A hidden challenge of $100 oil?
Now that crude oil prices have blasted through the $90/barrel level, the century mark is no longer unimaginable. Those of us whose livelihoods are inextricably tied to the oilpatch vacillate between exultation at good fortune and dread at the likely political and economic backlashes. But it occurred to me this morning that $100 oil presents a potential challenge to an unlikely group of folks: systems analysts.
First, a little history. I was a young pup working at ARCO back in 1977 when the Alaskan Pipeline was completed and production began to flow from the Prudhoe Bay oilfield. I had a great job in the Dallas office as an accounting systems programmer, creating data retrievals for various groups. I was not a programmer in the strictest sense of the word, as I used a program called MarkIV to build those retrievals, and I reported through the accounting department. The real code monkeys were in a separate IT group, and they worked in COBOL, FORTRAN, and other lost languages. They built and maintained the systems I and my co-workers accessed to pull data and format it into something useful to the end users.
Anyway, I remember that as the date drew closer for the first North Slope production to come flowing down the pipeline, a general panic began to spread through the systems analyst group. It seems that our production and revenue systems – which were perfectly fine for our company's business, pre-Prudhoe Bay – would not accommodate the anticipated volumes that would be recorded once that production came online. No one had anticipated that we'd ever be booking hundreds of thousands of barrels per day instead of tens of thousands.
As it turned out, the solution was fairly straightforward. The data fields for volumes and revenue were converted into packed decimal format, allowing more data to be squeezed into the database fields. It was still a huge task to make that conversion to the scores of databases, hundreds of programs, and thousands of ad hoc retrievals.
Fast forward to today. I've been out of that end of the business for decades, but I can't help wondering if there are any legacy systems still being used that won't accommodate three significant digits for crude oil prices. I suppose that from an oil company's perspective, there are worse problems to have, but if that is the case, the windfall to the bottom line will be tempered (albeit in a completely insignificant way) by the headaches to the IT folks who will have to make sure their accounting systems are up to the task.
I know that some of you are working in the oil and gas accounting systems business. How about it? Are you anticipating any systems problems due to triple digit oil prices?
Ahhhh,
MarkIV and COBOL. Those were the days. But "lost languages" makes me feel my age a bit more than I would like.
Good memories.
Posted by: Mark at October 26, 2007 02:11 PMJanie, that's a capacity issue of a whole different kind. Lace up your running shoes, girl!
Mark, now that I think about it, wasn't it "Mark 4" instead of "Mark IV"? The latter was a car.
If you want to feel old, Google "Mark 4 programming language." One of the top results is some is posing a question on a message board, asking if anyone has ever heard of Mark 4. The date of the posting is 1997!
Posted by: Eric at October 26, 2007 02:43 PMthose of us that work with a good oil and gas accounting system are not anticipating any issues with that scenario! i just tested over $100/bbl txns and they flew through and reported with flying colors.
Posted by: lyle at October 26, 2007 03:41 PMSo, where do I send the invoice for providing this high quality advertising space? ;-)
Posted by: Eric at October 26, 2007 04:35 PMWell, I'm not a systems analyst, but we did have to downsize the font we used on the tax return of one of the big boys in Houston in order to fit in all the extra zeros. ;-)
Posted by: gwynne at October 26, 2007 05:44 PMFORTRAN. Wow that brings back memories.
I remember back in the 70's when I enrolled in a computer programming class that taught FORTRAN. The first day of class, the professor explained that the computer lab was open 23 hours a day. I couldn't imagine why the lab would be open that late, or who on earth would be using it in the middle of the night. Then came the first assignment. To run a program you had to type the commands onto a punch card, give them to a technician to run through the mainframe; wait 30 minutes and find out you had made a typo causing the program to fail.
I soon found out why the computer lab was open 23 hours a day.
Posted by: John Peter Smith at October 26, 2007 08:12 PMGwynne, I figured zeros on a tax return would be a good thing. I suppose it depends on what's in front of them. ;-)
John, remember the intense fear of getting caught in an infinite do-loop? The profs loved to regale us with horror stories about the underclassman who ran the campus mainframe into the ground.
We were still using programs on punch cards when I went to work for ARCO. It was quite a leap in technology when we got our first TI Silent 700 terminal, complete with direct connection to the Big Iron.
Posted by: Eric at October 26, 2007 08:26 PMI must admit that I called in sick the day I was supposed to take Mark 4 class at ARCO in 1985 or 6. I already knew a couple of dead languages (Cobol and Fortran) and didn't want to get stuck doing Mark 4. At the time, FOCUS and SAS were my friends.
BTW...I keep a list of 'favorite old DP terms' on my BB. I will share just a few:
Bang
VolSer
VSPrint
SyncSort
Abend
HSM
........
John, thanks for jogging my memory about FOCUS. I actually took a class, but never used it as I got out of that line of work shortly thereafter.
I also remember most of those old DP terms (drawing a blank on Bang and HSM), and can add:
JCL
SYSDA
and
TCAM is stuck in the VDOC.
(We accountants never really knew what that last one meant, but we heard one of the DP guys say it one time, and thereafter we used it to explain any otherwise inexplicable data processing problem.)
Posted by: Eric at October 26, 2007 10:32 PMhuh? u lost me at 1977
Posted by: adam at October 27, 2007 09:39 PMWow, punch cards ..... THAT takes me back. I remember carrying an old briefcase at University of New Mexico, got it at the Salvation Army Store, and it had perfect configuration for carrying three rows of Hollerith cards - data sets for archaeological studies. The computer lab was in transition at the time, but we were pretty far back in the queue, and still had to rely on the old card-punching consoles, and the readers.
Posted by: Jeff at October 28, 2007 05:42 AMMy real estate group represented ARCO frequently in Dallas. I probably passed you in the streets every day.....and you didn't even say howdy!!
Posted by: Wallace at October 28, 2007 10:48 AMAdam, last time I checked, you got lost in the grocery store, so that's not saying much.
Jeff, I'll bet you also thought about the irony of using such technologically advanced methods for doing archaeological studies.
Wallace, I spoke everytime I saw you. You were the snooty one, with your fancy alligator boots and big honkin' turquoise bolo tie. Yeah, don't think I didn't know what you were up to.
Posted by: Eric at October 28, 2007 08:20 PMBang = !
the prompt that system operators got after booting the system. In other words, no GUI. Just a pleasant little '!' waiting to accept your next command.
HSM = Hierarchical Storage Manager
the software that moved data files from disk to tape based on access frequency. infrequently accessed files would be moved off to tape while frequently accessed files would remain on-line.
About the publisher
Random Abbye photos...
"Glove Box Stories" is Back!
Eel on a Wheel
Meteorological Musings
Random Thursday
Is stupidity the Net effect?
More Invaders
Back Yard Birds
Book Review: "The Year of Living Biblically"
Sometimes, you get lucky...
June Sunset
It's Official...
Google's new favicon rocks the design world
Give the Gift of Flame
The Incredible Shrinking Math Skills
The Neighborhood:
West Texas Blogs:
[Midland unless otherwise indicated]
Other Texas Blogs:
The Business:
The Church:
The World:
I'm anticipating systems problems due to triple digit oil prices, but they have nothing...and everything...to do with accounting. Woot. And I think I'm gonna need some (more) vitamins.
Posted by: Janie at October 26, 2007 11:40 AM