributions in the development of the Preliminary Specification and other derivative works such as the 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 end up with an unworkable model due to the claims of individuals and trolls who would hold up the profitability of the oil & gas producers for their own monetary purposes. If it is that you have your own Intellectual Property and feel that it should be recognized then the market is available for you to do so. 

There are a number of conditions that will need to be met in order to participate in People, Ideas & Objects user community. First we are seeking to provide the North American oil & gas producers with the most profitable means of oil & gas operations everywhere and always. A task that enables others in the rebuilding of the industry and sub-industries themselves. That is our objective. We are not in any way providing producers with anything to do with clean energy. The revenues of our user community and their service providers are derived from the oil & gas production. Therefore the license precludes user community members and their service providers from operations outside of the oil & gas realm. It will also preclude them from working in any area other than the domain of oil & gas ERP systems of People, Ideas & Objects, 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 greater oil & gas, software industries or elsewhere. Our focus is exclusively on the ERP product licensed for the oil & gas producers to maximize profitability. Maximizing producer profitability is seen as an unending task. 

We need to consider the possible contamination of this IP in a scenario that would disrupt this community. If a user community member or its service provider was using this IP, or augmenting 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 in order 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 sourced from the Intellectual Property that is produced through this community. Value of this magnitude needs to be protected from the potential of incidental and minor actions that would appear to be non-consequential. However could be based on the actions of others outside the community who were looking to leverage the work of the community in a manner that was unproductive. Our safeguard here is to state the risk to the community of a participant that may innocently fall prey to these actions by advising them of the consequences in advance. That the loss of the license is something that could be communicated to our user community members staff within their service provider organization and those within that organization would be wise to 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. 

Membership in our user community will be maintained in the initial development period on the basis that it’s a privilege and not a right. We need to have an environment within the community where the performance of the community 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 in which our user community's performance is the overriding requirement. Methods will therefore be implemented to ensure that the lack of contributions, free riding, trolling etc are to be dealt with effectively. What I am suggesting is, that in either of these or other possible scenarios the licensing and management of the IP in the structure of our user community ensures that the community’s leadership can manage who contributes. If the community member is not able, free riding or implementing a value proposition inconsistent with the overall objective, our user community leadership, under the license provisions will have the means in which to terminate the license. The right to cull the herd will be a method that our user community will be able to ensure that quality and performance is achieved and obtained in each and every corner of the work they’re doing. Vetting is not always able to determine the best candidates. A successful implementation of the IP and software in the industry is necessary in order for our user community and their service provider organizations to succeed as organizations.

Those that contribute are compensated appropriately and will need to perform to ensure producers are able to rely on quality ERP systems. Members of the community themselves will be able to know reliably 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 that have been used to establish other high performing organizations. Success must be obtained 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 its part time participation during initial development and prior to the initiation of their 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 where you're able to make a contribution and a difference. There are risks, and I have worked to ensure that none of these 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 to be impossible for many. And then it will attract exactly the kind of people that will perform in an environment such as this. One of People, Ideas & Objects first tasks is to establish the leadership group, which are full time positions. Then they’ll be able to take our user community members we have and recruit the many, many more that will be needed to cover the full needs of the applications scope and scale. 

Our User Community Tasks

As a group, our user community has specific tasks that need to be completed 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. In terms of technical risk, I assess the project as moderate, we are using proven technologies on a large scope and scale. In terms of business risk we see the North American producers failing in their primary objective of 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 have this completed successfully, in my opinion. Ditto for the market risk. Our vision within the Preliminary Specification is comprehensive and has the benefit of unifying 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 that is the Preliminary Specification. This vision provides the broad outline of what and how the applications need in order to operate. The details of how each individual's work needs to be handled is the work of our user community to fill in, define and ensure that our developers provide you with the systems that you want and need. For example, if you are working in an area where the Material Balance Report is part of the domain of your work. You will 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 your 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, exception 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 five Organizational Constructs and the vision of the Preliminary Specification. 

What we don’t need in this first iteration of the Preliminary Specifications software is to have 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 some other condition. What we will 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 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 the developments, when the software is operational in 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 a 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 a consistency in terms of the understanding throughout the industry.

Once we have the software fully operational in the marketplace then we’ll be able to innovate on the model, and 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 which we’ll provide to oil & gas. Services revenues fall under the domain of the service provider organizations individually which 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 it 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 have to initiate the changes through these 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 on 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 are changing 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 in the forefront of our user community's search for delivering tangible value. Upon commercial release we’ll have a solid foundation in which to innovate on a known - known in terms of the Preliminary Specifications business models.

