The Anatomy and Preparation of OCS Farmout Agreements

Oil and gas farmout agreements are important devices in spreading the risks of oil and gas exploration and development on the Outer Continental Shelf, as well as in onshore operations. In fact, because both the costs and risks (as well as the rewards) of offshore development are greater than those usually associated with onshore operations, oil and gas farmout agreements may play a more important role in operations on the Outer Continental Shelf than in onshore operations. The structure of an Outer Continental Shelf farmout agreement does not differ substantially from that of its onshore counterpart. The function of farmout agreements is essentially the same whatever the environment in which they are used. Thus, there are relatively few essential issues that determine the basic structure of the farmout agreement. The author has discussed these issues at length elsewhere. In this paper he will simply summarize the points made in that more extensive paper and point out some interesting characteristics of OCS farmout agreements

Recent Significant Cases Affecting Farmout Agreements

As this author observed in 1987, farmors\u27 and farmees\u27 mutual interest in maximizing available tax benefits causes the structure of farmout agreements to be very much the same, or at least fall into discernable patterns. Farmout substantive provisions, however, vary widely. The difference in substantive provisions results in part from the different goals that farmors and farmees seek when they enter into agreements. In part, the differences are reflexive; once one encounters a problem, one drafts to avoid it in the future. In part, also, the differences show the creativity of American businessmen and their lawyers in deal-making. The cases reviewed in this article illustrate that the transactional costs of drafting, administering and litigating farmout agreements is high. Farmout agreements are susceptible to orderly analysis, and over the years many distinguished commentators have written to suggest particular approaches to that analysis. Is it not time for the industry and its lawyers to try again to develop model forms

Black Hole Complementarity vs. Locality

The evaporation of a large mass black hole can be described throughout most of its lifetime by a low-energy effective theory defined on a suitably chosen set of smooth spacelike hypersurfaces. The conventional argument for information loss rests on the assumption that the effective theory is a local quantum field theory. We present evidence that this assumption fails in the context of string theory. The commutator of operators in light-front string theory, corresponding to certain low-energy observers on opposite sides of the event horizon, remains large even when these observers are spacelike separated by a macroscopic distance. This suggests that degrees of freedom inside a black hole should not be viewed as independent from those outside the event horizon. These nonlocal effects are only significant under extreme kinematic circumstances, such as in the high-redshift geometry of a black hole. Commutators of space-like separated operators corresponding to ordinary low-energy observers in Minkowski space are strongly suppressed in string theory.Comment: 32 pages, harvmac, 3 figure

Mapping the productivity of radiata pine

Forest owners, investors and policy makers all want to know the spread and productivity of New Zealand’s current and future radiata plantation. David Palmer, a geo-spatial analyst at Scion, has combined advanced statistical techniques with mapping technology to predict radiata 300 Index and Site Index for any location in New Zealand. The 300 Index is an index of volume mean annual increment, and the Site Index is for height and growth. The map of Site Index and 300 Index was built using growth measurement data from trees in 1,146 radiata pine permanent sample plots, planted between 1975 and 2003. The data was combined with a number of climate, land use, terrain and environmental variables to predict forest productivity under a range of conditions

The Australian Corneal Graft Registry 2012 Report

The Australian Corneal Graft Registry (ACGR) opened in May 1985 and thus has now been in operation for over 26 years. However, the census dates for this report was 01/06/2010 for penetrating grafts and 12/10/2011 for lamellar grafts. Over the years, we have collected data on more than 23,000 corneal grafts. The majority of corneal grafts registered have been penetrating, but increasing numbers of lamellar grafts have also been registered over recent years, as patterns of surgical practice change. At registration, we seek information on the recipient, the donor, the eye bank practices and the operative procedure. Follow-up then occurs at approximately yearly intervals for an indefinite period, and ceases upon loss of the graft, or the death or loss-to-follow-up of the patient. At each round of follow-up, we request information on the graft and visual outcome, and upon relevant post-operative events and treatments. The data are entered into an Access database and checked for consistency. Descriptive, univariate and multivariate analyses are subsequently performed using SPSS and Stata software, and the report is eventually collated

Is sticky blood bad for the Brain? Hemostatic and inflammatory systems and dementia in the Caerphilly prospective study

Objective— Hemostasis and inflammation have been implicated in dementia. This study investigates the role of specific hemostatic and inflammatory pathways with incident vascular and nonvascular dementia.Methods and Results— This was a prospective study of a population sample of men aged 65 to 84 years, with baseline assessment of hemostatic and inflammatory factors and cognition measured 17 years later. The sample included 865 men (59 had dementia and 112 had cognitive impairment, not dementia), free of vascular disease at baseline and for whom hemostatic and inflammatory marker data were available and cognitive status was known. A total of 15 hemostatic and 6 inflammatory markers were assessed. Factor analysis was used to identify hemostatic subsystems. The National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke–Association Internationale pour la Recherche et l’Enseignement en Neurologie criteria were used to identify vascular dementia. By using standardized (z) scores for hemostatic and inflammatory markers, and after adjustment for age and risk factors, vascular dementia was associated with fibrinogen (hazard ratio [HR], 1.68; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.02–2.76), factor VIII (HR, 1.79; 95% CI, 1.09–3.00), and plasminogen activator inhibitor 1 (HR, 3.13; 95% CI, 1.73–5.70). For vascular dementia, the HR risk from high levels of all three hemostatic variables (fibrinogen, factor VIII, and plasminogen activator inhibitor 1) was 2.97 (P<0.001). Inflammatory factors were not associated with vascular dementia.Conclusion— The associations of these hemostatic markers with vascular dementia may implicate clot formation as the primary mechanism and are consistent with a microinfarct model of vascular dementia