Planning and evaluation parameters for offshore complexes

Issues are presented for consideration in the planning and design of offshore artificial complexes. The construction of such complexes, their social, economic, and ecological impacts, and the legal-political-institutional environments within which their development could occur, are discussed. Planning, design, and construction of near-shore complexes located off the Mid-Atlantic coast of the United States is emphasized

Responding to Ethnic and Religious Conflict in the New Arab Order: The Promise and Limits of Rights

Intercommunal conflict has marred the political transitions unfolding in a number of states in the Middle East, raising questions about the status and protection of ethnic and religious minorities in the region\u27s evolving political order. In view of the transnationalc haracter and regional scale of the problem, this Article considers the efficacy of one potential regional response-the development of an Arab convention on minority rights. The Article begins by describing three types of minority problems that have been sources of conflict in the Middle East: (1) religious minorities and Islamist majoritarianism; (2) nationalist minorities and territorial disputes, and (3) politically dominant minorities and survivalist minoritarianism. The Article then sketches the international legal context, focusing in particular on the Council of Europe\u27s Framework Convention on National Minorities. Turning back to the Middle East, the Article concludes that while a treaty exercise of that kind is probably premature, an effort to begin building consensus about regional norms would be a valuable means of promoting discourse about the contours of local norms and their harmonization-both with one another and with evolving international human rights standards

Contractualism in the Law of Treaties

When Henry Sumner Maine famously observed that the movement of the progressive societies has hitherto been a movement from Status to Contract, he was invoking contract not as a device for binding parties to their commitments but, rather, as a metaphor for freedom. That metaphor lies at the heart of what legal scholars have come to call contractualism (or, sometimes, contractarianism)-the idea that people should be free to decide with whom, for what, and on which terms they enter agreements and that the law should minimize the constraints it places on these decisions. It is a proposition rooted in the values of liberty and efficiency-in the view that parties not only have a right to autonomy in structuring their relationships, but also are usually best situated to know what is good for them. And it has proved influential well beyond the law of contracts. Indeed, notwithstanding the highly anticipated, but ultimately unrealized, death of contract, contractualism has been urged on a growing variety of fields, including the law of corporations, bankruptcy, trusts, professional responsibility, family law, and environmental regulation. As Max Weber stressed, however, in no legal order is freedom of contract unlimited in the sense that the law would place its guaranty of coercion at the disposal of all and every agreement regardless of its terms. The existence of at least some mandatory rules-rules that may neither be varied nor waived by the parties to an agreement-has been justified by courts, legislatures, and legal scholars as necessary to address three problems inherent in the institution of contract: (1) the possibility that an agreement would have adverse effects on the protected rights of third parties, including those ostensibly represented by one of the parties to the agreement; (2) differences in capacity, knowledge, and power between contracting parties that undermine the voluntariness and fairness of their agreements; and (3) the need to protect the legitimacy and efficiency of the legal system when it is called on to enforce or invalidate an agreement between its subjects. What this Article examines is whether the freedom of contract of sovereign states is similarly constrained

Shadow or Shade: The Roles of International Law in Palestinian-Israeli Peace Talks

Pacta sunt servanda, the cardinal rule of international law, prohibits the breaking of agreements. But what role should international law play in the making of agreements? In How Nations Behave, Louis Henkin challenges lawyers to think beyond the substantive rules of law to the function of law, to the nature of its influence, the opportunities it offers, the limitations it imposes-as well as to understand the limits of its influence in a society of sovereign nations.\u27 2 In that spirit, international law scholars have redoubled efforts during the last decade to measure the influence of law on international politics, drawing on theoretical and methodological frameworks developed by political scientists. 3 Relatively little attention, however, has been directed to explaining how law functions in international peace negotiations, in part, perhaps, because it is difficult to find satisfying answers to this question within the framework of a single discipline. While contract and negotiation theorists have examined how parties make use of, and are constrained by, legal rules when engaged in private ordering, their analysis has tended not to address the peculiarities of the international setting-in particular, the relative indeterminacy of international legal norms and the relative unavailability ofrecourse to third-party adjudication and enforcement. Conversely, because studies by international law and international relations scholars have tended to focus on compliance with multilateral treaty regimes and adjudications by international tribunals, they overlook the unique roles that law plays in the context of international bargaining

