Natural Resources and Energy Security - Law

Sommario

1 - Allocation of NR under IL..................................................................................2

S ..................................................................................................................................... 2

OVEREIGNTY

Title............................................................................................................................................ 2

How to acquire it........................................................................................................................ 2

Sovereignty over a territory disputed among states..................................................................4

Allocation of NR at sea............................................................................................................... 4

E .......................................................................................4

XCEPTIONS OF THE CRITERION OF SOVEREIGNTY

The Area..................................................................................................................................... 4

The Antarctica............................................................................................................................ 5

The Outer Space......................................................................................................................... 5

The Moon................................................................................................................................... 6

The Moon and the Outer Space.................................................................................................. 6

2 - Permanent sovereignty over NR and sustainability.......................................6

PSNR - P S NR........................................................................................... 6

ERMANENT OVEREIGNTY OVER

UN Res........................................................................................................................................ 7

Uncertain material and personal scope of application................................................................7

Relevance of the principle.......................................................................................................... 7

S .................................................................................................................. 8

USTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT...................................................................................................................................................... 9

P NR ...........................................................................9

ERMANENT SOVEREIGNTY OVER AND SUSTAINABILITY

3 - NR in conflict areas........................................................................................10

D - ................................................................................................................ 10

UTY OF NON RECOGNITION

Scope....................................................................................................................................... 10

Conditions for the duty to become operational........................................................................11

NR ..................................................................................................................... 12

IN OCCUPIED AREAS

Corporative perspective........................................................................................................... 13

4 - Investments in IR.............................................................................................. 14

T ............................................................................................................................................. 14

YPESC ......................................................................................................................................... 15

LAUSES

Local employment.................................................................................................................... 15

................................................................................................................................................ 15

Training obligations.................................................................................................................. 15

................................................................................................................................................ 16

Social clauses........................................................................................................................... 16

Environment clauses................................................................................................................ 16

.................................................................................................................................................... 17

R ........................................................................................................................................ 17

EMEDIES

Arbitration................................................................................................................................ 17

State-investor arbitration?........................................................................................................ 17

5 - Investment contracts.....................................................................................18

D ...................................................................................................................................... 18

EFINITION

Diversity of contractual practice............................................................................................... 18

Relationship with national law.................................................................................................. 19

C ...................................................................................................... 19

ONTRACT PROCESS AND CONTENT

Process..................................................................................................................................... 19

Content.................................................................................................................................... 20

Stabilization clauses - referred to contracts..............................................................................21

Conclusion................................................................................................................................ 21

6 - Foreign direct investment (FDI) and international investment law...........22

D .................................................................................................................................... 22

EFINITIONS

General distinction................................................................................................................... 22

FDIs.......................................................................................................................................... 22

Treaties..................................................................................................................................... 23

Centre for disputes................................................................................................................... 23

1 T E C T ............................................................................................................ 23

HE NERGY HARTER REATY

T FDI IL........................................................................24

HE MAIN STANDARDS OF PROTECTION OF S UNDER

Fair and equitable treatment standards....................................................................................24

Full protection and security standards......................................................................................25

A FET .......................................................................................................... 26

PPLICATION OF STANDARD

Cases against Spain and Italy................................................................................................... 26

Expropriation............................................................................................................................ 27

................................................................................................................................................ 28

Awards focusing on the effects of the measure........................................................................28

Awards focusing on proportionality..........................................................................................29

D ........................................................................................................................ 29

ISPUTE SETTLEMENT

ECT modernization................................................................................................................... 30

7 - Gas and oil industries infrastructure..........................................................31

G ............................................................................................................ 31

AS AND OIL INFRASTRUCTURE

Transit...................................................................................................................................... 31

N .......................................................................................................... 31

ATURAL GAS INFRASTRUCTURE

SI ..................................................................32

NTERNATIONAL LAW NORMS ON GAS AND OIL INFRASTRUCTURE

Freedom of transit passage...................................................................................................... 32

8 - Players of the oil and gas industry...............................................................35

S ........................................................................................................................................... 35

TATES

S - .................................................................................................................. 36

TATE OWNED ENTERPRISE

C ...................................................................................................................................... 36

OMPANIES

I .................................................................................................... 37

NTERGOVERNMENTAL ORGANIZATION

The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC)...............................................37

Aim........................................................................................................................................... 37

How it works............................................................................................................................. 37

OPEC - WTO.............................................................................................................................. 38

................................................................................................................................................ 39

OPEC and future perspectives.................................................................................................. 39

9 – Conclusions...................................................................................................... 39

1 - Allocation of NR under IL

Sovereignty

Sovereignty is the main criterion for NR allocation among states.

Title to natural resources is allocated to the entity that exercises sovereign powers on a territory.

Sovereignty is linked to the concept of “title”.

Title

Title is used in public international law to show that a territory belongs to a State.

Title to a territory is usually defined as “a vestitive fact of territorial sovereignty” or “a source of territorial sovereignty”.

A State acquiring such title is vested with sovereignty that is opposable erga omnes > when a State has title to a certain territory, that State’s control over the territory in question is legally justified and other States must respect that State’s control over the territory.

