Oil and a Slippery Path to Conflict: ConocoPhillips, Guyana, and the Hostile Elephant in the Room

The increasing involvement of States and their surrogates in cross-border commercial activities has heralded an urgent need for codification of the well-established public international law rule of sovereign immunity. The problem is particularly thorny in international arbitration when corporate entities seek to enlist the courts of one State to seize the property of another state to enforce an arbitral award. The complex nature of sovereign immunity in a globalized economy and the challenge it poses for courts in the Caribbean, was highlighted in enforcement proceeding brought by oil giant, ConocoPhillips against Venezuela’s State corporations. This article therefore discusses (a) the extent to which property of a State enjoys immunity from the enforcement jurisdiction of the courts of another State; (b) the appropriate means to serve initiating legal process against another State? It concludes as the President of the Caribbean Court of Justice (Ag.) has noted, that legislative action is urgent.