Live Webinar: "Look Before You Leap: Are Your Oil Patch Liability Clauses Enforceable? An Analysis Under Civil Law Jurisdictions with Emphasis on Brazil"

11:00 a.m. BRT (UTC -3) Tuesday, May 18, 2021

9:00 a.m. CDT  |  3:00 p.m. BST  |  Timezone Converter

1.5 hours (inclusive of Q&A)

Norman Nadorff, Counsel, Mayer Brown; Adjunct Professor, University of Houston Law Center; Distinguished Practitioner in Residence, The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law
Maria Beatriz Gomes, Associate, Mayer Brown
Owen Anderson, Professor and Distinguished Oil and Gas Scholar, University of Texas School of Law
Gabi Ruthven, Senior Counsel, BP
Ana Castro Forman, Senior Counsel, Transocean

The oil and gas industry requires huge investments involving extraordinary financial, environmental and safety risks. Various oil industry disasters offer chilling reminders of the monumental loss of life, property and environmental integrity that can quickly result from human error. With this backdrop, industry participants and their insurers learned early on that the normal fault-based approach to wellsite liability did not fit the nature and needs of the petroleum business. Rather, it ran the risk that operators and their various service companies would spend more time and effort suing each other over inevitable mishaps than finding and producing oil. Thus, a unique series of clauses developed over time to efficiently allocate liability among wellsite service providers and to minimize litigation.

Organized by the Latin America & Caribbean Chapter, this webinar, based on a recent article in the Journal of World Energy, Law and Business, will analyze the risks inherent in applying the laws of a civil law jurisdiction to a wellsite contract, with particular emphasis on Brazil. It will begin with a short presentation by the article's authors describing (i) the traditional common law approach to liability allocation in wellsite contracts, including knock-for-knock clauses and (ii) the traditional civil law approach to liability (responsbilité) through French and Brazilian prisms. This will be followed by a panel of experts and practitioners who will touch upon the following areas, among others:

- The AIPN Model Well Services contract
- Key liability issues arising in negotiations
- Treatment of “other contractors” and third parties
- Day-to-day challenges and rewards for in-house practitioners of well services contracts
- How well services contracts have changed during the last decade

Registration Fees:
Member - complimentary
Non-Member - $25

Webinar registration fees include access to the live and on-demand recording on AIPN University.

Apply for membership before registering and receive member rates! After completing your membership application, please email aipnevents@aipn.org for assistance with registering.

Please register at the link to the right. Login details will be provided via email on May 17.