Month: June 2022

Latifat is the Company Secretary/Legal Adviser of the National Engineering and Technical Company Limited (NETCO), a wholly owned subsidiary of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPC). She heads the Legal Department providing support to key projects in Nigeria’s oil and gas engineering sector.

 

The bulk of her 20-year career has been spent in NNPC, where prior to NETCO, she spent 15 years providing upstream and midstream oil & gas legal advisory services within the National Petroleum Investment Management Services (NAPIMS), the upstream arm of NNPC overseeing the Federal Government of Nigeria’s investments in the oil industry’s Joint Ventures, Production Sharing Contracts and Service Contracts. During this period, she was regularly involved in the negotiation and management of contracts devolving from the Joint Ventures and the Production Sharing Contracts including gas sales, unitisations, and marginal fields. She provided direct legal support on some of Nigeria’s notable upstream projects including the Erha North Project, Bonga North West Extension Project and the Bonga South West Aparo Project. She has also provided support to Nigeria’s Ministry of Petroleum Resources, working on ad-hoc tasks which included the Unitisation Guidelines for Nigeria’s oil and gas industry as well as the Petroleum Industry Act. She is a contributing author to two of Globe Law and Business, UK’s topical books on the global oil and gas industry. “Upstream Law and Regulation: A Global Guide, Second Edition” and “African Upstream Oil and Gas, A Practical Guide to the Law and Regulation”.

 

Prior to joining NNPC, Latifat worked as a barrister and solicitor with two top law firms and as in-house counsel in a leading bank in Nigeria. She is a Centre for Effective Dispute Resolution (CEDR) UK Accredited Mediator.

 

Latifat has been a member of AIEN since 2010 and at different times, served as a Mentor on the AIEN Young Negotiators (YN) Mentoring Program. She has served as the Alternate Regional Director for the Africa Chapter of AIEN since June 2020 and was this year, voted in as an AIEN Board Director. She has organised and moderated AIEN webinars and is currently working as part of the Awards Committee for the 2022 Awards at the upcoming AIEN International Energy Summit (IES) in London. She is also a member of the AIEN Membership Committee.

 

When she isn’t thinking anything “law”, she loves to spend time with her husband and children in her home in Lagos, Nigeria.

Heike Trischmann earned a BSc/MSc in Biology from the University of Leipzig, Germany, and a PhD in Biotechnology/Bioengineering from the Academy of Sciences, Berlin, Germany. She became a legal practitioner in England and Wales in 2001.

 

Heike is now a partner in the corporate group of Watson Farley & Williams, London. She works in the firm’s international Energy Group and specialises in all aspects of oil and gas law, with a strong focus on LNG, and the LNG to power sector in particular.

 

Heike has acted for governments, national oil companies as well as junior and major oil and gas companies, banks, energy trading companies, regulators and individual investors in more than 40 countries worldwide on a broad range of international and domestic corporate, commercial, regulatory and projects work in the upstream, midstream and downstream sectors, including production sharing agreements, concessions and licence arrangements, M&A and farm-ins, joint operating agreements, gas and LNG supply/trading, transportation, storage and facility access agreements and the underlying regulatory regimes in the relevant jurisdictions as part of investments in the wider industry. Heike is recommended for her expertise by leading legal directories Legal 500 UK and Who’s Who Legal (Energy) [for her “an excellent energy and natural resources lawyer,” and “a very knowledgeable and through lawyer”, who stands out for her “high-quality advice”. She is commended for her “vast knowledge about the LNG industry”].

 

Heike became a member of the Association of International Energy Negotiators (AIEN) in 2005 (formerly AIPN) where she was recently appointed as chair of the regional sub-committee on course & training. Over the years, has served on a number of Model Contract Drafting Committees, including the Data Exchange Agreement, 2012 JOA, FOA and most prominently the Drilling Contract. Heike also presented together with Sam Dunkley at the 2012 AIPN NOC Conference in London on the terms of the Model GSA.