Oil & gas

The market-leading oil and gas practice Our global oil and gas team is made up of acknowledged legal experts in the oil and gas industry. This is reflected in our current “Tier-1”ranking as an oil and gas firm by legal directories.

Members of our global team can advise on the complex legal, commercial and technical issues associated with upstream, midstream and downstream developments worldwide.

We provide full service capacity to our global clients in key markets such as Africa, Russia and Eastern Europe, Continental Europe, the Middle East, Asia and Latin America. In all of our offices, we practice either, or in most cases both, English law and New York law, and in the majority of cases, the local law of the jurisdiction.

Our extensive experience ranges from the acquisition and disposal of interests (including farm-ins and farm-outs) in oil and gas fields around the world (including the UK and Norwegian sectors of the North Sea) to more traditional project development financings, including financing oil rigs, platforms and pipelines to Our construction group handles complex projects, construction contracts whether FEED, EPCM or EPC contracts, interface risk or technology licenses in addition to disputes and our litigation and arbitration teams are frequently called upon to resolve disputes between oil and gas parties worldwide.

More specifically, we have experience of all contractual and fiscal aspects of the industry including production sharing contracts (PSCs), concession joint venture agreements (JVAs), joint operating agreements (JOAs), asset sale and purchase, financings, farm-ins, farm-outs, unitisations, drilling and development contracts and short and long term gas, LNG, LPG and crude sales contracts.

We have particular expertise in pipelines, gas and oil product allocation, storage and shipping. We have worked on some of the most innovative project development(s) (including major refinery and petrochemical facilities), as well as acquisitions, disposals, joint ventures and asset swaps of the downstream operations of international oil companies ( IOC’s)  and national oil Companies (NOC’s). Indeed our experience goes beyond large transactional-related matters and we also advise on day-to-day operational agreements (e.g., franchise/licensing arrangements with independent retail outlets).

Understanding key industry issues

Working from a detailed understanding of the industry and its trends, the oil and gas team keep up to date on key issues in the oil and gas industry and our response to them.  These include the realignment of portfolios, mergers, restructurings and consolidation in the market, national oil companies looking to invest in new territories, technology driving the independent oil companies to look at acquisitions in less traditional areas, resource nationalism and expropriation of assets, the improved appetite for reserve base lending, increased focus on managing price exposure, greater focus on managing price exposure and the greater commitment to the renewables sector.  As clean energy transactions become much more complex and larger in scale, we have become increasingly active for clients in advising them on alternative sources, renewables, carbon capture and emissions trading.  Our market-leading Environment Group provides specialist expertise in all aspects of environmental law across the spectrum of transactional, regulatory advisory and dispute management contexts in the oil and gas sector.