Three United States companies sued Mexico before the International Center for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) of the World Bank with a claim of 100 million dollars.

The companies are Finley Resources Inc., MWS Management Inc. and Prize Permanent Holdings, LLC.

In general, oil service companies argue that Mexico violated investment-related provisions under the Agreement between Mexico, the United States and Canada (T-MEC).

Regarding this, the companies affirm that Pemex did not honor agreements between the parties.

For the companies, the representative before ICSID is Thompson & Knight, located in Dallas, Texas.

For Mexico, its representative before ICSID is the General Directorate of International Trade Legal Consultancy, of the Ministry of Economy, based in Mexico City.

ICSID

Annexes 14-D and 14-E of the T-MEC (investments related to government contracts), establish the rules related to investment disputes that arise only between Mexico and the United States, leaving Canada outside the scope of application. .

That is, only a Mexican or US investor may submit a claim to arbitration in the event that any of the governments of the countries included violate the corresponding investment principles.

Likewise, Annex 14-C refers to the possibility that any existing investment, that is, an investment established or acquired during the “validity” of NAFTA and that it remains or is existing on the date of entry into force of the T- MEC, a claim may be submitted to arbitration in accordance with NAFTA, by an investor of any of the Parties (Mexico, the United States or Canada), provided there is a written consent of the parties to the dispute (an investor with nationality of any of the three countries with any of the three governments) according to any of these three instances:

• Convention on the Settlement of Investment Disputes between States and Nationals of Other States, better known as the ICSID Convention.
• Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Arbitral Awards.
• New York Convention; or the Inter-American Convention on International Commercial Arbitration.