Our international oil and gas team offers impressive breadth and depth in understanding the needs of the on- and off-shore industries and the legal jurisdictions they encounter around the world. The team advises a range of E&P and service sector clients from majors to start-up companies. Several of the team are dual qualified and/or have language skills. We have a long track-record of seconding members of the team in-house to immerse themselves in the client’s environment.
We advise on every aspect of oil and gas transactional and operational issues in the UK and overseas, ranging from licensing, joint venture work and unitisation through the value chain to project contracting, construction and service contracts, and including acquisition, disposal, farm-in, oil and gas transportation, marketing and sales and due diligence work. Our lawyers work flexibly to offer quality advice and consultancy services, both independently and in-house.
Our international perspective has been acquired through familiarity with working in a wide variety of legal jurisdictions. As a result, we are very experienced at dealing with different licensing and regulatory regimes. We are culturally sensitive to varied approaches appropriate to different government entities and systems. In providing advice, we are attuned to different strategies that may be required in the context of issues such as fiscal terms and political risk and we work closely with local advisers and contacts.
The oil and gas team regularly works with other practice areas and support groups within the firm, drawing upon internal specialists and skill sets to form a highly effective and cohesive group for each project, allowing us to work in a cost efficient and timely manner. The team comprises industry experts supported by dedicated health and safety, corporate and corporate finance, dispute resolution, tax, competition, insolvency, employment, construction and engineering, planning, consenting and property lawyers.
From installing a new 1,768km pipeline across Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey to enabling a US$1.3bn sale of interests in Angola and the sale of a stake in one of the North Sea’s largest undeveloped gas fields, our respected team is regularly called upon to support a diverse range of large-scale projects, as well as smaller transactions and day to-day operational issues. As the industry diversifies into renewable energy and carbon capture and storage (CCS), our multi-disciplined Energy team offers unrivalled knowledge and experience through dedicated renewables and power generation lawyers who are UK leaders in the sector.
We have a strong network of relationships with oil and gas companies, industry professionals, government and regulatory bodies. We have active memberships of key industry bodies, including the International Bar Association, the Association of International Petroleum Negotiators (AIPN) and the United Kingdom Energy Lawyers Group. We act as an adviser to groups such as the Oil and Gas Independents’ Association and we work with Oil & Gas UK. Such involvement ensures that we build relationships across the sector and stay at the cutting edge of regulatory developments.
Our Work
- advising Tullow Oil on the sale of Tullow Oil UK Limited to ENI UK Limited for £210m
- advising large company on its Algerian project
- advising large energy company on the development of the York gas field
- advising large U.S. independent oil and natural gas company in relation to transactions and operations in Turkey, Trinidad and Tunisia
- advising EOG Resources on all transactional and operational issues in relation to its UKCS asset portfolio
- advising Centrica Gas Storage on the development of the Caythorpe gas storage project
- advising Premier Oil on a bid for part of ENI’s UKCS asset portfolio
- advising Cairn India and ONGC on their bid for Tullow Oil’s Ugandan assets