Pursuant to these petroleum contracts, most significant decisions, including our plans for development and annual work programs, must be approved by GNPC, the Petroleum Commission and/or Ghana’s Ministry of Energy. We have previously had disagreements with the Ministry of Energy and GNPC regarding certain of our rights and responsibilities under these petroleum contracts, the 1984 Ghanaian Petroleum Law and the Internal Revenue Act, 2000 (Act 592) (the ‘‘Ghanaian Tax Law’’). These included disagreements over sharing information with prospective purchasers of our interests, pledging our interests to finance our development activities, potential liabilities arising from discharges of small quantities of drilling fluids into Ghanaian territorial waters, the failure to approve the proposed sale of our Ghanaian assets, assertions that could be read to give rise to taxes payable under the Ghanaian Tax Law, failure to approve PoDs relating to certain discoveries offshore Ghana and the relinquishment of certain exploration areas on our licensed blocks offshore Ghana. The resolution of certain of these disagreements 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 government and/or national oil companies that may have a material adverse effect on our exploration or development activities, our ability to operate, our rights under our licenses and local laws or our rights to monetize our interests. The geographic locations of our licenses in Africa and South America subject us to an increased risk of loss of revenue or curtailment of production from factors specifically affecting those areas. Our current exploration licenses are located in Africa and South America. Some or all of these licenses could be affected should any region experience any of the following factors (among others): • severe weather, natural or man-made disasters or acts of God; • delays or decreases in production, the availability of equipment, facilities, personnel or services; • delays or decreases in the availability of capacity to transport, gather or process production; • military conflicts, civil unrest or political strife; and/or • international border disputes. For example, oil and natural gas operations in our license areas in Africa and South America may be subject to higher political and security risks than those operations under the sovereignty of the United States. We plan to maintain insurance coverage for only a portion of the risks we face from doing business in these regions. There also may be certain risks covered by insurance where the policy does not reimburse us for all of the costs related to a loss. Further, as many of our licenses are concentrated in the same geographic area, a number of our licenses could experience the same conditions at the same time, resulting in a relatively greater impact on our results of operations than they might have on other companies that have a more diversified portfolio of licenses. Our operations may be adversely affected by political and economic circumstances in the countries in which we operate. Oil and natural gas exploration, development and production activities are subject to political and economic uncertainties (including but not limited to changes in energy policies or the personnel administering them), changes in laws and policies governing operations of foreign-based companies, expropriation of property, cancellation or modification of contract rights, revocation of consents or approvals, obtaining various approvals from regulators, foreign exchange restrictions, currency fluctuations, royalty increases and other risks arising out of foreign governmental sovereignty, as well as risks of loss due to civil strife, acts of war, guerrilla activities, terrorism, acts of sabotage, territorial disputes and insurrection. In addition, we are subject both to uncertainties in the application of the tax 54