Mohamed Al Fayed has won over £600,000 in damages for trespass by an oil company into oil reserves beneath his
Judge Peter Smith ordered Star Energy to pay the Harrods boss compensation after it drilled diagonally under
Between 1990 and 2007 around 1,006,000 barrels of oil were extracted from wells which penetrated almost one kilometre beneath the Oxted estate, which sits on part of the Palmers Wood Oilfield.
Allowing a claim brought by Al Fayed’s Liechtenstein-based company Bocardo SA, which owns the estate, the Judge ruled: “I do not see how in the present case that the insertion of pipelines under the Oxted Estate for the purpose of removing the oil both beneath the Oxted Estate and in the remainder of the field can be anything other than a trespass.”
Al Fayed is now entitled to 9% of Star’s income from the wells, which amounted to £6.9m between July 2000 and December 2007, and 9% of all future income from that date until the oil and gas extraction is exhausted.
