Onshore Energy Business Panel Release Notes

January 2026

The Onshore Energy Business Panel (OEBP) has published an updated version of LMA5197A, which was originally published to the market in 2014.

The Property & Plant Testing & Commissioning Clause is established in the market and a key change at the time of publication of LMA5197A was the iThe Property & Plant Testing & Commissioning Clause is well established in the market. A key change at the time of the original publication of LMA5197A was the introduction of the Information Request Template, which was designed to provide information to support the various elements of the clause. This has been used successfully over the years to the benefit of all involved parties and has helped facilitate the transfer of assets from construction to operations.

The clause and the Information Request Template have been subject to review by the OEBP Engineering Support Group to ensure they remained fit for purpose and to incorporate learnings from their use. The review and ultimate publication of the original update were impacted by COVID-19, and so the opportunity has been taken to re-publish the updated clause as LMA5197C.

Following the review, a number of updates were made to LMA5197A. The main changes are as follows:

• “Performance Testing conforming to 100% Contract Design Criteria…” has been amended to “Demonstration of satisfactory plant operation at 100% design capacity…”. This is intended to move requirements away from project contractual issues towards insurance requirements, which are more specific and comparatively simpler.
• Terminology has been updated to align with standard industry project terminology.
• “Ramp up” to 100% design capacity is explicitly excluded. This was always the intent of the original clauses but is now stated for clarification.
• The technical content of the Information Request Template remains largely unchanged, except for some additional detail concerning the demonstration of plant operation at 100% design capacity, rather than performance testing.

The LMA5197A and LMA5197B versions have now been archived, with LMA5197C dated 21 July 2025 and published via email as an LMA Bulletin on 25 July 2025. LMA5197C, Property & Plant-Testing & Commissioning Clause can be downloaded from the Lloyd’s Wording Repository (LWR).

All LMA model documents are purely illustrative and are published and distributed for the guidance of Lloyd’s managing agents, brokers and other market participants. All contracting parties are free to agree to different conditions/amend the model documents as they see fit; the LMA does not protect its intellectual property rights over model documents. It is for underwriters to decide whether or not any contractual language is acceptable on any given risk. Model documents are available on the Lloyd’s Wordings Repository (LWR).

Dele Fajimolu
Senior Executive, Technical Underwriting
dele.fajimolu@lmalloyds.com

Andy Goddard
Senior Underwriter
andy.goddard@aig.com

Kathrin Lesser
Senior Underwriter, Oil & Gas
klesser@munichre.com