Here’s an idea I got from other businesses. They charge out their services according to the benefit the client receives. An example are energy conservation consultants. They get paid a portion of the energy savings realised by their client.
Imagine translating that into the oil and gas industry. Here’s an example. Say a separator is designed for 100 thousand barrels per day (kbd) of crude. Later, this turns out to be a bottleneck preventing a production increase to 105 thousand kbd (not an unrealistic value). If you use a profit sharing model (say 10% of the production increase), then this translates to 5,000 x 10% x USD50/barrel (I’m using low values here to make a point) = USD25k a day.
You can pretty much do whatever cost analysis you want. If you think how much you charge using the Engineering, Procurement, Construction and Commissioning (EPCC) method, how much would you get? For debottlenecking a process by changing vessel internals, prob USD500k, of which about 30% would be profit (I’m guessing nos. here).
Which profit model would you like? And if you work for a production company, you should be proud in the rate of return the company gets from you.
At another level, profit sharing is pretty much in vogue for the independent Malaysian oil and gas companies. Profits are shared by issuing stock to employees. Examples of companies that do this are Talisman and Newfield. Examples of companies that do not are ExxonMobil and Shell.
Wata - Malaysian Oil and Gas Engineer 
Vader thinks in the oil & gas industry, profit sharing between operator and service provider will work in areas of high risk or areas where operator relies on service providers’ technology / know-how. Schlumberger integrated project management (IPM) division recently secured an interesting profit sharing model in malaysia.
Wata must entice the slaves with shares on top of the free coffee …
ahha… why am i not suprised that Exxon Mobil & Shell do not.
shhhsss. maybe wata is a director of exxonmobil….
Nah, I wouldn’t do something as devious as that. Maybe I can lure people into EMEPMI with a honeypot, say … a scholarship? And have them for the next 5 years, on pain of death (you know what I mean).
wata, if i’m not mistaken, that kinda “profit sharing” model exists in the downstream business – especially so for proprietary technology like reactor, etc… the vendor continues making money as the clients make profit from using their technology…
agh… ure rubbing some salt on this wound. 😛
if i pay my whip/stun gun/flame thrower vendor every time i use these toys on my slave, i’ll go bankrupt
To Boba – any ideas how we can transfer this profit sharing model upstream? Preferably using intangible resources (i.e. solutions to implement) rather than selling hardware.
And Jabba – the best business model would be, the slaves pay every time you use your toys. Isn’t that what happens when the client asks you to use OLGA, and they pay for her services?
Good one. but that doesn’t work. they’ve got no money, and everything they own belongs to Jabba.