Oryx Energies fails to overturn 983m-shilling arbitration award

Uganda’s High Court has thrown out an attempt by the fuel firm Oryx Energies to overturn an arbitration award worth nearly 983m Ugandan shillings ($263,000), ruling that the company had shown no legal basis to interfere with the arbitrator’s decision.

The Commercial Division judge, Susan Odongo, dismissed Oryx’s challenge in full in a ruling delivered electronically on 9 August, and ordered the firm to pay the costs of the case. She upheld the award to a rival haulier, Oyster Energies, as valid, final and fully enforceable.

Arbitration is a private way of settling business disputes outside the courts, in which the two sides agree to let an independent arbitrator decide the matter. A court can set the outcome aside only in narrow circumstances, and Justice Odongo used the ruling to warn companies against treating that process as a route to a second hearing.

The dispute dates back to a contract signed on 25 November 2016, under which Oyster agreed to transport petroleum products by road from Kenya to destinations across Uganda. The two firms later fell out over unpaid transport fees.

Oyster originally claimed about 1.685bn shillings ($452,000) for the work. Oryx — formerly trading as Oryx Oil Uganda — rejected the figure, arguing that it had already cleared the fees through a fuel-credit arrangement in the contract, under which money owed for transport was meant to be offset against fuel bought by Oyster’s trucks at Oryx service stations. Oryx also lodged a counterclaim of about 412m shillings ($111,000) for fuel it said had been taken on credit but not repaid.

The parties agreed in November 2023 to settle the matter under the rules of the International Centre for Arbitration and Mediation in Kampala. After hearings that ran from February to July 2025, the sole arbitrator, Olivia Kyarimpa Matovu, awarded Oyster about 983m shillings, dismissed the Oryx counterclaim and granted Oyster costs of 38.5m shillings ($10,300) and $2,764, plus 10% annual interest. She found no basis for the fuel offset Oryx had claimed.

Oryx took the award to the High Court on six grounds, arguing among other things that it had been denied a fair hearing, that the arbitrator had mishandled the taxing of Oyster’s legal costs, and that she had been biased.

At the centre of the fairness complaint was Oyster’s failure to file written submissions on time. Oryx argued that the arbitrator had rewarded that default by letting Oyster file late, giving it two chances to attack Oryx’s case. The court found the record showed otherwise. When the late filing was discussed at a virtual meeting on 4 September 2025, Oryx’s lawyers were offered a chance to respond and declined, the ruling said. Having waived that right, the judge held, the firm could not later use the point to challenge the award.

Justice Odongo also rejected the claim that the arbitrator had unfairly assessed costs, noting that both sides had been directed to submit their bills of costs and supporting arguments, and that an arbitrator is not required to copy every step a court registrar would take.

On the fuel dispute — worth about 177m shillings ($47,000) — the judge said whether the arbitrator had read the contract correctly or weighed the evidence properly went to the merits of the case, which fell outside the court’s limited supervisory role. The arbitrator had examined bank cheques and ledger accounts before concluding the fuel had been paid for separately, the ruling noted.

The allegation of bias also failed. The court said the arbitrator had disclosed before taking the appointment that her law firm, Ligomarc Advocates, had handled work for Oryx more than a decade earlier, that she had not personally been involved, and that neither side objected at the time. Oryx had taken part in the arbitration for more than two years without questioning her independence, the judge added. She also noted that the arbitrator’s scrutiny had cut nearly 700m shillings from Oyster’s original claim, certifying only about 987m shillings ($265,000) as proved — hardly the mark of a tilted process.

Dismissing all six grounds, Justice Odongo said commercial arbitration was meant to deliver finality, and that firms which chose it could not turn to the High Court whenever the result went against them. Allowing routine procedural decisions or disagreements over contract interpretation to reopen awards, she warned, would undermine the speed and certainty businesses seek from arbitration.

The ruling leaves the original award intact, together with the 10% annual interest and the taxed costs. For Oryx, the failed challenge has instead confirmed the award it was trying to escape. For Oyster, it clears a major obstacle to recovering the money.