Foreign investments are usually implemented through contracts between host States and foreign investors. These contracts and international investment treaties represent two different legal instruments that protect foreign direct investment. The co-existence of both instruments under international investment law has generated fundamental problems. By scrutinizing and tracing the increasingly divided jurisprudence on central aspects of treaty interpretation and analyzing the conflicting legal concepts applied by arbitral tribunals, this book represents a comprehensive examination of the complex relationship between the two in the field of investment treaty arbitration.

The delayed development of the Islamic world, in defiance of the formulaic approaches long favored by economists, suggests that the traditional Sharia and Islamic values and principles are at least partially responsible for the region s persistent backwardness. By analyzing the impact of the legal regime of the Sharia on Saudi Arabia during the Arab Oil Bust of the 1980s, this thesis concludes that Islamic social values and the Sharia s de facto role as an uncodified pre-emptive Arab common law implemented with high regard to precedent by ulama with extraordinary power of judicial review had the effect of accentuating the effects of the Oil Bust, making the theory of the Petrocurse a subset of a larger Cost of Being Muslim. On the other hand, the author concludes that not only is the Sharia not constrained by its nature to playing a deleterious economic role, but that it has broad commercial application, both domestically and internationally, and a new generation of more flexible Muslim economists, lawyers, and financial theorists have pointed the way toward a possible comprehensive modern adaptation of Islamic laws and principles.

This book examines whether international agreements between non-state actors can be identified as a source of international law using objective criteria. It asks whether, beyond Article 38 of the Statute of the International Court of Justice, there is a system of rules, processes, beliefs or semantics by which these agreements can be objectively identified as a source of international law. Departing from the more usual state-centric analysis, it adopts postmodern legal positivism as its analytical tool. This allows for the reality that international law-making takes place in subjective social landscapes. To test the effectiveness of this approach, it is applied to agreements between petroleum agencies and corporations which allow two or more states to exploit disputed resources across boundaries looking in particular at arrangements involving China, Vietnam and the Philippines. By so doing it illustrates an alternative way that states can manage disputes, without having to resort to conflict. It will appeal to both scholars and practitioners of public international law, as well as civil servants.

This overview of project finance for the oil and gas industry covers financial markets, sources and providers of finance, financial structures, and capital raising processes. About US$300 billion of project finance debt is raised annually across several capital intensive sectors—including oil and gas, energy, infrastructure, and mining—and the oil and gas industry represents around 30% of the global project finance market. With over 25 year's project finance experience in international banking and industry, author Robert Clews explores project finance techniques and their effectiveness in the petroleum industry. He highlights the petroleum industry players, risks, economics, and commercial/legal arrangements. With petroleum industry projects representing amongst the largest industrial activities in the world, this book ties together concepts and tools through real examples and aims to ensure that project finance will continue to play a central role in bringing together investors and lenders to finance these ventures. - Combines the theory and practice of raising long-term funding for capital intensive projects with insights about the appeal of project finance to the international oil and gas industry - Includes case studies and examples covering projects in the Arctic, East Africa, Latin America, North America, and Australia - Emphasizes the full downstream value chain of the industry instead of limiting itself to upstream and pipeline project financing - Highlights petroleum industry players, risks, economics, and commercial and legal arrangements