Gas Dispute

The Gas Dispute Team specialises in dispute resolution and contract negotiation in the field of energy and natural resources, in particular natural gas. Long term gas sales agreements have common features irrespective of jurisdiction and choice of law in the specific GSA or SPA or whether the gas or LNG is purchased for resale, distribution and storage, power production, feedstock or as bunker fuel.

The Team has unrivalled experience in the negotiation and renegotiation of long term contracts for pipeline gas, LNG and liquid petroleum gases (LPG) upstream, midstream and downstream. 

Gas price reviews, index adjustment and index replacement disputes, volume and take-or-pay disputes as well as disputes concerning gas transit and transportation and investments and joint ventures in the petroleum industry are handled by the Team. The Team mainly represents gas buyers such as importers, utilities, power producers and the petrochemical and fertilizer industry against gas producers in Norway, Russia and elsewhere. 

The most common dispute resolution mechanism in long term gas contracts is international arbitration, and the Team handles both ad hoc and institutional arbitration (ICC, SCC and LCIA). Achievements include introducing hub indexation in a long term GSA between RWE and Gazprom Export and successfully representing Naftogaz of Ukraine against Gazprom in price revision, take or pay and transit disputes. The Team has handled contracts governed by Norwegian, Swedish, German, Austrian, Swiss, Ukrainian and English law.

The Team has significant experience with GSA and SPA competition law issues, like destination clauses and other resale restrictions, profit sharing mechanisms, resale price maintenance and abuse of dominance, and is familiar with relevant energy law such as the network codes on transmission tariff structures and capacity allocation. In these and other related areas such as shipping and construction, the Team draws on specialised competence from the entire Firm.