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 be looking 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 concern that need to be addressed in the work that is 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 costed this work in our budget at the $345 / hour rate for our user communities participants. We are looking for people of that caliber. 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 and their work experience fall under the greater oil & gas economy. However, we expect that there will be a strong element of Information Technology aptitude that will be inherent in their skill set. Particularly in the two areas we have mentioned before of relational databases and Java. Having a good working knowledge of these two specific technologies, on top of your current skills, will make the design and development of the software, which will be your job as a user community member and service provider, that much easier and better. 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 you to better understand the issues and opportunities that the technology provides. What is possible to you as a result of the Oracle database, its deployment in a cloud computing environment and Java, which now includes Oracle Fusion Applications the base of the Preliminary Specification, from a conceptual level offer interesting new perspectives and dimensions in ERP software. To add these to your 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 is no demand here to write code at any time, that is not what we are specifying. It is the conceptual framework of these technologies that need to be addressed.

Secondly your ability to communicate with the People, Ideas & Objects developers in their primary skill set will be necessary to enhance the communications between yourself and them. It is easier for you 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 in 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 an elementary level of the language of the developers. As there is no way in which each developer is ever going to 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 the technology may take four or five university level courses in order to acquire the type of understanding that I think is necessary. We are seeking to communicate effectively with developers. Think of it as an investment in order to earn those handsome hourly rates and resolve industry issues. The thing about providing the oil & gas producers with the most dynamic, innovative, accountable and profitable means of oil & gas operations. Is that you are able to prove substantial value propositions such as what we have. And therefore, as a result everyone benefits 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 from 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 keynote addresses, all are must see viewing for members of our user community.

OCI Revisions to User Community Vision, Part II

 Leadership in Our User Community

The first element of our user community in terms of its needs is leadership. Effectively our user community is a separate organization that is independent of both People, Ideas & Objects and the industry itself, 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 principles in the service provider organizations who provide the 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. It is People, Ideas & Objects objective to focus on our organizations competitive advantages of our user community, research and Intellectual Property. Therefore the leadership in our user community is an aspect that needs to be developed from those who commit to the overall vision of the Preliminary Specification and desire to provide oil & gas producers with the most profitable means of oil & gas operations. 

There will be two types of leadership provided by our user community. There is organizational focused leadership that focuses on the needs of our user community. Secondly there will be overall industry wide leadership of the oil & gas business model. This is discussed in detail in the next section. Our user community includes the necessary organizational support that will be demanded of it, including the approximate thirty Product Owners who are responsible for either a specific module of the Preliminary Specification or an element of its development. Involving the hard 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. To build an application on Oracle Cloud ERP can be done by anyone with the money to do so. To add a vision as compelling as the Preliminary Specification to the mix adds a lot of 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 becomes successful for all concerned. These software applications will deliver the explicit knowledge that is captured by our user community and codified in the software they develop, and 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. 

This leadership group contained within our user community should not be confused with the role of our user community itself. It is a supporting role, not a defining or traditional organizational structure to provide guidance to the organization. It is purely to provide our user community members with the support they need in order to perform their role in providing the oil & gas producer with the most profitable means of oil & gas operations. To suggest our user community is independent, then to continually state that they are People, Ideas & Objects competitive advantage with its own leadership structure is counter-intuitive and contradictory. I don’t see it that way. The Intellectual Property of which is the basis of what everyone is working and building is derivative of People, Ideas & Objects and our ultimate ERP software. We are seeking to build the highest quality software possible for today and to continue to do so. User based developments are the only method in which we can achieve that objective. It is more of a value to us that fits within the method that we’ve chosen to provide our solution. The leadership team of our user community is supportive. Looking to mitigate the issues and exploit the opportunities they see our user community being faced with. User community participants are focused on the demands of the producers' needs. That is where they’ll focus, seek and obtain their calling. 

McKinsey Consulting published a good article on the topic of 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 roles and responsibilities of the CEO, CFO and COO. 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 that will need to be filled are the approximately 30 product owners we mentioned earlier. These are intriguing roles that take a premier seat in the software development team. They are the ultimate representative of our user community for the scope of the team's development 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 by the People, Ideas & Objects software development team. Having expert knowledge in the area, in this case Partnership Accounting, the Product Owner is able to read our user communities needs and preferences and increase the effective 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 that are necessary 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 greater value to the dynamic, innovative, accountable and profitable oil & gas producer over what the bureaucracy is providing today. Our focus on developing our user community, its leadership and the associated service providers as our primary task. We do this as we are striving to provide 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 bureaucracy 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 bureaucracy. If we don’t work towards building an alternative, nothing will change. And this is the place where people can begin the process of changing 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 can not be quantified which are gained from implementation of the tools of specialization and the division of labor. Ours is a new way of operating the oil & gas industry, and as we’ve stated here before, even if the bureaucracy could park their self interests and wanted to proceed with our developments we would not begin until our user community is fully formed. The Preliminary Specification is a fine vision of what the industry can operate as. However without our user communities involvement in the software developments it will be a great vision without the appropriate implementation. There must be robust user community involvement in the software development of the Preliminary Specification. It is mandatory, and as I have pointed out our user communities development is our number one focus and priority. We are an existential threat to the bureaucracy who are challenged by the Preliminary Specification. They are eliminated from the landscape by it and therefore don’t want to be part of it. Therefore they have not and will not support us. And we'll therefore have to build our user community brick by brick and stick by stick. And that takes time, of which we have and the producers don’t appear to.

