In January 2010, two Irish businessmen secured a 20-year contract to turn Nigeria’s vast gas reserves into power. But the government never built a promised pipeline to feed gas to the processing plant, and their British Virgin Islands-registered company, Process and Industrial Developments, or P&ID, never so much as put spade to soil on its planned site in a riverine corner of southeast Nigeria.

P&ID, founded by Michael Quinn and Brendan Cahill, says it hoped to provide gas to generate power for millions in one of the least electrified countries in the world. Instead, a little over two years later, the company began an arbitration action against Nigeria that accused the west African state of a breach of contract.

In 2017, a panel of three arbitrators voted 2-1 to award P&ID the full sum of its claim for future profits tied to the original project: a stunning $6.6 billion. With interest, the award has ballooned to almost $10 billion, or a quarter of the foreign reserves of Africa’s largest economy.

After missing multiple deadlines to appeal – and only after P&ID applied to the British commercial court, a branch of the high court, for enforcement – Nigeria challenged the award. On Monday its lawyers will ask a high court judge in London to allow them to present what they say is newly discovered evidence that both the contract and Nigeria’s arbitration defence – under a previous administration – were, as President Muhammadu Buhari said in a speech to the UN last year, “a sham” that was “attempting to cheat Nigeria out of billions of dollars”.

P&ID denies any wrongdoing, and says that Nigeria has invented the accusations to avoid paying what it owes and to delay the seizure of state assets.

“The government is firmly committed to overturning the injustice of the award – no matter how long it takes,” attorney-general Abubakar Malami told the Financial Times. “We will pursue all available legal avenues in our fight to secure justice for the people of Nigeria.”

https://www.irishtimes.com/business/energy-and-resources/the-6bn-judgment-pitting-nigeria-against-irish-businessmen-1.4303141