Upstream Oil & Gas Legal Forum

Registration & Coffee

C5 Upstream Oil & Gas Legal Forum Introduction and Welcome

Chair’s Opening Address

Moving Beyond Low Oil Prices and Focusing on Adjusting Your Business Model for Long Term Coping Mechanisms

Much of the oil and gas industry has survived an especially tough few years with weak demand and low prices. It has been difficult to make strategic decisions and plan for the future. Only now is the sector beginning to emerge from its upheaval. If there is hope on the horizon, we must remain mindful of the risk.

• Assessing the potential in focusing corporate strategic objectives on sustainable profitability
• Creating a business focused approach using differentiated capabilities
• Participating in new business models and forms of partnership to ensure that the company most able to extract value manages the field in the relevant stages of its life
• Reviewing portfolios for coherence and resilience to radically restructure the business based on forecasts of future conditions and to ensure that the projects the company is undertaking match the organisation’s capabilities
• Exploring new forms of technology deployment
• Participating in innovative approaches to retaining and recruiting talent

Overview of Key Arbitration Decisions in 2017/18

• A look at key arbitration decisions along the value chain over the past twelve months
• Specific cases to be decided

Morning Break and Networking Register

The Use of Real Options for the Valuation of Upstream Oil & Gas

Discounted Cash Flow (DCF) is the most commonly used methodology for asset valuation in many contexts, including in the assessment of damages. However, “traditional” DCF analyses do not take into account the value of “optionality”. For example, the right to exploit a newly discovered field may have value even if at current prices the cost of development would outweigh revenues, because the right holder can choose at a later date to develop the field if prices rise so as to make it profitable. The right to exercise that option at some future date has value today. Real Options is a methodology developed by financial economists that can be used to estimate that value. It is widely used and recognised, and can give robust results given appropriate data.

• Gain insight into the both the discounted cash flow and real options methodologies
• Learn how to discern the benefits of each methodology
• Benefit from examples of the application of each methodology
• Be guided on how to avoid the pitfalls when evaluating damages

Decommissioning: The Impact on Security, the Environment and Contractors

• Decommissioning security disputes
  • Decommissioning security agreements, and how they operate
  • Impact of the oil price on decommissioning security
  • Net cost and net value calculations
  • Expert determination
• Decommissioning and the environment
  • What is ‘right?’
• Disputes with contractors during the decommissioning process
  • Delay disputes
  • Property, pollution and indemnity claims
  • Scope of works disputes

Lunch and Networking

WORKING GROUP ROUNDTABLES
Delegates have the chance to move roundtables after 30 minutes, to maximise input and discussion

Chair’s Closing Remarks and Networking Drinks

Registration & Coffee

Chair’s Opening Address

Bribery Charges in 2017: What Does This Mean for Upstream?

Upon news of recent senior Royal Dutch Shell and Eni executives being probed for bribery in September 2017, there are clear signs that it is no longer “business as usual for oil companies:”

• What impact do the probes have on upstream activities in 2018?
• Practical steps to address anti-corruption compliance challenges in joint ventures, mergers and acquisitions by drilling down into effective due diligence
• RegTech: An update on the latest and greatest technology for anti-corruption compliance for upstream
• Gifts, entertainment & hospitality: Best practices for balancing local culture with global compliance
• Compliance blind spots and internal controls perspectives from the business on how to get ahead of potential compliance pitfalls
• Navigating the public procurement, bidding, state tender and regulatory approval process

Host Government Retention: Finding a Win-Win Approach for Both Parties

• Rebalancing the portfolio:
  • Ascertaining the amount of knowledge you need to have of the host country
  • Expanding your network of relationships
  • Developing coordination with local stakeholders to ensure coherence between a company’s intent and local expectations
  • Strengthening capabilities to plan, respond, and adapt to ongoing change
• Ascertaining how reliable the government is in terms of keeping their commitments
• Positioning your business as a responsible contributor to the host country’s economic and social development and as a long-term player able to fully realise its mineral potential
• From government angle, debating how they should rebalance future deals/existing ones, particularly in mature oil & gas jurisdictions

Morning Break and Networking

PANEL SESSION
Time and Cost Saving Procedures in Dispute Avoidance

• Is arbitration more cost-effective compared to litigation?
• How to encourage and manage a non-confrontational approach to conflict
• Avoiding disputes in the post-contractual stage

Claims Management and Quantification

• How to understand the claim value?
• What’s the role of valuation in upstream disputes and what factors are often overlooked and underestimated?
• Understanding the key drivers of the value of upstream assets
• Valuation methodologies applied to upstream oil and gas claims; DCF and its alternatives
• The importance of understanding price forecasts (looking at the end of field life)
• The often underestimated cost of substantive hearings, etc.
• Assessing damages in international commercial arbitration
• Insight on the types of harm
• Expert witnesses and advisers for loss or damage quantification

Lunch and Networking

WORKING GROUP ROUNDTABLES
Delegates have the chance to move roundtables after 30 minutes, to maximise input and discussion

Chair’s Closing Remarks and End Of Conference