The ultimate configuration of the leadership positions of our user community will be determined by those within the community. Industry after industry is being disintermediated by Information Technology. And that is what is 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 is demanding a new business model be generated 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 deals with allocating production fairly across the industry, based on profits and doesn’t damage a producer with excessive G&A costs when production is shut-in. A business model that defines and supports a basis of innovation in the producer and industry to ensure that consumers are provided with abundant energy at reasonable costs. There are significant opportunities that lay ahead for the people who participate on the leadership team and our user community in general. They will have a hand in developing the 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 the 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, and the solution that 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 as a result of creative destruction. We don’t know and we certainly don’t care how the industry configuration ultimately changes. What we are concerned with is that we provide 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 particularly its leadership. One area of our value proposition that we’re unable to quantify is the value that we will be able to provide the dynamic, innovative, accountable and profitable producer due to the toolset which we implement within the Preliminary Specification. And that toolset currently consists of items such as automation of the business process, specialization and the division of labor. 

Looking at the overall scope of what can be accomplished by the leadership team and our user community. It is important to remember they have the wherewithal to make this happen. This is documented in the three structural components of the community 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 and another to provide that community with the means to undertake that vision. And I think those mechanisms are within the domain of our user community. 

The Preliminary Specification provides a solid vision and workable framework of what an alternative means of organization could be for the oil & gas industry. It works in that there is no deficiency or major failing where there is a breakdown in logic or implementation. It is a 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 be operated upon, 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 have their input into the process and build on the framework and vision that is the Preliminary Specification.

User Community Business Leadership of the North American Oil & Gas Industry

The questions that need to be asked is how does the North American oil & gas industry avoid the disaster it has become from recurring? Why did the business leadership fail? Why hasn’t it been corrected? Did producer firms adopt the cultural, Information Technology and organizational changes demanded of it? If not why not, and what motivation stopped these changes from happening? Has the dynamic of business leadership in oil & gas itself changed? Has it taken on a broader, industry focus and away from the individual organization? Or is it that producers today have just lost the script in terms of business performance? What is the meaning of business leadership and why has the loss of it 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 just 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.”

Nonetheless I don’t think I’ve been able to get to the beginning of the discussion that needs to be undertaken on the difficult topic of leadership. What I do know is that the miracle of Information Technology has made oil & gas organizations sink into a comfortable, fixed configuration that works for one small group of people at the expense of everyone else. These producers' decision makers are conflicted and self-absorbed to the point of 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. There is no demand for change as there are no issues.

Will our user community as configured be the means in which to provide the business leadership in terms of the governing business model for North American oil & gas? We’re suggesting here that the difficulties in organizations making changes to deal with their environment are catastrophically constrained by ERP software. When ERP software defines the process management the only method to make changes is to change the software first. This knowledge has been used in the current producer firms to ensure that nothing can challenge their methods of management and ensure their positions remain secure. Therefore a method is necessary to change the software that is used in the industry to deal with the business issues and opportunities as they arise. What People, Ideas & Objects are recommending in the Preliminary Specification is a permanent software development capability be established for our ERP system in addition to our permanent user community and their service provider organizations. Our business model is based on change and has discarded the traditional means and methods of ERP software firms to generate their revenues. Post commercial release of our Preliminary Specification will see People, Ideas & Objects generate the revenues necessary to support our developers and our user community through the changes that we make to these systems. These will be funded through an assessment made to the producers based on the prior quarters costs etc.

This change in funding brings about a number of fundamental differences between our offering and what is traditionally undertaken. The first is that our user community remains wholly independent. They will not, and never will be “blind, sleep-walking agents of whomever will feed them.” They will be driven by what is necessary in order 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. The capital markets will then be able to assess the producer's performance on the basis of its understanding and implementation of their science and technology of engineering and geology. Those producers who are unable to perform financially will be unable to succeed, unlike today’s bureaucracy. 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, software code therefore also 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 then they’ll have little to no vested interest in supporting it and therefore will make the change. The producers will generally be unaware and rightly unconcerned for any of these transactions. People, Ideas & Objects cost model distributes these costs across the producer population based on the North American production profile that participates in the development. Otherwise, as they do today, each of the producer firms will face these same costs of changes themselves, individually within each of their own empires. Each producer's independently replicated, unshared and unshareable overhead costs is the secondary reason for their lack of profitability. Our solution to that is we are enhancing the cloud computing paradigm by establishing our Cloud Administration & Accounting for Oil & Gas. Taking a highly complex and difficult process, that is capital intensive to build and maintain, that is costly to operate, is not in any way a producers competitive advantage and turning it into a shared and shareable variable cost. Variable based on profitable production.

