Scottish oil firm Cairn Energy said today that Covid-19 should not significantly delay the long-awaited outcome of its £1.1 billion ($1.4bn) arbitration claim against India.
Cairn said in October 2019 that the Arbitral Tribunal expected to be in a position to issue the award in summer 2020.
London-listed Cairn said today that while the pandemic had created some “difficulties”, the tribunal hoped to remain “reasonably within the lead time it had anticipated”.
It is not yet able to commit to a specific date for its ruling, but expects to “release the award after the end of the summer.”
Cairn insisted it continued to have a “high level of confidence in the arbitration”.
The firm is seeking compensation under the UK-India Bilateral Investment Treaty. The final hearings concluded in The Hague in August 2018 and Cairn initially expected an award to be made “in the near term”.
But Cairn said in March 2019 that the timetable for issuing the award would be “more protracted” than originally anticipated.
The tribunal had previously advised that a “number of procedural matters” had arisen and that it was unable to “provide specific guidance on timing”.
The long-running tax row centres on restructuring undertaken by Cairn ahead of the flotation of its Indian subsidiary in 2007.
Cairn said India was trying to retrospectively apply tax legislation introduced in 2012 to transactions made by the firm six years earlier.