About

Dubai-headquartered Shelf Drilling is one of the world’s largest contractors for shallow water drilling jack-up rigs. The company’s operations are overseen by a multinational and multilingual in-house legal team of five members, headed by general counsel Dzul Bakar. Since the inception of the company, legal procedures have been essential to steady growth. Shelf Drilling began its journey with a $1.1bn acquisition of 38 offshore drilling rigs from Transocean. Backed by three private equity investment firms, the legal team has been critical to the separation and integration of these assets in 11 countries, helping Shelf Drilling to establish independent operations. Since that time the team has been busy negotiating and closing transactions such as the integral $200m revolving credit facility with HSBC and the Royal Bank of Canada, allowing the company to provide credit support for contractual obligations. In another key transaction the legal department closed two separate five-year offshore drilling contracts with Chevron Thailand estimated at $345m, securing favorable rig delivery terms for the company. This deal was executed amidst market turmoil which limited finances for the oil and gas sector, made possible only through legal innovation of the bankable new build structure that secured limited recourse project financing. In addition to overseeing these transactions the team has demonstrated its value by helping the company to operate in multiple jurisdictions. It is praised in particular for its work on helping to secure corporate financing structures in Nigeria that met local requirements while allowing local capital to invest in its subsidiary. In addition to playing a pivotal role in all commercial activities, the legal team has protected the company in compliance and ethics through recruiting compliance personnel into the team and implementing policy documents, systems and processes such as the Standard Operating Procedure for third party members.