Modern petroleum contracts and practice in negotiations

Who should attend:

Petroleum managers and administrators in the International Oil Companies, the IOCs, as well as G and G specialists and engineers; technical, legal, financial and other specialists in the oil and gas ministries of the Host Governments and in the State Oil Companies; also technical professionals, economists, tax experts and lawyers in multilateral funding agencies, in banks, in other para-statal bodies and in law practice

Overview:

This course will develop an in-depth knowledge of the legal and contractual framework in which the upstream oil industry conducts its operations. It opens with an explanation of the geopolitical forces which shape the modern oil industry and then covers the major technical, legal/contractual and financial/economic/taxation/fiscal issues that inform modern E and P agreements world-wide. The course continues with an explanation of the principles and strategy of petroleum negotiations and then proceeds to a worked example of the negotiation of an actual upstream petroleum agreement. In the latter the course attendees will split up into two or more teams. One team will represent the government in the negotiations and the other(s) one or more of the IOCs who are attempting to secure with government an E and P agreement.

Contents:

• Sovereignty, the state and the ownership of the petroleum resource
• The petroleum legislation and key issues within it: the Ministry of Petroleum and the Petroleum Licensing and Monitoring Unit, PLMU. The State Oil Company: two modern examples...Pertamina and EGPC. Ten key steps in petroleum licensing and an example of modern petroleum legislation.
• Petroleum leases, concessions, agreements and contracts. The modern Equity ( Royalty-Tax ) Agreement. The modern Contractor ( Production Sharing) Agreement.
• Technical issues in petroleum agreements: term ( duration), work programme (duration and content: seismic and wells), exploration periods and relinquishment, exploration and production licences, discovery , the development plan......
• Legal and contractual issues in petroleum agreements: the rights, duties, obligations and liabilities of the parties
• Financial issues in negotiations: royalty, tax, additional profits taxes, OPEX, CAPEX, cost oil, profit oil, the Equity Agreement versus the Contractor

The course is accompanied by an eight hundred page text-book on Modern Petroleum Legislation and Agreements which has been written by Mr Michael Bunter.