About

Operating as an important downstream business of oil and gas multinational Shell in Turkey, Shell & Turcas Petrol benefits from the expertise of its in-house legal team on wide range of matters. All lawyers within the team assist in business lines within the downstream division, including retail sales and operations, trade and supply, global commercial marketing, commercial fleet, fuels and lubricants, gas and power, aviation, chemicals, marine and bitumen. The team is led by head of legal Berç Germeyan Işık and consists of four lawyers and one supporting staff member. One of the lawyers in the team, Tuğçe Eymirli, is mainly responsible for assisting trade and supply, gas and power, liquefied natural gas (LNG) and new energies, as well as advising in relation to regulatory matters including EMRA and the competition board. Aydan Erdem provides legal advice to retail business which is the Shell-branded network of sites selling fuel, lubricants and convenience retail items and which forms one of the core activities of Shell, involving all types of contracts with the dealers, title deed works and litigation. Gül Gülhan who is also a lawyer in the team, predominantly focuses on retail marketing, commercial fuels, commercial fleet, lubricants and contracting and procurement while also giving support to retail business. Seda Önoğlu works on all kinds of corporate work of Shell companies and provides legal support to the businesses that sit within global commercial, aviation, marine, chemicals and bitumen, meanwhile conducting legal work of the pension foundation of Shell. Working closely with the retail business to substantially grow its non-fuels retail business, the team is involved in implementing new business models and new business partners. As a leader in the LNG sector with more than 50 years of expertise, Shell is putting efforts into increasing the use of LNG, which is a cleaner burning fuel offering cost advantages, particularly in the marine and road transportation sector. The legal team has worked intensely in delivering this project by having made submissions before the Turkey’s energy market regulatory authority for the changes that need to be made in the legislation for the usage of D-LNG, applying for an LNG license, commenting on the draft regulation with proposals, finalising all system setup contracts and carrying out works to serve the demands of vehicles. The team is also negotiating sales contracts with the distributors under the wholesale LNG license. Commenting on the team ethos, Işık had the following to say: ‘The team is empowered by close collaboration, great solidarity and strong friendship which contributes to the quality of legal work, serves the needs of our stakeholders and enhances the bottom-line. We believe that the way to success comes from working in harmony, sharing learnings and knowledge, taking pride in everything achieved as a team, being resilient, endeavouring towards the same goal, understanding one another and communicating effectively. Turkey is an emerging and dynamic market. Therefore, special focus has been placed on operating in a fast-moving environment and we took courses on how to operate and work in such an environment through attending resilience workshops’.