Client Requirement: The client is the operator of the main port in Peru. As a port operator, our Client needs to deal with several environmental matters and all of them are trusted on our expertise. This year, two of these matters were especially vital to their operations:
The management of a very diversified kind of residuals such as dangerous, industrial, or chemicals, each one with specific regulations on a business-by-business basis. It is not the same to manage residuals of minerals than residuals from chemicals. Due to certain holes in the Peruvian regulations and the existence of different interpretations as a consequence of the lack of jurisprudence, the right treatment of residuals, turns into a critical matter for the port operations and our Client required us to provide certainty within regulations that are still under construction. It is difficult to allocate a monetary value but any fail on a correct management could impact the prestige of the Company and cause substantive indemnification amounts (e.g., From the Press we learned about the damage caused by Repsol with a spill of hydrocarbons not well controlled. According to the Press, such damage could eventually imply more than USD 1 billion impact)
The management of “Past Environmental Damages”. The Peruvian State granted to our Client the right to operate the port under a “concession” scheme. For this purpose, the Peruvian State delivered to our Client the original infrastructure of the port with certain Past Enviromental Damages which remedy remained in charge of the Peruvian State. In time, dealing with the Peruvian State in order to honour its commitment resulted in a very challenging task due to the nature (environmental responsibility) of these obligations. Our Client requested to undoubtedly classify each of the damage that need to be repaired in order to avoid any challenge by the Peruvian State. We have not an amount of the impact but it would not surprise that it would be around USD 100 million.
Our participation: Handling in a correct way environmental matters is not only a legal consideration but also a Company’s responsibility from many perspectives. The two specific tasks highlighted before were of the utmost importance to the operations of the Client. We designed a strategic comparison among different industries to better profit experiences among the different ways to regulate disposal of residuals. This way we were able to provide a more comprehensive and accurate advice in matters that represented holes in the regulations. On the other hand, we collaborated with the structuration of a protocol to follow in cases of Past Environmental Damages in order to facilitate the allocation of responsibility. With this structure and protocol, the rules to allocate responsibility on the Peruvian State are now crystal clear and will serve as good basis for our Client’s claims.
Client benefit: Our collaboration provides Client certainty on matters that are not covered correctly by the regulations (holes in the regulations). This certainty derives on the comparison work we have strategically performed and, on our skills managing similar jurisprudential cases. Also, Client was benefited with our negotiating capacity to build protocol structures with great ideas that fitted both parties’ interests.
