International Arbitration Newsletter - December 2018 | Regional Overview: Middle East and Africa

ANGOLA

Angola hit by ad-hoc arbitration claim on failed port concession contract

Angolan company Atlantic Ventures, a company linked to the billionaire daughter of Angola’s former president, has threatened Angola with a US$850 million claim against the state through ad hoc arbitration after the ICC declined to administer the dispute.

The dispute concerns an agreement for a port concession contract that was never signed, which provided for ad hoc arbitration seated in Luanda, with the ICC to serve as the appointing authority.  The agreement concerned a project to build and operate the Barra do Dande deep water port, located 60 kilometres north of the country’s capital, Luanda.

According to the Angolan ministry of transport’s statement, the respondents maintain that Atlantic did not enter into any concession agreement with Angolan public entities and never was a concessionaire for the Port of Barra do Dande.

EGYPT

Egypt settles Touristic and Real Estate Development arbitration       

An UNCITRAL arbitration brought by Touristic and Real Estate Development against Egypt in the wake of a privatization process of a steam boiler manufacturer implemented by former President Mubarak in 1994 has been recently settledThe dispute, known as Steam Boilers, began in 2013 and among the companies privatised was the Al-Nasr for Steam Boilers and Pressure Vessels Manufacturing Company, whose assets, including a large plot of land on the banks of the Nile, were acquired by a US company, Babcock & Wilson International.

Egypt hit by ICSID claim on cancelled port terminal

Kuwaiti shareholder KGL International for Ports, Warehousing, and Transport has filed a pre-arbitral notice request on a US$1.1 billion claim against Egyptian authorities under the 2001 Egypt-Kuwait bilateral investment treaty regarding a cancelled container terminal facility project at Egypt’s Damietta port.

The claim relates to a 40-year concession agreement entered by a consortium (DIPCO) made up of KGL and another partner with the state-owned Damietta Port Authority to develop, build and operate the facility at the Damietta Port, 8 kms west of the mouth of the Nile. According to KHL, the port authority “abruptly terminated” the concession agreement in 2015, depriving DIPCO and its shareholders of “a 40-year stream of revenue”.

LIBYA

ICC tribunal orders Libyan state entity to pay US$40 million on pipeline dispute

A Swiss-seated ICC tribunal has recently ordered Libya’s Man-Made River Authority to pay compensation to its joint Turkish joint venture partners Tekfen Holdings over disruption caused to an underground pipeline.

The dispute relates to the extension of the Great Man Made River, an underground network of pipes that supplies fresh water from the Sahara to major Libyan cities, a project that was suspended as a result of the Arab Spring.

The tribunal, applying the Libyan Civil Code, held that the parties’ contract must be “rebalanced" but left the calculation of the monetary value of the compensation and the making of specific amendments to the contract to a later phase of the case.

KUWAIT

Hyundai hit with award in favour of Kuwait Oil Company

Kuwait Oil Company (KOC) has obtained a partial award in its favour allowing nearly all of a US$ 3 billion LCIA claim brought against South Korean contractor Hyundai in a dispute over the construction of a network of fuel transportation lines.

The underlying dispute relates to the establishment of a network of lines to transport fuel to the northern and southern stations of Kuwait’s Ministry of Electricity and Water. While Hyundai had claimed approximately  US$2.7 billion from KOC, the tribunal had ordered the KOC to compensate Hyundai justUS$3.6 million, hence largely dismissing the claim.