Commitment Integrity Instruments

Decision governance applies to irreversible commitments including:

• Physical site control and placement
• Subsurface access and drilling
• Corridor and routing fixation
• Capital deployment that creates escalation pressure
• Regulatory or jurisdictional transfers
• Entry into shared or regime-level systems
• Autonomous activation thresholds

Once hardened, these commitments eliminate optionality.

Optimization cannot recover lost structural authority.

Decision governance evaluates whether commitment remains defensible before paths harden.

An Admissibility Screen produces:

• Admissibility classification
• Structured irreversibility analysis
• Dominant uncertainty framing
• Prohibited action identification
• Reconsideration conditions

A Commitment Integrity Determination produces:

• Formal Integrity Determination
• Authorized / Prohibited Action Registry
• Revocation triggers
• Expiration logic
• Assumption registry
• Escalation invalidity clause
• Precedent containment
• Audit-eligible governance record

Administrative records are produced only when a Commitment Integrity Determination is issued.

Integrity confirmation, instability, and compromise are legitimate governance outcomes.

Integrity is confirmed only when:

• Irreversible exposure is bounded
• Authority retention remains credible
• Escalation dynamics remain governable
• Assumptions remain stable

Instability is issued when:

• Admissibility remains intact
• But integrity collapses under execution

Compromise is issued when:

• Structural irreversibility dominates
• Authority collapse is unavoidable under execution

These are governance judgments, advisory opinions, or operational management. Responsibility for action remains with the Decision Authority. Proceeding contrary to an issued outcome constitutes rejection of the governance instrument and voids reliance.

Each instrument governs a single irreversible threshold.

When commitments are coupled through sequencing, shared systems, capital structure, or autonomy activation, the same logic across decisions reveals:

• Portfolio fragility
• Escalation contagion
• Correlated exposure
• Authority erosion over time

Programmatic governance emerges from the interaction of governed thresholds.
Individually admissible does not imply jointly defensible.

Sustainable Exploration engages only when:

• The Decision Authority holds legitimate authority
• Refusal and deferral are acceptable outcomes
• Responsibility remains with the institution

Sustainable Exploration does not:

• Optimize design
• Forecast performance
• Rank alternatives
• Replace domain expertise
• Manage execution

Its role is upstream of engineering, finance, permitting, and operations. This separation preserves authority integrity.

Commitment governance refuses:

• Prediction as substitute for judgment
• Optimization under structural irreversibility
• Analysis to justify predetermined outcomes
• Learning strategies that require irreversible exposure
• Escalation-based reinterpretation
   

When uncertainty cannot be reduced without crossing a one-way door, restraint may be the only defensible act.