Nigerian Company Dragged To Court

The High Court in Accra has granted US-based Lushann International Energy and its subsidiaries, Lushann-Eternit Ghana and Lushan- Eternit Nigeria, leave to issue a writ of summons to be served out of its jurisdiction against Ocean and Oil limited, a Nigerian company that owns the vessel in which nearly 74,000 barrels of crude oil that went missing were stored.

Lushann-Eternit took the matter to court after Ocean and Oil confirmed that it took the oil worth about $2 million away for non-payment of freight charges.

In an application for leave to issue the writ, the plaintiffs said the exercise of an owners? lien by Ocean and Oil under the Time Charter Party Agreement was unlawful and amounts to a dishonest appropriation of the 71,977.31 barrels of crude oil, the property of the Sovereign State of Ghana.

They also want a declaration by Ocean and Oil that the bolting away of the crude oil without authorization and approval from the government of Ghana is unlawful.

Lushann-Eternit also wants the court to compel the defendants to return the crude oil and also to pay in full attendant losses incurred by the government of Ghana as a result of the illegal act by Ocean and Oil.

In the alternative, the plaintiffs want an order of injunction restraining the Defendants either by themselves, their agents, assigns or otherwise from removing the assets and the payment of dividends of the Defendants within the jurisdiction. They are also seeking damages for breach of contract.