We have been fortunate at People, Ideas & Objects to be able to quantify the differences between our method of organization and the current bureaucracies. Documenting the $25.7 to $45.7 trillion in our value proposition over the next 25 years goes a long way to making 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 expectations that investors will be available to continue to “build balance sheets,” and “put cash in the ground” which is the current officers and directors method. The $5.7 trillion is the differential between our determination of “real” profitability and the definition of profits used in the 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. These will be material in their value to the dynamic, innovative, accountable and profitable oil & gas producer. Possibly of greater value than those benefits that we are able to quantify today. Lastly, what is the monetary value of establishing Cloud Administration & Accounting for Oil & Gas? It's interesting that producer officers and directors expect investors to invest in them when they themselves can't invest in their own organizations in order to enhance their own profitability. This being the case after the disaster that stands from the past few decades of the producers financial record. And their leadership has suggested what to remedy this?

Recently we learned during Oracle’s 2022 CloudWorld conference of many of the same developments and features being provided. 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 be applying in this community. Oracle Cloud ERP has accelerated these same principles across the generic business function and process landscape bringing about even higher levels of value to the 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 attributes and therefore covering off the majority of a producers accounting and administrative needs. 

To suggest that administration and accounting of the oil & gas industry are static is disrespectful to the word static. These are the foundation of the business which is where the 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. The leadership in these areas is constrained by the lack of effective business leadership in these producer firms and the industry. Relegated to the task of 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 science and technology be today? What would North America’s production profile be? Would they be looking behind them as they seem to always be doing now? Why is this acceptable to them when it’s destructive to what they’ve built and provides 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 are seeking to provide them with the very solution! We are not the enemy here.

Lets 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 best description that I can describe is that people are busy working for computers. We believe the shoe should be on the other foot and the computers should be deployed to manage the storage and processing. Leaving the distinct competitive advantages of our user community and their service providers to do what humans do best.

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 would be many more. It will be up to our user community to ensure that we employ this advanced toolset in the development of the Preliminary Specification and through to their service providers. This will be a challenging aspect of their work in terms of how it’s undertaken. With the reorganization of the industry and 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 entire new way of organization and perspective of how things are done. The scope of change is tremendous. The size of the G&A resources that are being shifted in this reorganization are therefore estimated to be in the region of $10+ billion per annum in terms of their share of producer overhead costs. 

It is these topics and areas of focus that will be the domain of the business leadership within our user community. Very high level, once in a century type of work that will be something an individual can highlight their career and establish a business in. The changes we are making are dramatic and 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 is material to how the producer performs financially, and since all our organizations are a critical part of our society, healthy organizations lead to healthy societies which lead to healthy individuals. 

OCI Revisions to User Community Vision, Part I

 People, Ideas & Objects User Community Vision

The lack of profitability has decimated the value that was created in the oil & gas business before the 1980s. The subsequent investment capital that was invested and all the revenues earned were fruitless when the business stands today without the ability to support commercial operations or meet the energy demands of consumers. This damage extends to the service industries capacities & capabilities. And includes the fact that the oil & gas and service industries capital structures are incapable of resurrecting commercial operations. People, Ideas & Objects have documented throughout the Preliminary Specification our remedy to 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, to formulate the solution based on the Preliminary Specification and deliver that to the North American producer marketplace. Our user community is configured unlike any user community that has been created to develop ERP systems before. This is to ensure they succeed in their task and make the transition from today’s culture of failure, to one 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 the direction and involvement of user driven software development. This has been proven and has become the foundation of the agile methodology of software development. The breadth of understanding contained within the administrative and accounting for oil & gas can only be obtained through the direct involvement of those who are familiar with the wants and needs of the process management, data, issues and opportunities. People, Ideas & Objects user community is configured to capture this understanding and define their needs for the software developers. 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 that this initiative is successful. The only method of developing quality software is through user community development and it is here that we’ve focused our efforts since March 2014. We have made our user community one of People, Ideas & Objects three competitive advantages consisting of Intellectual Property and research to round out the rest of our offering. Our user community is in fact our primary focus and our 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 the officers and directors of oil & gas producers is consolidation which occurred a few years ago. Centralized control of interactively complex systems are not effective and lead to failure. There needs to be decentralized control with the ad hoc capabilities of a market able to make the necessary changes as required. Interactive complexity is one of the difficulties that are plaguing 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. 

By recognizing the Joint Operating Committee as the key organizational construct of the producer firm we are defining and supporting the culture of the industry within the Preliminary Specification and eliminating this conflict. We believe the excessive regulatory requirements should be a consequence of action and not a factor in the decision making process. It is with this in mind that Oracle during their 2022 CloudWorld conference mentioned that once a feature is introduced into the software itself, it is very difficult to take the feature out. User community members will need to consider these aspects of software design and development. To ensure interactively complex systems are decentralized with the appropriate reporting, responsibility and authority being invoked without too much “noise” being created. Hence the critical nature and importance of our user community in these developments.

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 power necessary to affect the changes they need to make. They are, and will be for the long term, the ones that industry will turn to to resolve their ERP software related issues and opportunities. It will be our user community members who are authorized to make 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 all others.

Our user community has their own budget. They are independent business people. Not "blind sleep walking agents of whomever will feed them."

