Taqa Bratani Ltd and Ors v Rockrose UKCS8 LLC 2020 EWHC 58 Comm - 17 January 2020
Country
Year
2020
Summary
Introduction
This is the expedited trial[1] of a claim by which the claimants seek declarations that notices by which they purported to terminate the appointment of the defendant as Operator under four Joint Operating Agreements and a Unitisation and Unit Operating Agreement (collectively "JOAs") between the claimants and the defendant concerning the operation of five oil and gas field blocks ("Blocks") on the UK Continental Shelf ("UKCS") in the North Sea known collectively as the Brae Fields are valid and take effect in accordance with their terms.
The claimants maintain that on a true construction of the JOAs they were collectively entitled to act as they have without being obliged to justify their decision to the defendant or to give any reasons for that decision. The defendant maintains that the express terms on which the claimants rely were impliedly qualified by obligations that required the claimants to not exercise the express powers they rely on capriciously or arbitrarily and only in good faith and, in consequence, only in the best interests of the operation of the Block or Blocks in question, that the claimants did not comply with the qualifications for which the defendant contends and in consequence the claimants' purported notices were invalid and of no effect.
...