Sunil Inder Choitram

Sunil Inder Choitram, most-widely known as Inder Choitram, is in-house counsel to Crescent Petroleum. Headquartered in the United Arab Emirates, Crescent is the oldest, privately-owned oil and gas company in the Middle East.  A wholly owned subsidiary of the Crescent Group, it has more than 40 years’ experience as an international operator in numerous countries. In addition, the group has more than 25 diversified companies across 9 industry areas. Most recently, following years of litigation, Crescent (and others) successfully settled a long-running dispute with the Government of Kurdistan which saw figures of up to US$26.5 billion being claimed.

Prior to joining Crescent, he spent more than 10 years advising lenders and sponsors around the world on complex project finance transactions at Clifford Chance LLP, one of the largest lawfirms in the world. Originally trained and based in London, he went on to join the Frankfurt and Abu Dhabi offices focusing on project and corporate finance and non-contentious corporate/commercial matters. Over the course of 2008/2009, he forged alliances with AZB, the leading lawfirm in India, and advised Reliance Industries on oil and gas matters and more than a billion dollars of corporate joint ventures. In 2010 he was in-house counsel to Al Waha Capital, a boutique investment firm in Abu Dhabi. After several years in Abu Dhabi, he left private practice in 2014 to join Crescent.

Given the group’s diversified holdings, Inder has a very wide practice including arbitration, corporate/commercial matters, finance, funds and investments across various industrial sectors.

Some professional highlights include advising:

• Pearl Petroleum in relation to its $26.5 Billion dispute with the Government of Kurdistan, Iraq.
• Crescent Petroleum in relation to its dispute with the Government of Iran.
• Crescent Petroleum in relation to settling its dispute with RWE Supply and Trading.
• The financiers to a $20 Billion integrated acrylates complex located in Jubail, Saudi Arabia.
• Mubadala Oil and Gas in relation to a solvent restructuring of its asset portfolio.
• Shell Gas (LPG) Holdings B.V. on the divestment of a number of its liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) businesses in Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Germany, Romania, Spain and Switzerland.
• Reliance Industries Limited on various oil and gas project financing matters and gas pricing disputes from Krishna-Godavari Basin.
• Lenders on the financing for the € 7 billion Nordstream gas project.
• Qatargas in relation to the sale of part of its LNG business.
• Serbian state gas company (NIS) in relation to its Angolan, offshore oil and gas holdings.
• NIS and Gazprombank in relation to oil and gas joint ventures in Serbia.

Co-drafting the suite of documents for microfinance documents that are now the industry standard and negotiating OPIC guarantees for the initial Citibank Microfinance Program across 46 jurisdictions.