Spring 2023
7397 WRS: Transnational Petroleum Law - CARDENAS- 23890
Professor(s):
Julian Cardenas Garcia (RESEARCH PROFESSOR)
Credits: 3
Course Areas: Practice Skills - (Research and Writing)
Energy, Natural Resources and Environmental Law
Time: 6:00p-7:30p TTH Location: 200
Course Outline: Transnational petroleum law or lex petrolea is conceived as the rules of law and the transnational legal order created by the transnational petroleum community constituted by States, corporations, professional industry associations and other industry actors participating in the oil and gas sector. Therefore, the course will focus on the transnational rules commonly associated with the petroleum industry such as: investment protection standards included in international investment treaties, industry standards and best practices, general principles of international law, model contracts, and arbitration jurisprudence. All these sources of law have a common element which is their transnational legal nature that transcends parties’ agreements and the regulation enacted by oil and gas producing nations. Indeed, this plurality of sources of law is considered altogether “the network” that governs transnational petroleum operations in the 21st Century.
The course will also provide model contracts, standardized regulation and a collection of excerpts of arbitral awards in the oil industry which will guide our understanding of the new legal practices in the oil and gas sector. The cases under review will cover oil and gas arbitration in Latin America, North America, Europe, Asia, Africa and the Middle East. For example: cases of international arbitration related to expropriation or indirect expropriation in Russia, Venezuela, and Ecuador; the use of industry best practices in Nigeria, Sudan, Mexico and Canada; the protection of foreign investments in the case of armed conflicts (Libya, Sudan, and Colombia); the imposition of sanctions against the oil industry in Iran, Russia, Libya, and Venezuela, and environmental litigation related to oil and gas investments.
Course Syllabus: Syllabus
Course Notes: (Face-to-Face) The UH registration system instruction mode for this course is listed in parenthesis. After student registration opens, there may be instruction mode changes to this course up through two weeks before the first day of classes for the term, but notice of such changes will be sent to then-registered students. For this instruction mode, instructors and students are expected to normally be physically present in the classroom. If the course has a final examination, it will be in a classroom requiring your physical presence. Other assessment, such as a mid-term exam, may also be in a classroom. Whether this instructor will offer “remote presence” (starting a zoom meeting from the podium computer to enable student remote access on an occasional basis) for part or all of the semester is not known, but students should not rely on an expectation that remote presence will be available.
Quota=10.
Prerequisites:
First Day Assignments:
Final Exam Schedule:
This course will have:
Exam:
Paper:
Satisfies Senior Upper Level Writing Requirement: Yes
Experiential Course Type: No
Bar Course: No
DistanceEd ABA: No
Pass-Fail Student Election: Conditional Availability (not for required credits)