Users are the only individuals and / or groups who have the power to make any changes to the Preliminary Specification and its derivative works. People, Ideas & Objects business model is based on a fundamentally different method on which to develop 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 determine the configuration of the software. It will not be driven by the technical architecture, some business cycle or any 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. Changes, (subject to appropriate change management processes) to the underlying Intellectual Property can be made by those within our user community to a model that allows the access to those that are licensed in our user community. Use of the Joint Operating Committee and the five other Organizational Constructs are a strong model that solves the administrative, accounting and operational issues and enables the producers to realize opportunities in the industry. This business model and its future development is in the hands of our user community. Included with user community member participation is the granting for development and operation of a service provider organization that is licensed for an exclusive process domain in which to manage on behalf of North American producers. The service providers are a reallocation of the administrative and accounting resources of the producers and 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 and their overall relationship with our user community. This will be what makes the People, Ideas & Objects user community so effective. It is how People, Ideas & Objects have chosen to build quality software. Our user community members are involved in the development on a part-time basis. They will individually generate revenues for the work they're doing as users. Their service provider organizations will be the primary source of their value generation. A preliminary total of $1.67 billion in the initial development phase has been budgeted exclusively to users by People, Ideas & Objects. We expect a number of approximately 3,000 users and their service provider organizations to be created to address the specifics of each process under the ERP softwares management. Our user community members will use their budget allocation to research, collaborate and determine the needs of the producers and industry then communicate, oversee and ensure the software is developed in the manner they demand. Individual users will be able to specialize in terms of their contribution to a specific area and process of which their expertise as user community participants provides. 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 ensure that their needs are understood and what it is they specifically require in our software and services. Ensuring that what is developed on the producer's behalf is accurate. Not in fact relegating a definition contained within a service level agreement, where the producer is seeking to delegate the responsibility and accountability on to the agent of the agreement.

Participation is imperative for producers if they want to proceed with the developments around the Preliminary Specification. Developments which include the decentralized production model, the Joint Operating Committee and other Organizational Constructs, three marketplaces and thirteen modules. And in turn 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 make it that producers' particular requirements, their distinctive way of administration, accounting and operations are not accommodated or considered. That none of the software is built for the situations that the company experiences and 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 with 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 be participating with and interacting with our user community itself. I expect our user community to be dynamic and fast paced with significant iterations being made over the business model that uses the Joint Operating Committee etc. The non-participating producers' people won’t know what these changes are and they won’t know what the implications are to the assets of their firm. They weren't there when the decisions were made. As an analogy their producer firm has become a four year old that closed his eyes and covered their ears, screaming that they’re not listening. A very effective strategy. Shareholders will be wise to these actions and wonder why it is that their producer firms are not participating? Is the optimization of their profitability not an issue? Or is the company unaware of the technical progress that has occurred in the past 25 to 35 years? Investors will have questions and producers will need to provide answers. 

One answer might be that it's best to sit out and see how things develop with People, Ideas & Objects et al. I believe sitting on the side lines will be the tragic choice for any producer. They should choose to be in or out and have their reasons for non-participation, but to sit on the fence will be the worst 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, the subsequent software development will be bringing in new concepts and features on top of the features that were previously built that non-participating producers did not participate in, and therefore can’t understand or implement. Leaving them unable to make the transition. Permanently deprecating their performance standard and competitiveness.

What People, Ideas & Objects, our user community and their service provider organizations are doing is disintermediating the oil & gas business. Ending the life of the obsolete business model and culture that no longer supports any of its users needs and has ceased to build value for any of its stakeholders and most particularly its shareholders. Disintermediation is necessary and timely, no industry will be immune. We have not scheduled the commencement of our software developments, however we have spent our time since the publication of the Preliminary Specification developing our user community. There are no large technical issues foreseen that need to be resolved. I believe everything that we need to build the Preliminary Specification can be done with today’s technological infrastructure. Going as far as to suggest here that we have no technical risk in People, Ideas & Objects business. Review of the many keynote addresses by Larry Ellison at his Oracle conferences reflect this. Although there are no large database issues to resolve, it hasn’t stopped Oracle from moving their technology forwards in significant ways that will make our job faster, better, smarter and higher in quality. I mention this as this technological infrastructure is what is enabling disintermediation of the industry. 

It will be a new oil & gas industry. One that is limited by our user community's imagination. One based on the Preliminary Specification and developed further from there. This is the opportunity that 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 make changes to the underlying Intellectual Property and the only people our developers concern themselves with. But let's not forget their budget too. No one is going to grant us approval to proceed. We will act in the best interests of providing the 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 into an industry that is worthless. The demand for cash to support the long term destruction of the industry continues and fewer sources of support are being realized each passing day. The time when serious action is required is upon the producer firms. I would suggest one of the dynamic changes as a result of the shale era will be that the leadership of the industry will not be sourced from the engineering and earth science disciplines. But form in the hands of those leaders that can make the industry profitable. The future oil & gas industry's leadership will therefore be regenerated and exercised through our user community. This will be the means in which the industry regenerates itself, profitably, not as an out of control spending machine. If that appeals to people then they should act, as actions based on individuals working in collaborative fashion, driven by an overall vision of real profitability such as the Preliminary Specifications is how we’ll solve this. However, do remember that the losing side is the most dangerous just before the collapse. Don't expose yourselves to them unnecessarily.

