A US-incorporated energy firm, Lone Pine Resources Inc., is taking on Quebec’s stand against fracking, saying it violates the North American free-trade agreement and demanding more than $250-million in compensation.
Canadian company Pacific Rim can move forward under El Salvador law with a case against that country’s government for blocking a gold mining project, but cannot file suit under a regional trade agreement, a World Bank arbitration panel ruled.
Ecuadorian communities learned from the way that Chevron’s operations flouted environmental law in the 1990’s, that once entrusted to foreign businesses their natural resources are usually squandered.
On February 11, Chevron will ask a panel of three private lawyers named as "arbitrators" under the BIT to nullify the entire nine-year Ecuadorian court process that recently found the company liable for $18 billion in clean-up costs.
Pacific Rim is suing the Salvadoran government in an international investment court, one of scores of cases in recent years in which frustrated oil, gas and mining investors, using provisions of trade agreements, have sought to recoup losses from mostly developing countries.
Canada’s Bear Creek Mining Corp. is threatening a legal challenge
against Peru after its mining rights were revoked in a move that raises
the risk for other resource companies doing business in the
mineral-blessed South American country.
In a decision with implications for the national sovereignty of member states under US trade pacts, a World Bank tribunal has approved a Canadian mining company’s controversial lawsuit against the government of El Salvador.