UPDATE 1-Ecopetrol's Reficar wins court judgment in long-running dispute with McDermott
(Adds details on contractual dispute in paragraphs 3-6)
BOGOTA, March 21 (Reuters) - Colombia's Ecopetrol said on Thursday its Reficar oil refinery was awarded 19.9% of the common capital in U.S. infrastructure firm McDermott in preferential shares by a judge in Amsterdam.
The Reficar refinery is located in the Colombian city of Cartagena, and has been the subject of a prolonged international dispute dating back to the facility's renovation.
In 2016, Reficar sought arbitration with McDermott subsidiary CB&I, accusing it of doubling construction costs during the renovation as well as failings in the engineering, procurement and construction contract.
Last September, Reficar asked a U.S. federal judge to freeze certain assets of CB&I after the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) earlier in 2023 ordered CB&I to pay more than $1 billion to Reficar, after a judge ruled in the refinery's favor in the long-running contractual dispute.
Reficar had previously accused McDermott of attempting to eliminate what it owed to the refinery belonging to Colombia's majority state-owned oil company by seeking to restructure certain liabilities in courts in both Britain and the Netherlands.
McDermott did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment. (Reporting by Oliver Griffin; Additional reporting by David Alire Garcia; Editing by Tom Hogue and Rashmi Aich)
