Friday, October 6, 2017

Oil Royalty Revenue from Federal Lands

Background:
https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/green/reports/2015/06/19/115580/federal-oil-and-gas-royalty-and-revenue-reform/

Revenue collection problem:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/interior-department-worked-behind-the-scenes-with-energy-industry-to-reverse-royalties-rule/2017/10/05/30e8d8ce-a92a-11e7-b3aa-c0e2e1d41e38_story.html

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2017/10/tax-breaks-make-50-oil-profitable-u-s.html

Of course...it is a given that Big Oil does not want to pay the government what it owes.  They pay lobbyists to bend the rules.  Then after the rules are bent they avoid or evade them.  It is a business model.

This is about oil but is a casually related natural resource timber industry.  Timber from government land and taxes on timber from private land.  At   https://bendforestland.blogspot.com/ 
I am investigating a low assessment rate on private Designated Forestland that is being abused by owners of property within the city limits that have been authorized a low assessement rate on their land of $75 per acre because they have promised to plant and grow trees for future commercial sale when they are mature for harvesting.  About 50 years.  More if they intend to hold for the Old Growth market.  Otherwise the land is assessed at about $200,000 per acre.  Specific examples are given from County Assessor's records.

The fundamental problem is commodity accounting management.  The commodities involved are land, its related specific natural resource, measurable monetary units and documented rights of various forms of ownership.  Land measured in spacial units and exact location. related to specific Beneficial Ownership of land or rights.   Associated monetary units measurements.  And, of course specific units of measurement of the natural resource:  Barrels, board feet, acre feet of water, etc.

All of these object things play out over a time line as they function.

It seems to me that they are all subject to Blockchain management to document all of their inter-related chains in an Internet of Things environment.

What ties everything together is a Blockchain Internet of Things related to related to real world things, physical like oil or timber or conceptual like units of digital currency related directly to traceable object value and Beneficial Ownership.  I use the word "Internet" in its broadest form beyond the strictly computer domain of hardware and software.  "Internet" as all the real and conceptual things in this world to which the the computer system we identify as the Internet is being applied to all things (real and conceptual measurable objects).

The Internet of Things is a popular term in the computing domain but the broadest application of the computing domain application as we move forward in time is..........Everything.

Every Thing is related in space and time.  Even conceptual abstractions of real physical things as expressed in quantitative terms of units of value.

It is Block Chain that ties all of these quantified commodities together with a public ledger of validated past history and verification of present state of being.

It looks like the time has come for the application of Block Chain to bring truth and honesty to the management of Natural Resources like Big Oil and Big Money to protect the Public Domain.

This is an interesting point of entry to problem domain:  Everything, even what we conceptually fence off as "Private Domain" by a system of rights is in the "Public Domain"?

What a challenge!

How would some genius design an Oil Resource Management System applying the Block Chain model to Every Thing related to Oil Energy?

It will happen, I am sure.

Related to the prior entry in this blog on Investigative Journalism:  David Dayen is using a "Block Chain" model of investigation to establish the truth of a thing as a given state of being at a given time related in a chain of transactions documented to be true.  The essence of Block Chain.
https://www.thenation.com/article/how-americas-biggest-bank-paid-its-fine-for-the-2008-mortgage-crisis-with-phony-mortgages/

This would not have happened if Mortgage Beneficial Owners were documented on a Block Chain system.





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