Lawsuits NEWS

FIR has been registered by the CBI against the officials of KS Oils Ltd, a Madhya Pradesh based company in an alleged Rs 938 crore bank loan scam. Searches were conducted on Saturday in Morena and Delhi at the premises of the firm. K S Oils Ltd has manufacturing plants in Morena, Ratlam and Guna in Madhya Pradesh, Kota in Rajasthan and a port-based refinery in Haldia, West Bengal.

An order had passed to OFS International, to stop manufacturing and selling six connections which Tenaris alleged were based on confidential information and trade secrets that OFSi stole from Tenaris’s subsidiary by the federal judge. The order prohibits OFSi from developing new connections using Tenaris’s confidential information and requires OFSi to return or destroy all stolen information in its possession.

Diamond Offshore Drilling, which recently went bankrupt, has slapped a lawsuit against Beach Energy Ltd for abruptly ending a drilling contract worth $65 million. Beach Energy ended the agreement, citing that Diamond Offshore couldn't achieve a “contractual milestone to deliver the rig”. The lawsuit filed in Houston asks the court to render the termination notice invalid, on the grounds that the delay was “largely of Beach’s own making”.

Oil and gas producer, Chesapeake Energy Corp has been slapped with a $48.8 million lawsuit by Pipeline operator Glass Mountain LLC for allegedly defaulting on an oil transportation contract. Shale gas pioneer, Chesapeake had earlier borrowed aggressively to buy and drill properties and started making losses as gas prices toppled. A Chesapeake spokesman didn't respond to requests for comment.

Oil supermajor, ExxonMobil took a big sigh of relief on Tuesday when Judge Barry Ostrager acquitted the firm in the 4-year long New York Climate-Change securities fraud trial. The ruling for the $1.6 billion lawsuit read, “The Office of the Attorney General failed to prove, by a preponderance of the evidence, that ExxonMobil made any material misstatements or omissions about its practices and procedures that misled any reasonable investor,”.

Energy major, ExxonMobil has been slammed by New York's attorney general for lying to the investors about its future profitability. The lawsuit against the company that will go for trial on Tuesday claims that the firm has been maintaining two sets of books; one for climate change regulations and the other underestimating the costs. This has made the firm appear more valuable to investors.

Michigan's Attorney General, yesterday, initiated a lawsuit to shut down twin 66-year-old oil pipelines owned by Enbridge Inc in the Great Lakes area. Democrat Dana Nessel has argued that the pipelines present an "unacceptable risk". The twin pipelines are integral to Enbridge's Line 5, transporting 23 million gallons of crude oil and propane everyday between Superior, Wisconsin, and Sarnia, Ontario.

Two explosions and a gas leak at a chemical plant south of Rotterdam have resulted in a heavy fine for energy major Shell. The company has been fined $2.8 million by a Dutch court for violating Dutch labour and environmental laws. The company has also been found responsible for a leak of ethylene oxide gas that lasted from Nov.14, 2015, until Jan. 27, 2016, at the same plant.

A lawsuit which was filed in 2016 by Nigeria, accused many companies of exporting a total of 57 million barrels of crude oil to the United States between 2011 and 2014. The names of the companies also included Eni and Petrobras. However, on Wednesday the Nigerian court ruled out all the claims of the involvement of the subsidiaries of Eni and Petrobras for illegally exporting crude oil to the US.

Senior executives at Shell and Eni are now facing additional corruption allegations over a Nigerian oil deal. In a London lawsuit hearing, Nigerian government asserted about the involvement of executives, including CEOs, into over $1 billion in bribery payments. The years-long dispute over exploration rights to OPL 245 has made it to courtrooms all across Europe. Nigeria has separately prosecuted JP Morgan Chase for transferring payments for the deal.

America's biofuels company, Growth Energy has filed a federal lawsuit against the Environmental Protection Agency of the US. The company has challenged US for its failing attempt to address rising waived biofuel volumes in its renewable fuel mandate for 2019. Growth Energy's CEO slammed EPA by saying "Today's filing calls for greater accountability from EPA to ensure that every renewable fuel obligation is fulfilled as the law intended".

Nigerian government has accused energy super major Shell and Italy’s Eni for a 2011 oilfield deal. The government has filed a $1.1 billion lawsuit against the energy giants in a commercial court in London on Thursday. Shell and Eni’s former and current officials are also involved in the ongoing corruption trial in Milan where OPL 245 oilfield is a pressing matter.

Supermajor, ExxonMobil has been slammed with a new lawsuit by the New York Attorney General. The lawsuit alleges Exxon of misleading investors about its readiness to overcome the financial challenges posed by climate change to their business. The suit follows a three-year legal fight against Exxon. Spokesman for Exxon, referring to the allegations as baseless, said that the New York AG’s office is yet to find any evidence against Exxon.

EPC giant, TechnipFMC has sued Houston-based McDermott International and its newly appointed CEO, Samik Mukherjee for trade secret theft. TechnipFMC has alleged that Mukherjee downloaded thousands of sensitive and confidential documents right before he left his job at TechnipFMC to accept an offer at McDermott. The court has passed a temporary restraining order necessitating McDermott and Mukherjee to return any TechnipFMC documents and their use.

Anil Ambani-lead Reliance Naval has filed a lawsuit against E&P major, ONGC for wrongfully terminating a deal and invoking bank guarantee. ONGC refused to take the delivery of an eighth vessel under a supply deal of a dozen vessels. Reliance Naval has asked ONGC for a reimbursement of more than $6.6 million, and another $15.46 million as payment for the support vessel.

Greenpeace activists boarded a rig, ‘West Hercules’, which was due to sail to the Arctic to drill prospects for the oil firm Statoil. The drilling unit is being prepared at the Skipavik yard on the west coast of Norway. Along with other environmental groups, Greenpeace has been challenging the verdict of the Norwegian government for continued drilling in the Arctic which violates the citizens’ right to a clean environment.

In the year 2014, India had used a two year old legislation to raise a Rs.10, 247 crore retrospective tax demand on a decade old Cairn’s unit in the country. The British firm had initiated an international arbitration challenging the tax demand and the final hearing will begin in August, 2018 in The Hague.