Fraud, unfairness and unresolved issues

A range of procedural challenges to an award under s68 of the Arbitration Act 1996 were made inDouble K Oil Products 1996 Ltd v Neste Oil Oyj [2010] 1 Lloyd’s Rep 141. The allegations ranged from suppression of evidence to reliance on privileged documents. All were ultimately dismissed by Blair J.

Neste: the facts

Double K Oil Products 1996 Ltd (‘DK’) was an Israeli oil trading company whose business concerned the supply of Vetlosjan Gas Condensate (‘VGC’), a by-product of natural gas produced by Gazprom in Russia. By a contract dated 19 October 2000, DK agreed to purchase from a company in the Gazprom group the entire amount of VGC available for export in the years 2003 to 2010. On 14 December 2004 Neste Oil Oyj (‘Neste’), a state-owned Finnish oil company, agreed to buy the VGC from DK for a period subsequently extended up to the end of 2007. The agreement was governed by English law and provided for arbitration under the LCIA Rules.