The most wasteful, inefficient industry you could ever imagine

Originally posted on landmanliving.blogspot.com, November 2010.

A landman friend of mine once said that in regards to the oil and gas industry, and every day I work in this field I see more and more how dead on a statement it is. We print out hundreds of pages of documents to complete runsheets on tracts that, once turned in, are usually discarded only to be needed again in 3 months. Then we print the documents out again, wasting paper, time, and effort.

Every two weeks we receive a new ownership report form that has one tiny minor detail changed in it, such as the format of the surface owners address, etc. Runsheets that have been completed in the past 24 hours prior to the release of these new ownership reports must be redone with the new format. No one has figured out exactly who is making these minor detail changes…or why.

The client has now requested contact information for all of our landmen in the field. The landman field has evolved from the individuals all reporting to the client and receiving their instructions directly from the client to a broker based system where the broker hires and fires the landmen and handles all contact with the client. Apparently our client doesn’t like that new model, and wishes for things to go back to the way they were in the 80s.

One 2 acre tract could possibly touch the hands of 5-6 landmen before being turned in, and there are a few problems with this. First, every time a tract is handed off one of two things happens; time is lost (if the landman receiving the tract takes the time to read through and familiarize himself with all the documents), or the more common result is that things get missed (when the landman receiving the tract DOES NOT take the time to read through and familiarize himself with all the documents). Either of these options leads to inefficiency and introduces the possibility for mistakes to be made. Second, the clear path of responsibility gets convoluted. The landman that was first given the tract will most likely still have their name on it, but can then say, “well, I gave that tract to so and so” to negate any responsibility. Repeat this step 3 or 4 times and you can see how this turns into a big problem, real quick.

Everyone pretends to know what’s going on, but no one actually does. This one speaks for itself.