A shipowning division of Nigeria LNG is nearing an agreement to end a long-running dispute over a fuel delivery brokered by collapsed OW Bunker.
A lawyer for ING, which has been chasing repayment of fuel bills owed to the Danish marine fuels giant as its main secured lender, has told a US federal judge that the litigants in a lawsuit in New York have reached an "agreement in principal" to end the dispute.
They are "in the process of finalising the terms of their agreement", wrote Seward & Kissel partner Bruce Paulsen, whose New York law firm has been representing ING in many of its US disputes related to OW Bunker.
Details of the settlement were not disclosed. It is expected to be finalised this month.
The dispute focused on fuel that was delivered to what was then Nigeria LNG's 133,000-cbm LNG Finima (built 1984) just before Denmark's OW Bunker collapsed into a messy litigation. The LNG carrier has since been renamed Atlantic Energy and is controlled by South Korea's Sinokor Merchant Marine.
Bonny Gas Transport, a shipping arm of the Nigerian LNG exporter, filed a US lawsuit in December 2014 to prevent the company from having to pay for competing demands for payment of the same $2.46m invoice.
Triple jeopardy
Bonny had ordered the fuel from OW Bunker Germany, which arranged for US-based NuStar Energy to deliver the bunkers at the Caribbean island of St Eustatius.
In addition to facing claims for ING, which had provided OW with a $700m loan secured by the fuel supplier's receivables, the Nigerian company sought to avoid the prospect of claims from the German OW arm and the physical supplier.
The case is before US District Judge Valerie Caproni, who has overseen several of the OW bunker cases that landed in the Southern District of New York federal court.
Although OW fell into liquidation six years ago, legal sources have told TradeWinds that there are about a dozen cases still pending in US federal courts.
One source said that it could be another year before the remaining cases will be concluded.
