Curtis Hosts Government Masterclass on Strategic Foundations for Upstream Success in London

On May 15, 2026, Curtis hosted Strategic Foundations for Upstream Success: A Government Masterclass at the firm’s London office. The invitation-only seminar, co-hosted with the New Producers Group, brought together senior government and national oil company representatives from seven African jurisdictions — The Gambia, Tanzania, Somalia, Kenya, Uganda, Ghana, and Liberia — for a focused half-day of discussion on the legal, fiscal, and commercial architecture that underpins a successful upstream petroleum sector. The seminar was deliberately timed to follow the Africa Energies Summit, allowing delegations already in London to participate.

The conference, led by Curtis Partner Juan Carlos Boue, was designed for pre-production and early-stage producer countries with active exploration programmes. It addressed the decisions that determine whether a nascent petroleum sector attracts serious investment and delivers durable fiscal returns — decisions that, once taken, are difficult and expensive to reverse.

Key Issues Addressed

The seminar comprised three sessions. The first, Competitive Bidding Rounds for Petroleum Acreage, moved from first principles through the composition and ethos of petroleum fiscal regimes to the practicalities of competitive bidding and the particular challenges of attracting investment to virgin acreage. The second, Production Sharing Agreements, examined how cost recovery provisions in early-generation PSAs have tended to favour contractors, contrasted the approaches taken in Angola and Libya, and set out recommendations for governments seeking to redress that imbalance without compromising commercial credibility. The third session, delivered by Graeme Bagley of Westwood Energy and Huw Charles of The Risk Advisory Group, examined geological prospectivity, acreage attractiveness, and above-ground risks, including the differing strategic objectives and risk appetites of independents and majors and how each evaluates country risk.

Q&A and open discussion across the three sessions were moderated by Valerie Marcel of the New Producers Group, with Armando Zamora and Laura Robinson of the New Producers Group acting as respondents. The exchange across the room was substantive: delegates raised the practical pressures of designing licensing processes in real time, against real fiscal expectations, and tested the speakers on the trade-offs that arise when theoretical best practice meets political and commercial reality.

Curtis’ Capabilities in Energy, Project Development, and Government Advisory

Curtis’ Energy (Oil & Gas) practice brings decades of experience advising governments, national oil companies, and state entities on the design and implementation of petroleum legal and fiscal regimes, licensing rounds, and production sharing agreements. The team has advised sovereign clients across Africa, the Middle East, Latin America, and Central Asia on the full lifecycle of upstream regulation — from the drafting of petroleum laws and model contracts, to the structuring and running of bid rounds, to the negotiation of host government instruments with international oil companies.

These capabilities complement Curtis’ Infrastructure Development and Corporate practices, which have advised governments and project sponsors on some of the most complex petroleum, LNG, gas infrastructure, and pipeline transactions in emerging markets, as well as on the cross-border financings that underpin them. The firm’s London office serves as a hub for sovereign and government advisory work across Africa and the Middle East, with direct connectivity to Curtis’ offices in Washington, D.C., New York, Dubai, Abu Dhabi, and Muscat.

For governments and national oil companies designing or refining the foundations of their upstream sectors, Curtis offers the combination of regulatory, fiscal, and transactional experience required to translate policy ambition into a credible and investable framework.

About the New Producers Group

The New Producers Group is a network of over 1,000 government officials from 22 emerging producer countries navigating the legal, fiscal, and institutional challenges of establishing a petroleum sector.