Nonhyperbolic Reflection Moveout For Azimuthally Anisotropic Media

Reflection moveout in azimuthally anisotropic media is not only azimuthally dependent but it is also nonhyperbolic. As a result, the conventional hyperbolic normal moveout (NMO) equation parameterized by the exact NMO (stacking) velocity loses accuracy with increasing offset (i.e., spreadlength). This is true even for a single-homogeneous azimuthally anisotropic layer. The most common azimuthally anisotropic models used to describe fractured media are the horizontal transverse isotropy (HTI) and the orthorhombic(ORT) symmetry. Here, we introduce an analytic representation for the quartic coefficient of the Taylor's series expansion of the two-way traveltime for pure mode reflection (I.e., no conversion) in arbitrary anisotropic media with arbitrary strength of anisotropy. In addition, we present an analytic description of the long-spread (large-offset) nonhyperbolic reflection moveout (NHMO). In multilayered azimuthally anisotropic media, the NMO (stacking) velocity and the quartic moveout coefficient can be calculated with good accuracy using the known averaging equations for VTI media. The interval NMO velocities and the interval quartic coefficients, however, are azimuthally dependent. This allows us to extend the nonhyperbolic moveout (NHMO) equation, originally designed for VTI media, to more general horizontally stratified azimuthally anisotropic media. As a result, our formalism allows rather simple transition from VTI to azimuthally anisotropic media. Numerical examples from reflection moveout in orthorhombic media, the focus of this paper, show that this NHMO equation accurately describes the azimuthally-dependent P-wave reflection traveltimes, even on spreadlengths twice as large as the reflector depth. This work provides analytic insight into the behavior of nonhyperbolic moveout, and it has important applications in modeling and inversion of reflection moveout in azimuthally anisotropic media.Saudi Aramc

Shear-Wave Reflection Moveout For Azimuthally Anisotropic Media

The presence of azimuthal anisotropy causes shear wave propagation to split into fast and slow shear waves. The most common azimuthally anisotropic models used to describe fractured reservoirs are transverse isotropy with a horizontal axis of symmetry (HTI), and orthorhombic. In this paper, we study shear-wave reflection moveout in azimuthally anisotropic media with special attention paid to orthorhombic media with horizontal interfaces. In such cases the shear-wave reflection moveout is azimuthally variant and nonhyperbolic. We analyze the azimuthal dependence of normal moveout (NMO) velocity and we validate the accuracy of the conventional hyperbolic moveout equation. The azimuthal variation of NMO velocity is elliptical for both wave modes. In the presence of anisotropy-induced, nonhyperbolic moveout (NHMO), the hyperbolic moveout equation loses its accuracy with increasing offset (e.g., offset-to-depth ratio> 1). To study the azimuthal behavior of the NHMO for shear-wave reflections, we introduce an analytic representation for the quartic coefficient of the Taylor's series expansion of the two-way traveltime. In an orthorhombic medium the quartic coefficient for shearwave reflections has a relatively simple form, especially in comparison to P-wave. The reflection moveout for each shear-wave mode in a homogeneous orthorhombic medium is purely hyperbolic in the direction normal to the polarization. The nonhyperbolic portion of the moveout, on the other hand, reaches its maximum along the polarization direction, and it reduces rapidly away from the direction of pOlarization. As a result, the anisotropy-induced, nonhyperbolic reflection moveout is significant in the vicinity of the polarization directions (e.g., ±30° and for large offset-to-depth ratios). The implementation of the NHM0 equation and the utilization of the moveout coefficients allow for not only enhanced seismic imaging but also provide the link between seismic signatures and medium parameters.Saudi AramcoMassachusetts Institute of Technology. Borehole Acoustics and Logging ConsortiumMassachusetts Institute of Technology. Earth Resources Laboratory. Reservoir Delineation Consortiu