Global Toolbox Research Articles

From Global Toolbox to Local Implementation: The IBA Practical Guide on Business and Human Rights for Business Lawyers

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Technology Focus: Subsea Hardware and Technology

Overview Change. Look around. It is happening faster than most of us have seen in our entire careers. The market is driving change with a desperate insistence. The old ways of doing business are no longer sustainable. Change is therefore inevitable. New technologies as well as new business models are evolving. We have learned in our leadership training that we can follow change, we can get out of the way of change, or we can lead change. The astute business leader will always chose the latter, while recognizing and avoiding the temptations of falling into the behaviors of the former. So what does it mean to lead change? The market is seeking two seemingly conflicting goals: Costs for capital equipment, installation, and operations of subsea developments will be reduced predominantly through global standardization of products and processes. Technical innovations that boost efficiencies, increase capacities, enhance safety, and reduce costs are expected and will be rewarded significantly. The market will determine how these two mandates balance out. Future industry leaders will be determined by the companies and organizations that best achieve both of these goals simultaneously. Finding and developing synergies between these goals will be recognized. The challenges before us are clear, but they will require significant changes to our existing business models and our inertia as an industry. Our featured papers illustrate some ideas and methods to promote change in the ways we have conducted business, thus achieving positive results. The first paper illustrates an operator’s experience using standard equipment for the expansion of an existing subsea field in Brazil. Our industry tends to focus on locally developed solutions, but this was a case of finding the right answer in the global tool box. The authors explain the organizational resistance to this change, with the end results providing a very positive outcome. The second paper proposes a scientific method of efficiently establishing qualification requirements to increase safety and reliability of offshore operations—integrity assurance. This is a good example of recognizing a standardized way of focusing on the important issues facing technology qualifications. Our third paper is a contribution from academia describing concerns about fatigue strength evaluations of subsea wellheads, suggesting an analytical treatment that will actually reduce the calculated fatigue-damage rates from thermal effects of operations, thus reducing risks (costs) of the system. I also invite readers to consider reading the suggested additional papers describing some enabling technologies involving large-load-deployment systems, subsea in-line oil/water pipe separators, and operational experiences in subsea gas compression in the North Sea. All of these papers promote new approaches to executing offshore developments that involve change but promise to deliver positive outcomes in the appropriate applications. JPT Recommended additional reading at OnePetro: www.onepetro.org. OTC 26138 Simplified Hydraulic Design Methodology for a Subsea Inline Oil/Water Pipe Separator by M. Stanko, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, et al. OTC 26904 A New Subsea Large-Load-Deployment System by T. Krasin, Canyon Offshore, et al. OTC 27159 Gullfaks Subsea Compression—Subsea Commissioning, Startup, and Operational Experiences by Bjørn Birkeland, Statoil, et al.

A Foresight Overarching Method

Few disciplines are as vast and diverse as that of foresight. But diversity can lead to fragmentation; to strengthen it as an asset, it is necessary that the fundamentals of its uniqueness are firmly established. Roots for this appear within several factors of oneness embedded in foresight methodological apparatus: first of them, the global toolbox that shows the transition from a research of certainty to anticipation of uncertainty and from very simple tools sketching the reality to a more subtle approach of complexity; second, are the reading grids, namely, here “foresight lens,” that generate these tools and include the worldview, the capacity for discernment, and the creation of such foresight lenses; and finally, and still upstream of paradigms, the different types of knowledge required for the practice of foresight: dynamic, systemic, epistemic, and diagnostic. Built upon these three factors, a meta-method of foresight emerges, transverse to all other methods, inclusive and enriched—not dissolved—by diversity.

Assessing health impacts of CO2 leakage from a geological storage site into buildings: Role of attenuation in the unsaturated zone and building foundation

Geological storage of the greenhouse gas CO2 has the potential to be a widespread and effective option to mitigate climate change. As any industrial activity, CO2 storage may lead to adverse impact on human health and the environment in the case of unexpected leakage from the reservoir. These potential impacts should be considered in a risk assessment process.We present an approach to assess the impacts on human health in case of CO2 leakage emerging in the unsaturated zone under a building. We first focus on the migration of the CO2 in the unsaturated zone and the foundation through numerical simulation with sensitivity analysis. Our results show that the intrusion of CO2 into a building is substantially attenuated by the unsaturated zone and the foundation and may lead only under very specific conditions (very low ventilated parts of buildings, high flow rate and/or building situated very close to a leaking pathway) to hazardous CO2 indoor concentrations.We have then integrated the former results in a global toolbox that provides an efficient and easy-to-use tool for decision support, which enables to assess the impacts on human health of CO2 leakage from the reservoir to a building.

The metabolic syndrome: in need of a global mission statement

The value of clinical definitions of the metabolic syndrome has been questioned, with confusion surrounding their intended use and purpose. Our aim was to construct a mission statement that outlines the value of the metabolic syndrome in clinical and public health settings. Case studies have been used to demonstrate three key points. We argue here for recognition of obesity as being a crucial element within the metabolic syndrome but perhaps even more important before its development. We also contend that the concept does indeed have a role as a risk prediction tool, and that it could provide a useful metric for the scale and progress of the looming global epidemic of diabetes and cardiovascular disease. Through appreciation of its purpose, and recognition of both its limitations and those attributes that make it unique and valuable, we believe we have demonstrated here that the metabolic syndrome deserves its place in the global toolbox of diabetes and CVD prevention.