Ten of the major international oil and gas businesses have successfully digitized voting and polling in the industry with the use of blockchain. Some of the members of the Oil & Gas Blockchain Consortium include Chevron and Shell. The blockchain system pilot is a test for an authorization of expenditure ballot in partnership with GuildOne. The GuildOne business is a Canadian technology provider.

In the December 18 announcement, the authorization of expenditure set up a proof of concept in its first initiative. The plan is to allow members to send ballots and make elections digital with the blockchain technology. The authorization of expenditure is used in the natural gas and oil industry in order to approve capital and expense projects and to determine the interests of members through a joint contract for operations.

Because authorization of expenditure ballots have been done manually until now, digitizing it could cut down on the time needed to process all of the paper ballots. The proof of concept aims to enhance the approval process and provide records that cannot be tampered with, which will help with the reduction of errors. Using smart contracts will also allow for the automatic calculation of working interests. It is another type of proof that blockchain is able to fundamentally transform business activities in the oil and gas industries.

According to Rebecca Hofmann, who is the chairperson of the OOC consortium, the proof of concept was completed by all of the consortium members in less than four months. Hofmann added that the new blockchain-based oil and gas industry plan was able to demonstrate the speed and power of technology for distributed ledgers and the other essential activities of oil and gas businesses.

The OOC consortium has also been planning to take a look at other benefits of blockchain and technology. The consortium was established in February 2019 with this specific goal. The 10 members of the consortium are international firms. They include Chevron, Conoco-Phillips, Equinor, Exxon-Mobil, Hess, Marathon, Noble Energy, Pioneer Natural Resources, Repsol, and Shell. In September 2019, OOC set up a project for North Dakota's oil fields.