Production Lineage
Allocation engines are mature and nobody needs another one. What does not exist is a graph that ties a reported volume back to the measurement point that produced it and forward to the owner it pays — so a royalty dispute becomes an archaeology project instead of a query.
In the active basin filter.
Modeled at a flat realized price across the traced set.
Held because the owner chain hangs off an unresolved identity.
At least one layer cannot be proven to describe the same well.
Custody-transfer meter on the Cottonwood Draw 23-8H tank battery. Gas by orifice, liquids by LACT.
Engineering system · meter tag derived from 42100373973846
Battery volumes split back to wells on test-rate factors. Mature technology — the engine is not the weak link.
Production accounting · monthly allocation run
The allocation key for this well resolves to two candidate records in the accounting system. The split is being applied to a well identity nobody has confirmed.
Volumes reported to the state on the monthly production report, keyed on the regulator identifier.
Regulator filing · TX monthly production
Reported under a regulator identifier that the graph cannot tie with confidence to the accounting record — so the reported number and the booked number cannot be proven to describe the same hole in the ground.
Working interest 59.60% · lease royalty 19.74% · net revenue interest 47.83%.
Land · division order and lease terms
Royalty on this volume is sitting in suspense because the owner chain hangs off the unresolved identity. Suspense is a liability that accrues interest in most states — it does not stop growing while the question is open.
Identity is unresolved upstream, so every layer below inherits the doubt. Until a person merges or separates the candidate records, this well produces a number the platform can report but cannot defend — and the royalty attached to it stays in suspense, accruing.
The reconciliation problem is not theoretical. A bottom-up basin equipment inventory came to 315 Gg of methane a year against 1,500 Gg measurement-informed on the same asset base — a 4.8× gap between what was modeled and what was measured. Allocation engines are mature; the missing artifact is the lineage graph.