align="justify"> The sea bed is not without danger. Geohazards such as steep slopes, faults, shallow gas, landslides, mud volcanoes and gas hydrates can all cause instability, creating risks for subsea facilities, the people who run them and for the environment.date, surveys could assess these risks only during a finite window of time; first prior to the deployment of the installations, then at regular intervals. Acquisitions of such isolated data provide «snapshots» of the status of geohazards at one or more points in time. But there is no continuous monitoring of their status over time or in space.the complex geological environments of the Group s deepwater projects, managing these risks is crucial. Total s R & D rose to the challenge by introducing a technological world first called HORUS (for Hazards Observatory for Risk analysis by Underwater System). This subsea real-time geohazard monitoring station was patented in 2011.enables:
· continuous measurement of a set of physical characteristics of the water, seafloor and upper layer of subsea sediments. Measurements are performed using chemical sensors, a detector of gas bubbles escaping from the seafloor and various other types of probes (such as pressure, microseismicity and ground motion sensors);
· real-time analysis of the data gathered;
· semi-automatic triggering of warnings in the event of danger for personnel or facilities.is a major breakthrough that brings within grasp a real-time knowledge of changes in the key parameters of the subsea environment over the various phases of a field s life. This innovation is essential, given that alterations in pressure and temperature conditions, or vibrations generated by production operations, can sometimes cause soil instability. HORUS is a significant contributor to the safety of deepwater developments, and will soon be tested on one of Total s production sites.
OFFSHORE POTENTIAL AND TECHNOLOGY'S ROLE
Offshore Areas There has been agreat deal of effort devoted to assessing the petroleum potential of the continental margins of the US and the world. One of the more recent works is contained inMemoir 15 which was published by the «American Association of Petroleum Geologists in 1971 under the sponsorship of the N ational Petroleum Council.continental margins of the US, which include submerged lands from the shorelineout to a water depth of 2500 meters, constitutes an area of ??about 890,000,000 acres (1.4 million square miles). A sstatedin Memoir 15, some of this area is known to be non-prospective, although the report does not speculate on the size of these non-prospective areas. Of the total 890,000,000 acres approximately 560,000,000 acres (63%) lie on the continentalshelf (shorel ine out to 200 meters). F igure 49 depicts the total acreage and broadly how it is distributed. 421,000,000 acres (47%) lie adjacent to the conterminous U. S. And the South Coast of Alaska. The remaining 469,000,000 acres (53%) are located north of the Alaskan peninsula. Also shown is the amount of OCS and S tate acreage under lease compared to the 239,000,000 acres located on the cont inentalshelf of the conterminous US and the South Alaska coast. The approximate 5.0 million acres under leaserepresent about 2.0% of thisshelf area and about 112 of 1.0% of the totalarea .50 depicts the distributi...
