Assignment:
TITLE: DESIGNING A BLOCKCHAIN SOLUTION TO SOLVE THE OPEC Oil and Gas Tracking Problem.
The OPEC Cooperative is an umbrella organization of firms based out of oil-producing countries. They launched their first Oil and Gas product that tracks the shipment of oil from source to destination markets using Oracle. Usually, the oil is drilled in one of the oceans or oil fields in the deserts of Saudi Arabia by a producer called Aramco. Then the oil is shipped by large oil tankers owned by freight liners. Finally, the oil is delivered to shell, reliance, etc. that refine this petroleum into natural gas and diesel for transportation to fuel pumps where customers purchase them.
A web-based solution turned out to be expensive to maintain since the Database company kept changing software versions and charged a lot of money to maintain the solution and service. Eric, the president of the OPEC's cooperative in consultation with Emma the CTO, decided that they have to move this onto blockchains to enable smaller oil producers and smaller tanker operations (especially in less developed counties and second/third world countries) to track produced oil. The technology cost for the hardware and software required is too high and since this operation is cross-continent it will be extremely difficult to track products such as
- Fuel Gas
- Naphtha
- Light Kerosene
- Heavy Kerosene
- Light Gas Oil
- Heavy Gas Oil
- Gasoline
- Diesel
- Lubricating Oil
- Motor Spirit
- Light Vacuum Gas Oil
- Heavy Vacuum Gas Oil
- Vacuum Diesel
- Residue
- Tar
For this reason, we are supposed to build an in-house Asset Tracking Solution powered by blockchain technology that runs on a global computer. The asset lists could consist of different petroleum products. On the blockchain, participants document details such as registration deeds and organic/non-child labor/fair trade certifications.
This registration and tracking of ownership on a blockchain system will help all parties on the transaction to provide origin tracking and quality standards certification, as well as helping facilitate access to the market.
Imagine that there are different stakeholders in the supply chain for oil and gas products namely: the driller, the transporter, the retailer, the refiner, the supply tanker and the customer.
Farm trace PantherChain is as follows: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=igpHKepcT_A
Farm Trace WebClient
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B2Ht6Ba_VWc
Present a detailed report of your solution (not exceeding 10 pages) that does the following:
Also submit a presentation that describes your solution in detail.
The presentation should not exceed 10 minutes. You can upload onto youtube, submit the URL separately, or you can upload the video directly on FIU-google drive and share the URL with the submission. Ideally we would recommend that all coauthors on the report do a zoom recording of the presentation with your faces visible and then submit the URL of the recording.
Each page (chapter) of your report should answer the question below.
1. Restate the problem statement in your own words. What are you doing exactly? What are the benefits of such a solution?
2. Who are the stakeholders in such a supply-chain? What is their role? and what data do they deposit on the blockchain?
3. If you plan to use smart contracts - define these contracts between the buyer and the seller or the intermediary at each stage of the supply chain.
a. Say, as a customer I'm interested in knowing where this oil is coming from, how do I do it?
b. How does the oil tanker or the country that receives the oil know where this oil comes from?
4. Describe the design of your system. Attach diagrams, etc of your blockchain solution depicting users and stakeholders of the system.
5. Describe who would be the stakeholders, who would be the miners, who would be the currency/token issuers, is there a role for Bitcoin in such a system e.g., for fast processing payments across countries.?
6. What are the limitations of your system?