User Community Charter

Our user community seeks to find 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. What oil & gas is experiencing is unquestionably the most difficult issue they’ve ever faced. Our user communities collaborations are not to build consensus or compromise. On the contrary, we have many issues to resolve and some of the most complex that have ever been approached. The resolution of issues 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 the industry software for the next generation, to lead and build the dynamic, innovative, accountable and profitable energy industry we now need in North America.

We have a history in North American oil & gas of a decided lack of profitability. We therefore have a basis of understanding why profits are so important and should always be the focus of everyone that’s involved in the industry. In Canada our former Prime Minister Stephen J. Harper, who’s 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 am stating 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 the previously invested capital. The money that is needed throughout the greater 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 the revenues are earned due to the efforts of all the secondary and tertiary industry efforts. Service industry revenues do not exist outside of the oil & gas producers. 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 the activity of an industry except for the time during its formative years. Eventually a viable industry will benefit those who took the risk to establish the opportunity and those that made it real. Today in North American oil & gas we have an industry that is not profitable in the “real” sense. It has ruined the value that was developed by those that came before them and those that had been led to believe otherwise. An industry that has now degraded to the point where it’s unable to provide profitable operations or satisfy its customers demands. Profitability will be the only source of value that the industry will be able to use to generate its future. No one else trusts the current trustees historical performance record. Besides, other than profitability there is no other source of capital large enough to even begin to approach the needs of the industry.

It is therefore incumbent upon our user community to take the leadership role in establishing “real” profitability in North American oil & gas. I am frequently confronted by producer engineers and geologists who say that accounting has nothing to do with the industry's profitability. “There is no way accounting will make the basin profitable.” The fact that they have lost what former Prime Minister Harper states, “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. 

OCI Revisions to How to Join

 User Community Membership Process.

People, Ideas & Objects user community members are our priority and focus. 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 in which to affect the necessary changes in the oil & gas business model and 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 the issues being experienced in oil & gas are welcome to join People, Ideas & Objects as user community members. Our users are compensated for the part-time work they’ll conduct while involved in these software developments. We are establishing a 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 service we are building. The scope and scale of the Preliminary Specifications modules are well beyond what could be asked of a volunteer community, and the North American based 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 and to transition to operational service provider organizations. 

To initiate your involvement in this community please review the following.

Review the Preliminary Specification.

Gain a strong understanding of the differences of using the Joint Operating Committee and five other Organizational Constructs of the Preliminary Specification. How the nature of the differences of this system contrast to traditional ERP systems. How these differences are captured in the Performance Evaluation, Analytics & Statistics, Research & Capabilities, Knowledge & Learning, 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. “Additions” in Oracle 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. These videos can be sourced from YouTube. 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 attain the ultimate value for the oil & gas industry.

To enhance our understanding of the dynamic and innovative nature that we seek in oil & gas, I recommend downloading and studying Professor Giovanni Dosi, "Sources, Procedures and Microeconomic Effects of Innovation."

Sign the Copyright License. 

I am the beneficial owner of the copyright of the ideas expressed 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, and be published for the benefit of all the participants in this user community, their service provider organizations and the greater 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 their own service provider organizations. The Copyright and End User License Agreement both provide for this, and assign the derivative work done by each User, Developer and Project Manager etc. back to myself where it will remain available for use to all other licensed users to prepare further derivative works etc. The fees paid to our user community members for this development work is the act of purchasing their Intellectual Property.

Our user community members are compensated for their time and should consider this software development project a cornerstone of their service provider organizations future revenue and income. And to particularly those Users that wish to generate their service provider organizations based on this software offering.

Management of the copyright in this manner has the added benefit of focusing the energies of the industry into one solution. Industry can not have multiple software developments being attempted at the same time. The scope and scale of these developments and the critical nature of the industry's issues demand a comprehensive focus in order 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 the establishment of your service provider offering? What area of focus will you be looking to build value in the industry?

What are your experiences in oil & gas, where is it that 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 our good friends, the producer officers and directors.)

Disintermediation through Information Technology is the process that is being applied through these developments. Where the structured hierarchy is incapable of meeting today’s market demands, more efficient methods of organization must be provided to meet our 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 that our users make to increasing the value to the greater oil & gas economy. Not the contacts you may have. Proving it’s a different business world that we live in today. Please join us by submitting your information here.

