Liquefied Natural Gas Editing and Proofreading Services

A cargo arrives at a terminal and the gas is slightly wrong. Not dangerous, not unusable, but outside the range the receiving terminal's specification permits — a heating value two per cent high, or a nitrogen content that the network downstream will not accept. Sixty million dollars of hydrocarbon is now sitting in a ship at a berth, and what happens next was decided years ago by whoever drafted the quality clause.

We edit what LNG producers, traders and terminal operators produce — sale and purchase agreement quality specifications, off-specification cargo procedures, terminal use agreements and access rules, cargo documentation and quantity measurement procedures, ship-shore compatibility documentation, nomination and scheduling procedures, take-or-pay and flexibility provisions, boil-off and heel allowances, safety and emergency documentation for terminals and vessels, custody transfer and measurement dispute procedures, and commercial correspondence around delivered cargoes. Our editors work on the clauses that operate when a cargo is not quite right.

The quality specification and its off-spec procedure is where LNG contracts are either operable or litigious, and the failure is a specification with no consequence attached. A table of ranges tells both parties what is expected and nothing about what happens when it is not achieved. We work through these so each parameter has its range, its measurement method and the point at which it is determined, since a value measured at loading and a value measured at discharge are different numbers and only one of them governs; so the off-spec regime distinguishes between what the buyer must accept, may accept with a price adjustment, and may reject, because collapsing these into a right to reject makes every marginal cargo a negotiation; so any price adjustment is given as a formula rather than as a principle; so the buyer's obligation to use reasonable efforts to accept is defined by reference to what their terminal and network actually permit rather than to reasonableness; so the notification sequence and its timing is written as a clock — who tells whom, within how many hours, and what happens if nobody does — as the vessel is on demurrage throughout; and so the dispute route for measurement disagreements is separate and fast. Contracts written this way settle a marginal cargo in a day rather than a quarter.

Everything you send is treated in confidence, including contracts, cargo data and commercial terms. We are editors rather than commercial, technical or legal advisers, and we offer no view on specifications, cargo acceptance or contractual entitlement. What we can do is make the clause work at the berth rather than in arbitration.