{"id":339,"date":"2008-09-26T10:26:00","date_gmt":"2008-09-26T15:26:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/itn.mattrock.ca\/2008\/09\/26\/caratube-international-oil-company-llp-v-republic-of-kazakhstan-american-investor-sues-kazakhstan-over-oil-field-dispute\/"},"modified":"2013-02-11T07:31:20","modified_gmt":"2013-02-11T13:31:20","slug":"caratube-international-oil-company-llp-v-republic-of-kazakhstan-american-investor-sues-kazakhstan-over-oil-field-dispute","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.iisd.org\/itn\/2008\/09\/26\/caratube-international-oil-company-llp-v-republic-of-kazakhstan-american-investor-sues-kazakhstan-over-oil-field-dispute\/","title":{"rendered":"Caratube International Oil Company LLP v. Republic of Kazakhstan: American investor sues Kazakhstan over oil-field dispute"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>By Damon Vis-Dunbar<br \/>\n26 September 2008<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>A US citizen, Devincci Salah Hourani, has launched a lawsuit against the government of Kazakhstan over a failed contract to explore and exploit oil in the country.<\/p>\n<p>Mr. Hourani, who holds a 92% stake in the Kazakh firm Caratube International Oil Company (CIOC), has alleged breaches of the United States-Kazakhstan bilateral investment treaty in a claim registered with <span class='tooltipsall tooltipsincontent classtoolTips18'>ICSID<\/span> in August.<\/p>\n<p>Few specific about the case have emerged, so far. According to the law firm Allen &amp; Overy, who act as counsel for the claimant, \u201cthe dispute concerns Kazakhstan\u2019s arbitrary, discriminatory and unlawful expropriation of CIOC\u2019s long term rights under a contract for the exploration and development of hydrocarbons in the Aktobe Oblast region of Kazakhstan.\u201d The claimant is also alleging that Kazakhstan authorities\u00a0harassed Mr. Hourani, his family and employees.<\/p>\n<p>The alleged damages are \u201cvery substantial\u201d, given the production stage of the contract was expected to yield at least US$ 2 billion, said lawyers with Allen &amp; Overy.<\/p>\n<p>Kazakhstan is defending itself in one other arbitration at the ICSID facility &#8211; Liman Caspian Oil BV and NCL Dutch Investment BV v. Republic of Kazakhstan. In this case, Liman Caspian Oil, a Dutch subsidiary of the Canadian company Aurado Energy Inc., is alleging breaches of the fair and equitable treatment and expropriation provisions of the Energy Charter Treaty (<span class='tooltipsall tooltipsincontent classtoolTips67'>ECT<\/span>) &#8211; a multilateral agreement that governs investments in the energy sector.<\/p>\n<p>Liman argues that it obtained the license to extract oil and gas in 2002 from its original holder, Aral, but that Kazakhstan courts annulled the transfer on wholly specious grounds,\u201d according to a statement provided by counsel for Liman.<\/p>\n<script type=\"text\/javascript\"> toolTips('.classtoolTips18','International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes'); <\/script><script type=\"text\/javascript\"> toolTips('.classtoolTips63','Bilateral investment treaty'); <\/script><script type=\"text\/javascript\"> toolTips('.classtoolTips65','East African community'); <\/script><script type=\"text\/javascript\"> toolTips('.classtoolTips67','Energy Charter Treaty'); <\/script><script type=\"text\/javascript\"> toolTips('.classtoolTips72','Investment Court System'); <\/script><script type=\"text\/javascript\"> toolTips('.classtoolTips85','Organisation internationale du travail'); <\/script><script type=\"text\/javascript\"> toolTips('.classtoolTips86','Organizaci\u00f3n Mundial del Trabajo'); <\/script><script type=\"text\/javascript\"> toolTips('.classtoolTips98','Chambre de commerce internationale'); <\/script><script type=\"text\/javascript\"> toolTips('.classtoolTips100','investissement direct \u00e9tranger'); <\/script><script type=\"text\/javascript\"> toolTips('.classtoolTips108','C\u00e1mara de Comercio Internacional'); <\/script><script type=\"text\/javascript\"> toolTips('.classtoolTips116','European Commission'); <\/script><script type=\"text\/javascript\"> toolTips('.classtoolTips118','Union europ\u00e9enne'); <\/script><script type=\"text\/javascript\"> toolTips('.classtoolTips119','Uni\u00f3n Europea'); <\/script>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Damon Vis-Dunbar 26 September 2008 A US citizen, Devincci Salah Hourani, has launched a lawsuit against the government of Kazakhstan over a failed contract to explore and exploit oil [&hellip;]<script type=\"text\/javascript\"> toolTips('.classtoolTips85','Organisation internationale du travail'); <\/script><script type=\"text\/javascript\"> toolTips('.classtoolTips86','Organizaci\u00f3n Mundial del Trabajo'); <\/script><script type=\"text\/javascript\"> toolTips('.classtoolTips98','Chambre de commerce internationale'); <\/script><script type=\"text\/javascript\"> toolTips('.classtoolTips108','C\u00e1mara de Comercio Internacional'); <\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":15869,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1956,1989,1984,1924,2085],"class_list":["post-339","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-itn","tag-energy-charter-treaty","tag-expropriation","tag-fair-and-equitable-treatment-fet","tag-icsid","tag-natural-resources"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.iisd.org\/itn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/339","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.iisd.org\/itn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.iisd.org\/itn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.iisd.org\/itn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.iisd.org\/itn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=339"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.iisd.org\/itn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/339\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.iisd.org\/itn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15869"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.iisd.org\/itn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=339"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.iisd.org\/itn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=339"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.iisd.org\/itn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=339"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}