If You Don't Like Change, You're Going to Like Irrelevance Even Less, Part III

 There are many other important and valuable attributes that I had written regarding the Oracle CloudWorld conference. I’ve been going through a thinking process this past week that has deviated from what it was prior to the conference and throughout the past years. I personally am at a loss of how I could build any further incremental value to what I've proposed today! Having to deal with the surreal nature of thirty one years of my effort in building this value, seeing these issues continually manifest themselves and being repeatedly denied. Trying to determine what would ever satisfy someone who apparently is unsatisfied or unsatisfiable? The ease with which the producer makes two phone calls, one to SAP and the other to a CPA firm’s integrator are too competitive. Therefore I’ll post this with the information contained within it, and leave it at that. 

People, Ideas & Objects now provide a compelling and comprehensive value proposition through our user community and their service provider organizations. When funded, the work we’ll do with Oracle will place our collective offering on a much broader scope and scale in terms of the value we’ll bring to the dynamic, innovative, accountable and profitable oil & gas producers. In terms of our competitive advantage of providing the most profitable means of oil & gas operations, everywhere and always. Ensuring that we can prove that we wasted none of these valuable energy resources when they’re produced profitably. And in turn hand over abundant oil & gas resources, a viable and profitable industry to future generations for their needs.

Producers today, that is October 26, 2022, are having difficulties with high differentials and negative commodity prices. These are just some of the issues that they’re plagued with and are specifically addressed in our Preliminary Specification. Within our offering we have six Organizational Constructs that define what and how our software and the services of our user communities service provider organizations will provide. For producers these provide an inherent common sense, understanding and logic of how our software will operate that emulates the culture of the industry and society at large. Oracle has built these features into their Oracle Cloud ERP offering which we’ve made the foundation for the Preliminary Specification. Recently demonstrating their enhanced specialization and division of labor being applied between themselves and J.P. Morgan to enhance the expense reporting process from an organizational burden of thousands of man hours per year to a few seconds processing on Oracle Cloud ERP. This is the representative method Oracle is using to build value for its customers and what they’re applying to all generic business processes. In which they’ll market to the global business community. People, Ideas & Objects will use Oracle Cloud ERP to develop methods that generate similar value to specifically addressing the North American oil & gas processes as we have defined them in the Preliminary Specification. 

These are the business models of Oracle and People, Ideas & Objects converging to provide an overwhelming value proposition for North American oil & gas producers. One that is desperately needed in the industry today. And as the world engages in political conflicts based on these commodities. A world in which the North American economy has within its grasp the opportunity for energy independence from an oil & gas perspective for the remainder of this century. A critical requirement as the most powerful economy will also be the largest consumer of energy. People, Ideas & Objects, our user community and their service providers, and Oracle have formed a competitive offering based on the value that North American producers and the greater oil & gas economy will gain. We are prepared to undertake this task and need the financial support of the industry to conduct this software development and service preparation for them. There are no other takers or volunteers willing to do so when I can’t answer the question why aren’t the producers involved? And more than that there’s the need to see producers' to have some skin in the game in order to ensure this will be a success and the commitment that oil & gas is the central and only focus of the oil & gas industry. 

We have traveled a long distance in order to find ourselves in this most fortunate of positions of being able, I believe, to fundamentally assist the North American oil & gas producers to mitigate their issues and optimize their opportunities for the mid to long term. We need to proceed with these efforts in a timely manner. I must now place a deadline on the funding of the Preliminary Specification as it is proposed by November 24, 2022, the American Thanksgiving. If that doesn't happen then the earliest we’ll be able to regain the momentum we currently enjoy may be years from now. The last time we were in this position was 2017 when oil & gas investors were asking producers why not the Preliminary Specification? And were told they can't shut-in production without damaging the formation. We were denied then and faded due to events beyond our control such as viruses etc. Only now have I put the pieces back together and actions are being taken to remove this option from the marketplace. 

The realities that may preclude us from being able to make another run at generating the necessary momentum that we have now. Such as the time it will take for SAP to fail to attempt to resolve the issues and realize the opportunities in the North American oil & gas marketplace. Issues such as today's commodity price differentials and negative prices that are evidently of no concern to producers, and SAP would therefore not be compelled to have a solution. And unable to generate one that precludes the Intellectual Property of the Preliminary Specification. The one reality that I’m dealing with in terms of putting an effort into resurrecting another possible, viable chance is the fact that I’m sixty four years old. Although I am fit and capable, my willingness and commitment to this is undiminished, reality says otherwise. SAP may take a decade to prove they’re unable to solve the industry issues. I am not a wealthy man either. The fact of the matter is that sometimes these things don’t work out. I’m very pleased with what I’ve done and believe there is significant value in the Preliminary Specifications Intellectual Property. 

If You Don't Like Change, You're Going to Like Irrelevance Even Less, Part II

 As mentioned, the competitive nature of all businesses will need to transition in the short term in order to maintain a competitive capital structure. This will be most evident in the North American markets where the adoption of technology is seen as a cultural advantage, is the most advanced and the best prepared. We are now entering a period of advanced creative destruction where the old will no longer be acceptable in terms of its financial performance. When the alternative, albeit which only promises today, will go to those who undertake the journey in the most timely fashion. Oracle is setting a new expectation of how organizations must compete. The individual responsible for this fundamental change of the basis of competitiveness and ushering in this information revolution works for Oracle Corporation, its founder, Larry Ellison. More than anyone he’s provided the infrastructure that businesses need in order to implement the vision he and Oracle are offering. What was revealed last week was nothing more than the icing on the cake. The cake which he began creating when he sold his then unwritten relational database to the CIA in the 1970s. 

