East Jakarta District Court conducts hearing of Weatherford - Superior case
Friday, May 13 2011 - 07:05 AM WIB
Weatherford Indonesia is a subsidiary of Weatherford International Inc, a multinational oilfield service company based in Houston, Texas, USA. In Indonesia, through Weatherford Indonesia as well as Wira Insani, Weatherford group provides oilfield products and services across the drilling, evaluation, completion and intervention areas with clients of multinational oil and gas companies, and operational areas spreading throughout the country.
Superior is the owner of the land in Cawang that Weatherford rented for its facility to store its heavy equipments.
The legal battle started when Weatherford got caught in a dispute with PT Saga Trade Murni (Saga Trade) in October 2005 which finally reached the Supreme Court due to appeals from both sides. Eventually, both parties reached a Settlement Agreement on July 20, 2010. During the time of dispute, in 2006 Saga Trade had imposed an attachment against the land occupied by Wira Insani?s facility, which is owned by Superior. As a result, Superior, as owner of the land felt that they had suffered a loss from this attachment and filed a lawsuit against the Defendants (Weatherford and Wira Insani) and Co-Defendant (Saga Trade).
Rully Nasrullah, spokesperson of Weatherford Indonesia stated, ?Weatherford Indonesia expects a fair trial process. We believe that Superior's claim has no legal basis and the amount it claims is beyond comprehension. We believe that all obligations under the Lease Agreement have been fully met, including the payment of increase lease fee proposed by Superior throughout 2000 - 2010. Therefore, Superior has not suffered any loss whatsoever.?
Superior demanded a compensation totaling of around US$ 60,000,000 and put security attachment over some equipment in Wira Insani?s facility in Cawang. The land lease agreement between Wira Insani and Superior commenced from June 2000 and expired on December 31, 2010. At present, Wira Insani has left Cawang facility as of December 31, 2010, but some of their equipment is still retained by the Court due to the pending decision regarding the status of the case. Wira Insani had requested permission to remove their seized equipment to their new facility but there is still no response from the Judge. The case is currently ongoing in the District Court of Jakarta but no real examination has been made by the Judge following some delays of the hearing. (ends)