Dickens leads the Oil and Gas Practice at the firm. Prior to joining Cristal Advocates, he worked as the Company Secretary of the Uganda Refinery Holding Company Limited (URHC), a company that represents government’s interests in the refinery project as well as managing the petro based industrial park.
He also served as the Company Secretary of the Uganda National Oil Company (UNOC), a company that represents the government’s commercial interests in Uganda’s oil and gas sector from its inception until September 2016. He was also instrumental in UNOC’s formation and its initial period of operation where he also served as its Head of Contracts, Negotiations and Advisory until May 2018.
Prior to joining UNOC, Dickens was Legal Counsel at the Petroleum Directorate of the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Development (MEMD) for a period of 5 years where he was tasked with the evaluation of oil and gas and infrastructure transactions, negotiation of Production Sharing Contracts, Memorandas of Understanding (MOU’s), host government agreements and joint venture agreements. He was also part of the team that put together the upstream and midstream petroleum laws and the associated regulations.
Education
- Master of Laws – Petroleum Law and Policy – Merit – University of
Dundee, UK
- Post Graduate Diploma in Legal Practice – Law Development
Centre, Uganda
- Bachelor of Laws Degree – Makerere University, Uganda
- Certified Project Control Specialist Training (EPC) – IFP France
Professional bodies
- Association of International Petroleum Negotiators – AIPN
- East Africa Law Society
- Uganda Law Society