The negative pricing for West Texas Intermediate oil (“WTI”) on Monday has raised alarm bells for many of our clients in the exploration and production and midstream industries. This article will clarify the issues for these companies and explain the forces at work that have created this situation. The root cause of the current dilemma arises from the dramatic drop in demand starting with the onset of the COVID-19 virus on the United States ...
On 8 March 2020, Saudi Arabia initiated a price war with Russia which has caused a major fall in the price of oil. This is disastrous for an industry that had only just recently recovered from the 2014 crash and companies are now looking at how to best get through another difficult downturn ...
The Planning and Development (Amendment) (No. 3) Bill 2021 is being expedited through the legislative process. It will provide for extensions to a number of time limits, including for the passing of development plans. Importantly however it will also allow for extensions, or additional extensions, to existing planning permissions to allow projects be completed. Planning permissions have a fixed duration, usually five years ...
Does your organization’s insurance program provide any protection from the economic disruption caused by the novel coronavirus pandemic? What steps should you take to assess and protect that insurance coverage? The Bradley Policyholder Insurance Coverage team has provided an informative webinar addressing insurance coverage and claims adjustment for event cancellation, business interruption, and third-party claims stemming from the pandemic ...
Do I have a COVID-19 business interruption claim? Particularly if you operate in the leisure, retail or hospitality sectors, your business has likely suffered significant financial losses from the disruption caused by COVID-19. In trying to alleviate the impact of those losses, you might have identified that your business’s insurance policy offered cover for ‘business interruption’ (or ‘BI’) ...
On November 27, 2020, the Federal Official Gazette published Resolution No. 50, by means of which the National Mining Agency (“ANM”) amends Resolution No. 46/2020, which suspended the deadlines of certain procedural and material acts and the extension of mining titles. According to the new wording, the period of certain procedural and material acts as well as the tacit approval by the Agency is suspended from March 20, 2020 to December 31, 2020 ...
On January 22, 2021, the Federal Official Gazette published Resolution No. 55, by means of which the National Mining Agency (“ANM”) amends Resolutions No. 28/2020 and 46/2020, which deal with the suspension of deadlines of certain procedural and material acts under its competence, and the extension of the terms of mineral titles, due to the current COVID-19 pandemic ...
The National Mining Agency (“ANM”) amends Resolutions No. 28/2020 and 46/2020 due to the current COVID-19 pandemic and revokes Resolution No. 55/2021. On June 30, 2021, the Federal Official Gazette published Resolution No. 76, by means of which the National Mining Agency (“ANM”) amends Resolutions No ...
The COVID-19 pandemic has had a disproportionate impact on skilled nursing and assisted living facilities. While the following CMS recommendations and guidelines identify nursing homes as the target recipients, they are applicable to all facilities that receive Medicare and Medicaid funds, and are therefore subject to CMS's oversight ...
November 15, 2022 By: Gwenneth O’Hara, Lillian Rafii, and Jonathan Kendrick On November 10, 2022, the CPUC issued its long-awaited and reworked net energy metering (NEM) “3.0” proposed decision on a successor tariff. The origin of California’s NEM tariff was to incentivize Californians to install on-site renewable energy resources such as rooftop solar to serve part or all of their own electrical requirements ...
Temporary flexibility of the terms of adjustment of guarantees and the term to carry out audits to the Reliability Charge was defined. The Energy and Gas Regulation Commission, seeking to guarantee the proper provision of electric power service, decrees that the value of the guarantee in Article 31 of CREG Resolution 061 of 2007 will not be adjusted in the scenario presented in paragraph 2, numeral 3: 3 ...
On 1 April 2014 amendments to the Contributions Act increasing the general rate for health insurance contributions from 13% to 15% came into force. The new contribution rate will be applied to salaries beginning in April 2014. Receipts related to previous periods will be grandfathered in at the previous applicable rate. Unused vacation for 2013 will be calculated at the 13% contribution rate and the new rate will apply to unused vacation in 2014 ...
The Green and Sustainable Finance Cross-Agency Steering Group co-chaired by the HKMA and the SFC (Steering Group) announced on 15 July 2021 the next steps to advance its strategy to bolster Hong Kong’s position as a leader in green and sustainable finance and help transition the financial ecosystem towards carbon neutrality ...
The Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act, commonly referred to as CERCLA or Superfund, does not contain any provision for a private cause of action for personal injury or property damage relating to the release of hazardous substances ...
Argentina has great geological potential and a very attractive regulatory framework that provides mining companies with important incentives, such as a 30-year fiscal stability period and several tax exemptions. However, in 2010, the Argentine mining industry faced certain issues prompted by regulatory trends in order to address social, environmental, and economic concerns towards mining ...
Water Law On August 20, 2021, the Deputy Director of the Division of Water Rights (Deputy Director) of the State Water Resources Control Board (State Water Board) issued water curtailment orders for the remainder of August and for all of September to approximately 4,500 water right holders in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta watershed (Delta Watershed). These curtailment orders affect post-1914, pre-1914, and riparian rights, though in different ways, as described further below ...
Target, Home Depot, Sony, Anthem. All of these companies have been victims of very public cybersecurity breaches. Given what we know about those breaches, how can any other company know that it is safe from a cyber attack? No firewall appears to be unbreachable and no security system impenetrable. No company is big or small or traditional enough to avoid such exposure, as long as the business receives or transmits data or uses computer networks ...
The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (“HIPAA”) contains minimum security standards that Covered Entities and Business Associates must employ to safeguard protected health information (“PHI”). As part of HIPAA’s security standards, Business Associates are obligated to report all security incidents to the Covered Entity ...
A year ago, President Obama issued Executive Order 13636, or "Improving Critical Infrastructure Cybersecurity." The order concerned "critical infrastructure," which it defined as "systems and assets, whether physical or virtual, so vital to the United States that the incapacity or destruction of such systems and assets would have a debilitating impact on security, national economic security, national public health or safety or any combination of those matters ...
In what has been described as a “sweeping victory” for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit issued a decision on June 26, 2012 in lawsuits that challenged various aspects of the Agency’s regulatory scheme for greenhouse gases (GHGs). EPA’s challenged actions stem from a decision by the U. S. Supreme Court in 2007 in the case of Massachusetts v ...
