PENGERANG REFINING COMPANY Sdn Bhd

On the court record

A petrochemical-sector company litigating on two fronts: judicial review of retrospective local-authority assessment rates, and performance-bond and arbitration disputes under section 11 of the Arbitration Act 2005.

Pengerang Refining Company Sdn Bhd, a company associated with the large petrochemical development at Pengerang in Johor, appears in the corpus in two distinct streams of litigation: public-law challenges to local-authority assessment rates, and commercial disputes over performance bonds and arbitration. It appears variously as applicant, appellant and respondent.

The rating litigation was pursued by judicial review. The company challenged the imposition of assessment rates under the Local Government Act 1976, arguing that the local authority had no power to impose the rates retrospectively by reference to the date of issuance of the Certificate of Completion and Compliance, and that the decision was ultra vires the Act. Parallel Malay-language applications sought "Semakan Kehakiman" (judicial review) and, among other relief, a "perintah deklarasi" (declaratory order) and a "perintah certiorari" (order of certiorari) invoking sections 127, 133 and 144 of the Akta Kerajaan Tempatan 1976 (the Local Government Act 1976) together with section 25 of the Courts of Judicature Act 1964 and the Federal Constitution.

The commercial stream turned on a performance bond and the boundary between the court and arbitration. The company was involved in an ex parte order and its setting-aside under Order 29 and related rules of the Rules of Court 2012, engaging section 11 of the Arbitration Act 2005 on interim measures. The dispute concerned whether a demand under the performance bond should be restrained, whether an interim injunction was appropriate to preserve the position pending arbitration, and whether security for costs should be ordered — the familiar tension between protecting a beneficiary's contractual call on a bond and preventing an unconscionable or fraudulent demand. The two strands share a common posture: in each the company is resisting a demand or an imposition it says exceeds the other side's authority — whether that is a local authority levying rates it had no power to backdate, or a beneficiary calling on a bond in circumstances the company characterises as unconscionable — and in each it turns to the supervisory or interim jurisdiction of the court for protection pending final resolution.