At the same time, territorial control without title is never accepted as legitimate.

How to acquire it

Cession is the transfer of territory, usually by treaty, from one State to another.

2

If there were defects in the ceding State’s title, the title of the State to which the territory is ceded will be vitiated by the same defects.

Occupation is the acquisition of terra nullius - that is, territory which, immediately before acquisition, belongs to no State.

The territory may never have belonged to any State, or it may have been abandoned by the previous sovereign.

Abandonment of territory requires not only failure to exercise authority over the territory, but also an intention to abandon the territory.

Nowadays there are hardly any parts of the world that could be considered as terra nullius, because most of the land areas of the globe are at present placed under the territorial sovereignty of an existing State.

Occupation is based on effective control over the territory, accompanied by the intention and will to act as sovereign.

Prescription is the acquisition of territory which belonged to another State and it is based on effective control.

The effective control necessary to establish title by prescription must last for a longer period of time than the effective control which is necessary in cases of occupation; as loss of title by the former sovereign is not readily presumed.

Effective control by the acquiring State needs to be accompanied by acquiescence on the part of the losing State; protests, or other acts or statements which demonstrate a lack of acquiescence, can prevent acquisition of title by prescription.

i.e. In the Island of Palmas case (Netherlands, USA), 4 April 1928, the arbitrator emphasised the absence of Spanish protests against Dutch acts on the island:

“Since the moment when the Spaniards, in withdrawing from the Moluccas in 1666, made express reservations as to the maintenance of their sovereign rights, up to the contestation made by the United States in 1906, no contestation or other action whatever or protest against the exercise of territorial rights by the Netherlands over the Talautse (Sangi) Isles and their dependencies (Miangas included) has been recorded.

Although occupation and prescription can be distinguished from one another in theory, the difference is usually blurred in real life, because often one of the very points in dispute is whether the territory was terra nullius or was subject to the sovereignty of a “first” State before the “second” State arrived on the scene.

Operations of nature

A State can acquire territory through operations of nature, for example, when rivers silt up, or when volcanic islands emerge in a State’s internal waters or territorial sea.

In the past, conquest was a method to acquire territorial sovereignty; today, this is against the prohibition of the use of force (article 2(4) of the UN Charter).

A State defeated in a war used to cede territory to the victor by treaty.

i.e. France (forcibly) ceded Alsace and Lorraine with the Treaty of Frankfurt of 1871, which ended the Franco-Prussian war.

3

Acquisition of territory by conquest was not lawful unless the war had come to an end. If the defeated State entered into a peace treaty with which it ceded territory to the victor, or which recognised the victor’s title, it was clear that the war had come to an end.

In the absence of a peace treaty, it was necessary to prove that the war had come to an end in a different way, by producing clear evidence that all resistance by the enemy State and by its allies had ceased.

i.e. German annexation of Poland during WW II was invalid, because Poland’s allies continued the struggle against Germany. According to international law, Germany was merely the belligerent occupant of Poland.

Sovereignty over a territory disputed among states

Usually in conflict areas.

i.e. Western Sahara, Crimea, Donbass, Northern Cyprus.

• Duty of non-recognition
• Law of occupation

Allocation of NR at sea

Territorial sea: up to 12 nautical miles (nm) measured from baselines.

The sovereignty of a coastal State extends to the territorial sea, including air space over the territorial sea as well as to its bed and subsoil.

Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ): is an area beyond and adjacent to the territorial sea, up to 200 nm from the baseline of the territorial sea.

The coastal State must claim the zone in order to establish an EEZ.

The coastal State exercises sovereign rights over the EEZ for the purpose of exploring and exploiting natural resources.

Continental shelf: comprises the seabed and subsoil of the submarine areas that extend beyond the territorial sea throughout the natural prolongation of the land territory to the outer edge of the continental margin, or to a distance of 200 nautical miles from the baselines from which the breadth of the territorial sea is measured where the outer edge of the continental margin does not extend up to that distance.

The continental shelf does not need to be claimed by the coastal State.

The coastal State exercises sovereign rights over the continental shelf for the purpose of exploring and exploiting natural resources.

Exceptions of the criterion of sovereignty

The Area

The seabed and ocean floor and subsoil thereof, beyond the limits of national jurisdiction.

Resources of the Area are “the common heritage of mankind” (UN GA Res 2749 of 1970).

[n]o State shall claim or exercise Article 137 - Legal status of the Area and its resources: sovereignty or sovereign rights over any part of the Area or its resources, nor shall any State or natural or juridical person appropriate any part thereof.

A International Seabed Authority was created to regulate the activities in the area: States (or companies incorporated in such States) that would like to exploit NRs in the Area should have submitted a project to the ISA, providing the participation of the Authority, through the Enterprise, to the exploitation (in association with developing countries).

4

No activities has been so far carried out in accordance with these provisions, that have also been modified in 1994.

Art 86 of UNCLOS, high seas are “all parts of the sea which are not included in the EEZ, in the territorial sea or in the internal waters of a State, or in the archipelagic waters of an archipelagic State”.

Arts 87 and 88 of UNCLOS: the high seas are open to all St