Mette Duffy
Mette’s practice incorporates both transactional and dispute resolution work across the energy, offshore and shipping industries.
Mette’s transactional practice focuses on tenders, contracts and other project documentation for high-value and complex projects in the oil and gas, shipbuilding, offshore construction, drilling, floating production (particularly FPSO and FLNG) and renewables sectors. She advises on ship/offshore asset sale and purchase transactions, charterparties and wider projects involving the conversion, repair, refit and recycling of ships and other offshore assets (including FPSO, FLNG, LNG and drilling rigs). Mette’s transactional practice is informed by her extensive dispute resolution experience (and resulting knowledge of where problems typically arise and how these best can be addressed).
As a dispute resolution practitioner, Mette is focused on providing pragmatic advice and helping clients to achieve the best commercial solutions. Where disputes could not be avoided or resolved at an early stage, she has handled heavyweight and technically/legally complex international proceedings, most recently in the offshore construction and floating production sectors. Her experience includes arbitrations under major rules (LCIA/ICC/LMAA/UNCITRAL) and litigation in the English High Court (Commercial Court/TCC) as well as alternative dispute resolution.
Prior to joining Haynes Boone, Mette was a Managing Associate in the Energy & Infrastructure Group of another large international law firm.
Mette is a co-author of the chapter on shipbuilding contracts governed by the law of England and Wales in Getting The Deal Through – Shipbuilding 2022: England and Wales.
Transactional
- Acting for an FPSO owner/operator on a project with a major European contractor to design, engineer, construct, charter, operate and maintain an FPSO offshore Brazil. Providing assistance with drafting, reviewing and negotiating FPSO charter and O & M agreements.
- Acting for an FPSO owner/operator on the sale and purchase of an FPSO (including dovetailing sale and purchase transaction with cross-jurisdictional requirements of wider project for field sale and purchase offshore Brazil and continued field operations of the FPSO).
- Acting for an FLNG owner/operator in respect of drafting and negotiating an EPCIC contract for the conversion of an LNG Carrier to an FLNG (including hull/ topside integration arrangement).
- Advising a European subsea cable installation contractor on contractual arrangements for a wind farm project.
- Acting for a European owner in relation to the construction of a specialised research vessel (including advising on and drafting the tender process shipbuilding contract).
- Acting for an offshore drilling unit owner/operator in relation to the arrangements for the disposal of a semi-submersible drilling unit.
- Assisting various clients (as relevant, owners/shipyards and buyers/sellers) in the preparation and negotiation of shipbuilding, ship repair and ship sale and purchase contracts.
Dispute Resolution
- Representing a client in the Far East on a technically complex semi-FPS EPCIC dispute concerning variations, defects and delay with claims and counterclaims totalling c. USD 1 billion.
- Acting for a JV in highly technical English High Court proceedings (Commercial Court) concerning the performance of a drilling rig (alleged BOP, top drive and tripping speed defects and problems caused by overloading one of the rig’s legs) and recoverability of spread costs.
- Acting for major Middle Eastern contractor in a London LCIA arbitration with claims and counterclaims totalling c. USD 500 million. The dispute concerned termination of a state of the art heavy lift and pipe lay vessel contract for alleged design breaches/delay.
- Representing a European buyer regarding the cancellation of two platform supply vessel shipbuilding contracts and recovery under associated refund guarantees. This matter involved successful anti-suit injunctions and enforcement proceedings.
- Acting for FPSO owner/operator in ICC arbitration in Australia concerning performance issues related to well product and O & M (operations and maintenance) issues.
- Acting for FPSO owner/operator in proceedings in Australia (Supreme Court of New South Wales) against insurers arising from subsea damage to the FPSO’s umbilical.
- Acting for European contractor in a London LCIA arbitration concerning the foundation design of a meteorological mast.
- "Conversion Contracts - Commercial Benefits but not Without Challenges," co-author, Haynes Boone brochure, January 5, 2023.
Education
Legal Practice Course, BPP Law School, 2006
Postgraduate Degree, Law, BPP Law School, 2005
B.A., Modern Languages, Oxford University, 2003
Languages
Norwegian
German
Admissions
England and Wales
We are pleased to bring you our Shipping and Energy Newsletter Digest for 2023. Our annual digest provides you with a roundup of our quarterly shipping and energy newsletters from 2023. It includes articles, podcasts and videos on topics of interest in the shipping, offshore energy and renewable energy sectors, and on autonomous vessels, dispute resolution and artificial intelligence. We are del [...]
