Could a predicted natural hazard still be considered as 'force majeure'?

摘要

Nowadays we are living in the "Age of Knowledge". The technology today allows the humanbeing to build and maintain huge databases and facilitates to process them as never seenbefore. Therefore, many ways to prevent natural disasters using technology and hugedatabases were created to advise users in advance and to mitigate the possible tragicconsequences.In the oil industry, the capital and operating costs of the upstream activity have increasedstrongly in the last years and the operators are saying that the main reasons, among other,for that are the new standards of HSE (Health, Safety and Environmental) required in theiroperations. In fact that is not the entire truth because the technology has improved a lot andsafety parameters are frequently revised based on such new technology.Generally, when DP (Dynamic Positioning) operators are advised previously of a possiblenatural hazard occurrence, usually they consider it like an emergency situation and their mainaction is oriented only to prepare the first response and use the "force majeure"argumentation to protect itself from any additional responsibility. When the naturalphenomenon actually happens, the expenses due to the losses will be accepted because itwas already considered in its budget as "Losses due to accident" and it will be shared by thepartners of the project according to the correspondent contractual terms.