World Bank Tribunal has rejected Venezuela’s appeal on the ruling in March in a case brought by Tidewater against the Latin American country.
On March 13, 2015, the Tribunal ruled in favor of Tidewater, who accused Republic of Venezuela of unlawfully expropriating its oil services business in Venezuela.
The tribunal found that Venezuela had expropriated Tidewater’s investment in its Venezuelan subsidiary SEMARCA without payment of prompt, adequate and effective compensation.
It determined that Tidewater was entitled to be compensated for that expropriation, and calculated the principal amount of the compensation to be paid as $46.4 million.
Looking to reduce the amount it has to pay, Venezuela applied for a revision of the ruling. Making its case, Venezuela claimed that the tribunal had based its decision on a document containing a typographical error, according to which the estimated value of SEMARCA was $31.9 million instead of $13.9 million.
Venezuela claimed that if the tribunal had been aware of this fact, the award would have been between $27 million and $35 million.
The tribunal acknowledged that there had been a clerical error in transcription. However, it said the error was not of such nature ‘as decisively to affect the award,’ and dismissed the application for revision, affirming its initial ruling of $46.4 million as final.
Offshore Energy Today Staff