Wellington-based Todd Energy says its international oil company partners, including oil giant Shell, tried to beat the New Zealand company into the ground in a "David and Goliath" struggle over a Taranaki gasfield.Todd Energy is claiming damages
Wellington-based Todd Energy says its international oil company partners, including oil giant Shell, tried to beat the New Zealand company into the ground in a "David and Goliath" struggle over a Taranaki gasfield.
Todd Energy is claiming damages of $274 million from its international partners in the Pohokura gasfield, alleging that from 2006 and each year since then, Shell and Austrian company OMV breached the Commerce and Crown Minerals Acts by constraining production of the gasfield to 70 petajoules of gas when it could produce at least 85 petajoules.
All the allegations have been denied by Shell and OMV.
Todd Energy managing director Richard Tweedie, giving evidence yesterday in the High Court at Wellington, said he had no doubt Shell and OMV's agreement to limit production from Pohokura was designed to influence the downstream gas market, The Dominion Post reported today.
Shell wanted to "prioritise" its gas from the Maui field over Pohokura, he said.
But Todd had always seen significant value in Pohokura and it had never had a strategy to delay its development.
Shell's behaviour on many fronts was "obsessive, self-serving in an ongoing attempt to beat Todd into the ground", Mr Tweedie said.
However, Shell's lawyer Les Taylor said that as a 6.25 percent shareholder in the Maui field, Todd would have information on "dramatically increased" Maui reserves in late 2005.
Todd would have tried to get as much Pohokura gas away before the information about increased Maui reserves became public, therefore getting better prices for the Pohokura gas, Mr Taylor said.
But Mr Tweedie said when the market did know about the greater reserves, Todd was still able to sell 6PJ of gas to Fonterra at a higher price than Maui gas.
