Susan O’Rourke is the Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Spencer West Middle East based in the UAE to provide legal services in and out of the region.
Susan is a corporate and commercial lawyer qualified as a solicitor in England & Wales (2001) and in Australia with over two decades experience at partner level in top tier international law firms.
She has been a partner and head of the legal practices in various firms across oil and gas and energy and resources, venture finance and infrastructure, and head of country desks for the Middle East, China and Japan.
Susan’s background is in complex cross border transactional legal work both in the Middle East (UAE and Kuwait) and outside Australia (Japan, China, Korea, Indonesia, Singapore, Cayman Islands, United Kingdom) in a range of corporate and commercial transactions linked to infrastructure projects, privatisations, assets in energy, energy transition and chemicals, low carbon technologies, battery energy storage systems, transport, AI technology, critical minerals, agribusiness, financial services, high stakes disputes management and foreign bidder opportunities across the Middle East and Australasia.
She is a strategic thinker and negotiator who starts an assignment by understanding the deal drivers to successfully close a transaction for both the client and the counterparties. She leads teams and develops and enables expertise for the life cycle of assets.
Susan’s experience includes working with clients within the Middle East. She has advised Kuwait on the $US 3.4bn Olefins plant in Kuwait with Dow Chemical and PIC and the formation of their international petrochemical (olefins and aromatics) joint ventures.
She has also worked with Middle East clients on their investments outside of the GCC, including in energy, mining, agribusiness and food, financial businesses, private equity and venture capital.
Susan will focus on cross border trade & investment between Europe, the APAC countries and the Middle East.
RELEVANT EXPERIENCE
CORPORATE & COMMERCIAL
- Typically advising corporate organisations on mega deals with multiple parties from different countries in strategic deals with a wide geographic impact.
- A transaction of note was acting on a $2.5 bn scheme of arrangement merging two Australian listed energy companies holding conventional oil and gas reserves and underwater shale in three countries. This involved major stakeholders from Japan and Australia with expansion of reserves and diversified geographic footprint for both product source and supply as the main deal drivers.
- Another transaction was the formation of a JV among a large listed Canadian energy company, government owned entity sponsor and international construction corporation to develop a $5.5bn undersea cross border gas pipeline and floating LNG platform.
ENERGY/NEW ENERGY/LOW CARBON TECHNOLOGIES
- Susan has a strong interest in the use of battery energy storage systems to most efficiently utilise electricity generated from both conventional and renewables. These projects are highly strategic and important to economic and trade development. Incentives by governments in the Middle East may be a magnet for capital and industry to migrate to the Middle East.
- Two Transactions of note on which Susan advised include:
- Advising Kuwait on the $US 3.4bn Olefins plant in Kuwait with Dow Chemical and Petrochemical Industries Company (the subsidiary of Kuwait Petroleum Corporation) and in the formation of their international petrochemical (olefins and aromatics) joint ventures in Kuwait, Canada and Germany. Susan’s legal work included negotiation and drafting the formation of the complex international JV and EPC, O&M and off take arrangements for the Kuwait olefins plant (including training, skills transfer and secondment of Kuwaitis to Dow’s other global plants for long term skill building, sustainability and growth).
- Negotiations for and planning a ‘whole of infrastructure’ to use hydrogen to make green steel in Australia and transport for export to Europe and the Middle East. Susan has had involvement of over 10 years in the underlying project covering the iron ore mine, corporate restructures and port and rail planning for export.
PROJECT CONSTRUCTION AND INFRASTRUCTURE & FINANCING
- Susan has frequently advised on negotiation of long life cycle high impact strategic assets which need to be planned and constructed for future benefits of growth and sustainability,including in PPP/privatisation frameworks. Her project finance background integrates with the structuring of project arrangements to facilitate the ability to be financed, initially and in future rollovers.
- A transaction of note includes a gas pipeline for the Government of the Northern Territory Australia for 1500km with 15 syndicated international project financiers (led by Swiss and Japanese) in multi tiered layers. This led to establishment of 10 sets of gas generation units for power supply to remote towns and dedicated transmission lines running off them to connect to mineral exploration projects for uranium. lithium gold, silver and iron ore. Later technology was developed for portable remote power generation.
- Another transaction of note includes the 1750 km construction of ICI’s new ethane pipeline across 3 separate regulatory jurisdictions. The regulatory rules made both the real estate acquisitions and the cross covenants complicated with another existing main gas trunk pipeline to major urban industrial users occupying adjacent land. Its strategic purpose was for the ethane to be transported 1750km and used as feedstock for a petrochemical plant to be converted from imported shipped LPG (which had become uneconomic) and, expanded and linked with another Exxon petrochemical plant in another city to exploit the synergies of efficiency and scale for plastics production.
