Case study: Expert Witness and Advisory Support – South-East Asia

Our client's requirement

An oil company undertook an enhanced oil recovery (EOR) programme on a very old multi-well onshore field where production had been declining for decades. The campaign was unsuccessful and the company eventually withdrew from the south-east Asian country. It then filed a claim on its political risk insurance policy on the basis that the state oil company was refusing to pay invoices totaling over US$25 million. Its insurers had to determine whether the claim, which was backed up by thousands of pages of technical data, was valid or not.

Our approach

We were commissioned to undertake a detailed study of the highly complex claim to determine its validity. We used our team of technical consultants to thoroughly analyse the claimant's technical data. One of our experts had spent more than 20 years in the region and knew more about its geology than any other Western national. Our second expert was a highly experienced and respected reservoir engineer with whom we had previously worked on all of the major oil cases before the US-Iran Claims Tribunal. The combination of our two leading experts, plus the Menas support staff who worked on other aspects of the case, were able to analyse the claim and discover both numerous discrepancies and mistakes that the claimant had made during the EOR campaign.

The outcome

During the subsequent arbitration case the insurers' lawyers were able to successfully challenge the claim on the basis of Menas advisory support and expert witnesses, with the result that the eventual settlement was less than ten per cent of the original claim. While this was an example of Menas working for the insurers, we have also worked on other cases where we have helped claimants prove their case.

Regions covered

East and Southeast Asia

Services provided

Expert witness and advisory support