Patent ID: 8275719

Claim:
A petroleum or gas distribution processing system comprising: at least one non-transitory computer readable storage medium encoded with executable instructions; and at least one processor that is configured to, upon execution of the executable instructions, perform operations comprising: storing, in electronic storage, quantity data defining a quantity of petroleum or gas included in a petroleum or gas distribution associated with a well; accessing, from sources including an independent source that is not involved in the petroleum or gas distribution, price data associated with the petroleum or gas included in the petroleum or gas distribution; storing, in the electronic storage, the price data associated with the petroleum or gas included in the petroleum or gas distribution; producing a list of rights and obligations of various parties associated with the well based on information from source documents that govern ownership of the well; after producing the list of rights and obligations, determining, based on at least one rule, which of the rights and obligations included in the list take precedence over others; after determining which of the rights and obligations included in the list take precedence over others, determining whether any of the rights and obligations included in the list are in conflict with each other; based on a determination that at least one conflict exists in the rights and obligations included in the list: generating an alert indicating the at least one conflict, and automatically reconciling the at least one conflict based on a heuristic process that uses one or more of a conflict resolution rule that agreements with later dates supersede agreements with earlier dates and a conflict resolution rule that reflects current legal precedent for the applicable jurisdiction; storing, in the electronic storage, reconciled rights data that reflects the rights and obligations associated with the well after automatic reconciliation of the at least one conflict; and generating a settlement for the petroleum or gas distribution using the quantity data, the price data, and the reconciled rights data.