NAMIBIA Trends and Developments Contributed by: Tshuka Luvindao and Azaria Wallace, Dr. Weder, Kruger & Haikali Inc.
that Namibia needs specialised forum capacity is right. What changed my mind is what the Bill actually does. The Petroleum (Exploration and Production) Amend - ment Bill [B.12 – 2025], introduced by the Minister of Industries, Mines and Energy on 4 February 2026 and now at Committee Stage, is not a dispute resolution reform. It primarily restructures institutional author - ity. It moves upstream regulatory authority from the Ministry to the Office of the President, sets up an Upstream Petroleum Unit, and replaces “Minister” with “President” across the operative provisions. The Director-General and Deputy Director-General will be appointed and removable by the President. A residual clause in the proposed Section 3A(3)(j) authorises the Unit to perform “any other function as required by law or the President”. That clause has rightly attracted commentary from the profession. Limited attention has been paid to examining what these changes mean for dispute resolution. It deserves closer scrutiny. Relocating regulatory decision-making to the Presidency (which given our history we support) does not remove it from Article 18 review; a presiden - tial decision in execution of a statute remains admin - istrative action. But the political weight of suing the Office of the President is not the same as the political weight of suing a minister. Licence holders will likely think twice before instituting proceedings. This may have practical implications for administrative-law liti - gation as Mode Three becomes harder to use. The Bill says nothing about consolidation, the qualifications of Ancillary Rights Commissioners, or Namibia’s posture toward the New York Convention. Adding a separate Petroleum Tribunal to this picture, without addressing those silences, creates a fourth silo rather than provid - ing a meaningful solution. A proposed integrated architecture The reform Namibia needs is not a new tribunal. It is a statutory dispute architecture, compulsory in every petroleum agreement and every licence, that tells the parties in advance how related disputes will be sequenced, where they will be heard, and on what enforcement footing. The individual elements are interdependent and only function effectively when implemented together.
The process begins with a mandatory pre-arbitral evaluation, modelled in regulation 3 of GN 93 of 2003. The evaluation panel should comprise three experts: one nominated by each party and a third appointed by mutual agreement or, failing agreement, by the Law Society. The process could within a 60-day period and culminate in a non-binding recommendation. Struc - tured early evaluation will not resolve every dispute, but it can clarify the issues, distinguish genuine disa - greements from tactical posturing, and reduce the parties’ appetite for the cascade to follow. Disputes that survive evaluation should proceed to consolidated arbitration seated in Windhoek, under bespoke rules that borrow the Cambodia Power con - solidation grounds, the LCIA-style multi-party joinder provisions, and the Dutco safeguard of party equality in tribunal constitution. The carve-out must be explicit: purely regulatory decisions issue, renewal, cancella - tion, and field designation remain reviewable under Article 18 and cannot be displaced into private arbitra - tion. Some choices the State makes affect more than the contracting parties. Those choices should remain subject to public-law oversight. Enforcement comes next and is the hardest piece. Namibia should accede to the New York Convention. That is the cleanest fix and should be a national prior - ity. Until accession, the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Arbitral Awards Act 40 of 1977 should be amended to align with Article V of the Convention and to add petroleum-specific provisions. Arbitral awards in petroleum disputes should be enforceable as orders of the High Court on registration, subject only to the narrow grounds for setting aside in Section 33 of the Arbitration Act 42 of 1965. Finally, the Ancillary Rights Commission should do the work a Petroleum Tribunal would have done. Part IX of PEPA should be amended to expand the Commis - sion’s jurisdiction over all operational disputes – land access, compensation, abandonment liability under Part XA, and decommissioning trust fund disputes under Section 68B. Its appointment architecture under Section 55, its procedural footing under the Commis - sions Act 8 of 1947, and its appeal route to the High Court under Section 61 already provide the institu - tional bones. Consideration should also be given to
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