No doubt that the last three years have been quite busy for the Energy Charter Treaty (ECT) and for the Energy Charter Conference. The number of investor-state arbitration cases under Article 26 of the ECT doubled in this time span, going from thirty known cases to sixty-eight (as reported on the website of the Energy…

1. Background Modern arbitration in Mexico commenced with the reforms to the Mexican Commercial Code in 1989 and with the incorporation in such code of the UNCITRAL Model Law on International Commercial Arbitration in 1993. Project agreements with state entities such as Petróleos Mexicanos (PEMEX) and the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE) may be submitted to…

A few weeks ago, the day before the Obama Administration and the EU announced dramatic new sanctions against Russia, an international tribunal announced a $50 billion award against Russia in favor of a group of oil investors. The current violence engulfing Iraq has multiple satellite arbitration disputes over oil sales to Turkey. Recent violence on…

Every now and then the arbitration society witnesses the filing of investor-state disputes in fields previously ‘unharmed’ by the spotlight of investment adjudication. Perhaps the most recent example is the ‘hydraulically fractured’ shale gas dispute against Canada (see Lone Pine v. Canada). In a similar manner, the Vattenfall II dispute over Germany’s nuclear phase-out has…

Sandra De Vito Bieri with Anton Vucurovic 1)Sandra De Vito Bieri, attorney at law, LL.M., is a Partner and Co-Head of the Arbitration Practice Group of Bratschi Wiederkehr & Buob in Zurich and Member of the Arbitration Court of the Swiss Chambers’ Arbitration Institution; Anton Vucurovic, attorney at law, LL.M., is a Partner and Head…

The numbers of energy and mining related disputes in Latin America constitute 67 out of 162 or 41% of the total ICSID cases within the region. In most of these disputes the respondents are Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador or Venezuela, which represent 52 out of 67 or 78% of the total energy and mining ICSID cases…

and José Roberto Oliva Junior and Ricardo Dalmaso Marques, Pinheiro Neto Advogados One of the segments of the infrastructure sectors in Brazil that have lately triggered the greatest amount of disputes are the power generation, distribution and trading sectors. In effect, there’s little disagreement in Brazil nowadays that, just as with other sectors that could…