b'determination if operational fatigue has occurred. Such remediation efforts may negatively impact oilproduction, and/or result in additional expenses.Furthermore, deepwater operations generally, and operations in Africa and South America, inparticular, lack the physical and oilfield service infrastructure present in other regions. As a result, asignificant amount of time may elapse between a deepwater discovery and the marketing of theassociated oil and natural gas, increasing both the financial and operational risks involved with theseoperations. Because of the lack and high cost of this infrastructure, further discoveries we may make inAfrica and South America may never be economically producible.In addition, in the event of a well control incident, containment and, potentially, cleanup activitiesfor offshore drilling are costly. The resulting regulatory costs or penalties, and the results of third partylawsuits, as well as associated legal and support expenses, including costs to address negative publicity,could well exceed the actual costs of containment and cleanup. As a result, a well control incidentcould result in substantial liabilities, and have a significant negative impact on our earnings, cash flows,liquidity, financial position, and stock price.We have had disagreements with the Republic of Ghana and the Ghana National Petroleum Corporationregarding certain of our rights and responsibilities under the WCTP and DT Petroleum Agreements.Multiple discovered fields and a significant portion of our proved reserves are located offshoreGhana. The WCTP petroleum contract, the DT petroleum contract and the Jubilee UUOA cover thetwo blocks and the Jubilee and TEN fields that form the basis of our current operations in Ghana.Pursuant to these petroleum contracts, most significant decisions, including our plans for developmentand annual work programs, must be approved by GNPC, the Ghanaian Revenue Authority (theGRA), the Petroleum Commission and/or Ghanas Ministry of Energy. We have previously haddisagreements with the Ministry of Energy and GNPC regarding certain of our rights andresponsibilities under these petroleum contracts, the 1984 Ghanaian Petroleum Law and the InternalRevenue Act, 2000 (Act 592) (the Ghanaian Tax Law). These included disagreements over sharinginformation with prospective purchasers of our interests, pledging our interests to finance ourdevelopment activities, potential liabilities arising from discharges of small quantities of drilling fluidsinto Ghanaian territorial waters, the failure to approve the proposed sale of our Ghanaian assets,assertions that could be read to give rise to taxes or other payments payable under the Ghanaian TaxLaw, failure to approve PoDs relating to certain discoveries offshore Ghana and the relinquishment ofcertain exploration areas on our licensed blocks offshore Ghana. The resolution of certain of thesedisagreements required us to pay agreed settlement costs to GNPC and/or the government of Ghana.There can be no assurance that future disagreements will not arise with any host governmentand/or national oil companies that may have a material adverse effect on our exploration ordevelopment activities, our ability to operate, our rights under our licenses and local laws or our rightsto monetize our interests.The geographic locations of our licenses in Africa and South America subject us to an increased risk of lossof revenue or curtailment of production from factors specifically affecting those areas.A large portion of our current exploration licenses are located in Africa and South America. Someor all of these licenses could be affected should any region experience any of the following factors(among others):\x7f severe weather, natural or man-made disasters or acts of God;\x7f delays or decreases in production, the availability of equipment, facilities, personnel or services;\x7f delays or decreases in the availability of capacity to transport, gather or process production;54'