The government has said that it has appointed a top lawyer to fight the legal battle in the Niko compensation case in an international tribunal.
Nasrul Hamid, state minister for power, energy and mineral resources, made the remark to the Dhaka Tribune as a reaction to a recent order of an international court that asked Bangladesh keep aside a huge sum of money for paying Niko’s overdue bills.
On September 14, the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) ordered Bangladesh’s state-run oil company Petrobangla to deposit more than $25.3m (around Tk200 crore) in an escrow account for settling Niko’s invoices on gas deliveries between November 2004 and April 2010.
A month before that, the ICSID passed the order that Petrobangla would have to pay the money that the Canadian oil and gas exploration and production company had claimed.
ICSID is a part of the World Bank Group that facilitates arbitration of legal investment disputes between international investors and host states.
The three-member tribunal constituted in 2010 for this claim is presided over by Michael E Schneider of Germany.
In 2010, Niko filed a lawsuit with the ICSID after Petrobangla withheld payments on gas sales from the Feni Gas Field from 2006.
It filed another case involving compensation for the two blowouts occurred at Chattak gas field in 2005, after a Bangladeshi court held Niko liable for the accident. The trial in that case has yet to be completed.
The blowouts took place while drilling at the gas field in Sunamganj, locally known as Tengratila field, on January 7 and June 24, 2005.
Bangladesh will now also have to pay the Canadian company an interest for the delay in payment.
The fate of the other case that Niko had filed seeking clearance of liability for the blowouts is likely to be decided next month.
