What are the most significant cases and transactions that your legal team has recently been involved in?

The first that comes to mind is a project we are doing in Nigeria; a storage facility of about 278,000 cubic metres located in the southern region of the country, worth $200m. We are near financial close on the project, and it has taken quite a bit of resources in terms of human capital, funding, documentation, structuring the transaction, payments, and repayments.

Another significant transaction we reached financial close on was a $43m project financing for constructing a 12,000 metric tonne LPG storage facility in Cote d’Ivoire. It was a joint venture transaction between my company and the public entity and required managing the public company; building the relationship between the parties in the shareholders agreement and basically getting to a point where both parties felt like their interests were well represented in the shareholders agreement as well as in the agreements for the actual transaction.

In terms of a successful dispute resolution my company was involved in a dispute with the government of a Western African country that essentially, did not meet its terms of the contracts and terminated the contract prematurely which resulted in us incurring tremendous financial liability. We had to face litigation in several jurisdictions and find a way to pay because of contractual commitments with a third party that was supposed to supply a service, a GSA. We had to pay about $60m in compensation for the early termination.

Eventually, we successfully received an arbitration award in our favour; recovered substantial amounts of the claim; and got the government to settle to repayment.

In your role, how do you balance the need to protect the organisation’s interests today while also considering legal implications and opportunities that may arise in the future?

At every point in time, we consider risk; what the risks to the organisation are and what opportunities the organisations can take advantage of at an early stage. In terms of sustainability and renewables, the fact is we are in Nigeria, and in the foreseeable future, fossil fuels are still going to be very much relevant to our economy and our business. Hence, while we focus on fossil fuels, we have begun to pay attention and invest in renewables

I emphasise that because of our current positions in Nigeria and the different African countries in which we operate, fossil fuels are still very much relevant to our business and to the economies in which we operate. So, while we invest in fossil fuels, we pay attention to the sustainability of the economy and geographies in which we operate. We try to ensure that our operations leave a green footprint.

How does the in-house legal function contribute to the overall dispute resolution strategy of the organisation?

In the aforementioned arbitration case, there was a supply contract and a GSA which was terminated. Commitments that had been made on the supply contracts by a Sahara entity had to be terminated as well, and the supplier under the supply contract had no choice but to sue us for the early termination.

As the arbitration clause in that contract was governed by English law, they were able to secure an arbitral award in the London Court of Arbitration and attempted to enforce it both in the courts of England and in the courts of the BVI.

Our legal team had to manage the engagement of external counsel in every country involved; appropriately engage and advise our management to offer a settlement to the counterparty, to avoid progressing to enforcement proceedings. Consequently, we were able to get them to withdraw the enforcement proceedings and basically negotiate a settlement that allowed us a staggered payment plan, while essentially maintaining a business relationship with the company and avoiding a litigation process that could have been injurious to our reputation. With the help of competent and experienced external counsel we also successfully entered into a settlement agreement with the government and saved the business relationship.