Abstract

Investment treaty arbitration offers few awards on nationalizations. The Award in Mobil v Venezuela ( Mobil ) is one of them. Maybe because of this, it is a rather disappointing decision to read for those concerned with international investment law. The Claimants (Venezuela Holdings, Mobil Cerro Negro Holding, Mobil Venezolana de Petróleos Holdings, Mobil Cerro Negro and Mobil Venezolana de Petróleos) alleged violations of the provisions on expropriation, fair and equitable treatment (FET) and arbitrary or discriminatory measures of the 1991 Netherlands-Venezuela bilateral investment treaty (the BIT). 1 In the Award, the Tribunal did not elaborate on the rich case law available on expropriation and FET. Instead, the Tribunal simply repeated some of the criteria already put forward by other international investment tribunals on these issues, scarcely citing any of their awards. The Tribunal focused primarily on the quantum of the nationalized investments, a topic that is generally best suited for accountants rather than lawyers. The facts of the dispute partly explain this situation. They also provide a rare opportunity to remind us how nationalizations work. *** Venezuela formally expropriated its hydrocarbon industry in 1975, through the nationalization law of that year (para. 35). This law created Petróleos