People, Ideas & Objects Preliminary Specification sees the producer firm's footprint reduced by extracting their administrative and accounting resources from them and reconfiguring them into our user communities service provider organizations. Focused on one individual process and managing that process on behalf of the entire North American producer population as their client base. The ability to do this provides the oil & gas industry with our decentralized production model, turning its overhead costs variable based on profitable production. These are managed through the use of what are commonly referred to as microservices. Microservices are able to break down monolithic systems and enable them to be managed in ways that are, more or less, possible. What we propose to do is to break down the business processes associated with the oil & gas producer and service industry operations in North America and reconstruct them through our user community and their service provider organizations based on the individual process management of microservices. 

At their CloudWorld conference Oracle announced it’s implementing a broader vision on a much larger scale. Using a partnership they’ve established with J.P. Morgan Chase to provide expense reporting as a microservice. Oracle Cloud ERP, the base system of the Preliminary Specification, will provide individuals that use their credit cards, on behalf of their employer or business, the ability to designate the classification of the charge and its disposition. Oracle's microservice will assess whether it is an acceptable charge based on the firm's expense policies, if it’s an eligible corporate expense it would be coded directly into the general ledger. At the end of the month these charges would be paid back to the employee. At no point in this transaction did J.P. Morgan Chase or the employer consume any administrative or accounting resources in the recording of this transaction. A few milliseconds costs of electricity replaced the transaction costs of the employees at J.P. Morgan Chase. The employers administrators and accountants time in reviewing, processing, approving, coding and paying the charges may have incurred double digit hours. The incremental seconds incurred by the firm’s employee to tag the charges designation offsets the many hours spent by them each year in preparing their expense reports. Those that may have missed the discussion on designing transactions in last week's blog posts may want to revisit the Resource Marketplace module and its role in implementing these features in oil & gas through our user community.

We see these features of Oracle Cloud ERP leveraging many of the same Organizational Constructs of the Preliminary Specification. Specialization and the division of labor, the only proven method of generating value, is employed here. Oracle is doing their work in developing the relationships and writing these microservice capabilities. J.P. Morgan Chase is doing their job in providing a better banking service by leveraging their capabilities with Oracle technologies. And the division of labor between computers and people is working by separating the processing and storage, and people are better redeployed to productive and profitable activities. The Organizational Construct of Information Technology is well presented in this example. What we can assume through the automation of these business processes is the accuracy of the data will be higher, less money will be spent on costs being incurred on unauthorized expenditures, and time is not wasted when alternatives such as this exist.

The specialization and division of labor between People, Ideas & Objects and Oracle is clear. Oracle is involved in the generic business processes that would be marketed and of value to all businesses that use their product in any industry anywhere on the globe. People, Ideas & Objects will be implementing the Preliminary Specification on top of Oracle Cloud ERP and therefore the North American oil & gas producer is able to gain this value proposition throughout their organization for both the oil & gas and generic business attributes. 

It’s no doubt the producers will claim they’ve had this level of functionality in their organizations. And that will be a true statement when we see they pay their employees expense accounts. However I do challenge them with their limited budget to undertake the work that Oracle did with J.P. Morgan Chase and all the other banks. Write the software for them and then all the other banks North American producers use. Then do the same for each of the service industry providers and other generic business processes that Oracle will be undertaking. And do so with all the other North American producers doing the same work individually in order to obtain the same value that Oracle and People, Ideas & Objects et al would have otherwise provided. If the fallacy of the officers and directors obstinate business approach to the Preliminary Specification isn’t comical to you, please visit our value proposition. Or maybe the summation of our offering as represented in Cloud Administration & Accounting for Oil & Gas is just too good to believe.

Although I did not hear it from Larry Ellison, Safra Catz or any of Oracle’s other leaders making presentations at the conference. Two presenters did make comments regarding Oracle's approach to deal with “medium to large business” organizations. This is contrary to People, Ideas & Objects thinking and it’s important to note here that Larry Ellison is the founder of NetSuite, a small business Cloud ERP system now owned by Oracle. However I believe this to be a redundant approach. We will provide our solution to all classes of oil & gas producers from Exxon to yesterday's startup. We feel our approach is valid and ask, what is it that’s provided in the expense report example with J.P. Morgan that Oracle would be unable to provide to the startup oil & gas producer? This is the standard of expectation that I demand that our user community take the Preliminary Specification to in terms of functionality and process management. This expectation raises the level of our systems quality needed to be produced for all producers and users in order to attain this level of service. It is a necessity as the propensity to overproduce is precipitated through the need for revenue which is assumed to only ever be made up on the basis of “more volume.”