ABUJA (Sundiata Post) – TheSupreme Court has ruled against Brittania U which had asked the apex court to grant an interlocutory injunction requesting Chevron to stay action on the transfer of assets OML 52, 53 and 55 to Amni, Seplat and Belema oil respectively.
In their ruling, Justice Syvester Ngwuta who read the lead judgment said the prayer brought to the apex court by the appellant, through its lawyer, Rickey Tarfa SAN lacked merit.
The lead judgment noted that the crux of the appeal is a simple matter of life span of an interim order, noting that counsel to the appellant overblew the issues. The court then adopted the five issues distilled by the appellant for determination, resolving all the issues against the appellant.
It noted that the appeal lacked merit and accordingly, dismissed same. In addition, a cost of N100,000 each was awarded to each of respondents to be paid by the appellant. All justices on the panel for this matter assented to the judgment and the consequential award against the appellant.
Seplat Petroleum Development Company and the other respondents are yet to respond formally to the judgment.
To understand how the Brittania and Chevron/Seplat got to the Supreme court, it is imperative to track the trajectory of the case.
In August 2013, Chevron put up three acreages for sale. They were OMLs 52, 53 and 55 . In putting up the bid, Chevron had announced its intention of selling the three OMLs to one preferred bidder not necessarily the highest bidder.
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After the first bid round, 30 bidders emerged. Chevron made a shortlist and when the sealed bids were opened, Britannia U had bid $1.6bn which the company later revised her bid to $1.015bn.
The Seplat consortium with a bid of $800m was declared the preferred bidder and signed SPA Nov 28, 2014. The Seplat Consortium comprised Seplat and Amniwith Belema joining the consortium subsequently.
Brittania U was however, insistent that Chevron should declare it bid winner and sought an injunction restraining Chevron from concluding the sale to the Seplat Consotium.
The company approached a federal high court sitting in Lagos which granted an interlocutory injunction and further granted an extension while the issue of jurisdiction was pending.
Following the extension of the injunction, Seplat and its consortium partners went to the appeal court on June 20, 2014 to challenge the high court’s injunction. The appeal court ruled in Seplat’s favour and vacated the injunction reasoning that the life of the interim order could not be extended, while the jurisdiction of the Federal High Court was being challenged.
Not satisfied with the Appeal Court’s ruling, Brittania U went to the Supreme Court to contest the appeal.
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