Mr Sameh Khodeir > Zaki Hashem & Partners, Attorneys at Law > Cairo, Egypt > Lawyer Profile

Mr Sameh Khodeir

(+20-2) 2399-9999 law@hashemlaw.com

Work Department

Oil & Gas

Position

Senior Partner

Career

Mr. Sameh Khodeir, Senior Partner, is Head of the Oil & Gas Department at ZH&P.  Having joined the Firm in 1982, he has been extending his seasoned skills and expertise to the fields of oil & gas, energy, mining, project finance, litigation, international commercial arbitration, taxation law, labor law, and the structuring and restructuring of companies.

Mr. Khodeir’s professional track record includes 30+ concession agreements, 40+ deeds of assignments, and an extensive number of settlement agreements for oil & gas disputes as well as arbitrations in petroleum explorations and production (E&P).  Mr. Khodeir recently handled an arbitration over the supply of crude oil with a disputed value of US$ 200 million.  The award ruled in favor of ZH&P’s client.

With a vast experience exceeding 44 years, other selected examples of Mr. Khodeir’s expertise include:

• Advising on three mega projects exceeding the value of US$ 1 Billion, namely,
• Advising INVP, from construction to hand-over, on the Second Nuclear Research Reactor and Radioisotopes Projects (2007 & 2015);
• Advising on the implementation of Union Fenosa’s Damietta Project – the first LNG project in Egypt (2000); and
• Advising Middle East Oil Refinery (MIDOR) on the Project Financing for the Modernization, Upgrade and Expansion of a New Refinery (2015 – 2020).
• Review of the US$ 600 million Syndicated Loan Agreement granted by Credit Agricole Indosuez, Sucursal in Spain, the Royal Bank of Scotland PLC, and the Royal Bank of Canada in connection with Union Fenosa’s Damiettal LNG Project (2000/2001).
• Special Advisor to the Egyptian General Petroleum Corporation (EGPC) in a US$ 1.55 billion forward Sale Contract of Crude Oil arranged by Morgan Stanley (2005).

Recent examples of his expertise also include:

• Advising the Egyptian Electricity Transmission Company in its USD 1.6 billion EPC Contract of the Egyptian-Saudi Linkage Project. (2019)
• Extending Legal Support to RAKTA regarding the EUR 10.5 million Tender for Rehabilitation of Machinery. (2019)

Mr. Khodeir also acted as the legal advisor to a large number of multi-national Investments operating in Egypt in the sectors of: i) Exploration and Production of Oil & Gas (e.g. IEOC, Apache, Sipetorl – among others); ii) Petroleum Services in drilling and Services Contracts (e.g. Schlumberger, SantaFe which became Shelf Drilling – among others); iii) Mining and Pharmaceuticals (e.g. NOVARTIS, Otsuka – among others); iv) Trading (e.g. Cargill – among others); and v) International Organizations (e.g. JETRO, JICA, and JBIC – among others).

In addition to Petroleum companies, he also acted as Special Legal Advisor to the Egyptian General Petroleum Corporation (EGPC) and the Egyptian Natural Gas Holding Company (EGAS) on specific transactions with values ranging between US$ 850 million and US$1.55 billion.  He was also entrusted by EGPC and EGAS to act as their special advisor in bank guarantee agreements (security agreements).

Mr. Khodeir adeptly maintains solid long-standing relations with his clients. He has been the legal advisor to IEOC since 1984, to Santa Fe since 1984 (and through its merger and acquisition by Transocean), to Alitalia (Egypt) since 1983, to Le Meridien Hotel since 1988, to the Four Seasons Hotel in Cairo since 2011, to EGPC since 1985 – among others.

Mr. Khodeir is often sought after to lecture as a practitioner in universities and institutions such as his lecture on the legal regime of Oil & Gas regime in Egypt delivered to post-graduate students at Harvard Law School in 2010.  He achieved the LL.B. from Cairo University’s Faculty of Law in 1975.

IFLR1000 ranked Mr. Sameh Khodeir as “Highly Regarded Leading Lawyer” in the Project Finance and M&A practices in 2019, 2020, and 2021.  He had been ranked as “Highly Regarded Leading Lawyer” in Project Finance and Banking in 2018 and as “Leading Lawyer” in the Financial and Corporate practice in 2016 and 2017.  The LEGAL 500 ranked Mr. Khodeir as “Leading Individual” in the Energy practice in 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, and 2022.  The LEGAL 500 had also recommended him in the Arbitration practice in 2018 and 2019 and had ranked him as “Leading Individual” in the Oil & Gas practice in 2016 and 2017. Chambers and Partners ranked Mr. Sameh Khodeir as Band 1 Lawyer in Projects & Energy in 2021 and as Band 2 Lawyer in 2022.

Languages

Arabic and English

Memberships

He is member of the Egyptian Association for International Law; the Egyptian Association for Politics, Economics, Statistics and Legislation; the Legal Core Committee of the American Chamber of Commerce in Egypt; the Egyptian Lebanese Business Association; and the British Egyptian Business Association.  He is also a member of the BOD of the Japanese-Egyptian Business Council.

Education

Mr. Sameh Khodeir has achieved his LL.B. from the Faculty of Law at Cairo University in 1975.