Yanal Abul Failat

Yanal Abul Failat is Of Counsel in the Corporate practice at Al Tamimi & Company in Dubai and a core member of the firm’s Energy and Resources Practice Group, focusing on Oil and Gas Law. He is an English-qualified energy and corporate lawyer with over ten years’ experience advising national and international oil and gas companies, including national oil companies, international majors, and independent E&P companies.

His practice covers cross-border mergers and acquisitions, joint ventures, upstream investments, and projects across Europe, the Middle East, Southeast Asia, Russia and the United Kingdom. He has extensive experience across the full petroleum value chain — upstream, midstream and downstream — including the drafting and negotiation of concession frameworks, production sharing arrangements, and related project documentation.

Trained and practised in London with a specialist international oil and gas boutique and the corporate practice of an international law firm in the City, he has been based in the Middle East since 2022 with Al Tamimi & Company, where he leads the firm’s regional oil and gas practice within the corporate group, acting as a principal client contact and leading multi-jurisdictional transaction teams.

His representative experience includes advising an Iraqi E&P company on a development and production contract with the Ministry of Oil for an integrated oil and gas field in northern Iraq; advising an international oil and gas major on its bid for an onshore unconventional gas concession in Oman; advising BlackRock and KKR, as UAE counsel, on the disposal of 40% of their respective indirect interests in ADNOC Oil Pipelines LLC to Lunate; advising Maha Energy AB on the sale of its entire participating interest in Block 70 onshore Oman; advising Sapura Energy Berhad on a joint venture with OMV (approximately US$900 million); and advising CEFC China Energy on its proposed acquisition of a 14.2% shareholding in Rosneft Oil Company (approximately US$9 billion).

He is recognised in The Best Lawyers in the UK: Ones to Watch (2023) for Corporate Law, ranked as a Rising Star by IFLR1000 (2025) for Oil and Gas, Corporate M&A and Projects (Energy), ranked by Lexology Index (2026) for Oil and Gas, and recognised by Legal 500 (2026, UAE) for both Oil and Gas and Infrastructure (Projects). He is also a contributing author to leading industry publications on upstream oil and gas law, including The Encyclopaedia of Upstream Oil and Gas and Understanding Joint Operating Agreements.

Yanal holds a Legal Practice Course from BPP University (2015), a Master of Laws in Oil and Gas Law from the University of Aberdeen (2012), and a Bachelor of Laws from Kingston University London (2011). He was admitted as a Solicitor of England & Wales in 2016 and as a Legal Consultant in the Emirate of Dubai in 2023. He speaks Arabic, English, Greek and Italian.