BLP Oil & Gas Update Creative Doc.pdf April 2014 | Page 6

If the stringent procedural tests can be passed in the application for a
freezing order, such orders can be powerful. The English court was prepared
to assist proceedings in the UAE courts by going as far as granting worldwide
freezing and disclosure orders even though the defendant was in the UAE
and there were no obvious assets in the UK.
If there are grounds on which the English civil court can exercise substantive
jurisdiction over the proceeds of Nigerian oil theft, then the possibility of
commencing substantive proceedings in England is a trump card. The English
court may be persuaded to exercise its jurisdiction if a suspected thief of
Nigerian oil can be served with court proceedings in England and Wales or if
the proceeds of the theft can be shown to have passed through bank
accounts or used to buy assets in England and Wales. English courts can
grant world-wide interim relief in such circumstances.

Lessons learnt
Crude oil theft is also becoming a major issue in Mexico, where state-owned
oil corporation Pemex estimated in June 2013 that between 5,000 and 10,000
barrels of oil were being stolen per day.
Pemex recorded 730 illegal siphons in its pipelines in the first four months of
2013, compared to 377 in the same period for 2012. The theft also appears to
be becoming more organised and sophisticated and it is now suspected that
major organised crime groups are involved.
Pemex, unlike its Nigerian counterparts, has been proactive in seeking redress
through foreign civil courts against suspects based outside of Mexico that it
believes, one way or another, are involved in the th eft.
In a lawsuit filed at a US district court in Texas, Pemex alleged that nine US
companies and two US oil executives were involved in receiving natural gas
condensate stripped from its Burgos oilfield in northeast Mexico.
The Mexican company claimed that some of these companies knew, or
should have known, that they were trading in or transporting stolen gas.
Some companies may have been ignorant that they were purchasing stolen
goods, but in either case the companies had improperly taken possession of
Mexico’s sovereign property.
A federal judge dismissed most of Pemex’s claims in September 2013 as timebarred because they fell foul of the two year statute of limitations under Texas