Which other foreign companies have pending ICSID or bilateral treaty claims against Venezuela?
Executive summary
ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips are the highest-profile foreign claimants that have pursued treaty-based ICSID or bilateral‑treaty claims against Venezuela, and more recent filings by companies such as Halliburton — plus older Mobil‑linked proceedings and a larger set of treaty-based matters tracked by UNCTAD — mean the docket is both significant and fragmented across jurisdictions [1] [2] [3] [4] [5]. Reporting and public case trackers confirm these names but do not provide a single, exhaustive roster of every pending bilateral‑treaty or ICSID claim against Venezuela, so conclusions must be limited to what the sources document [6] [5].
1. Big oil’s headline arbitrations: ConocoPhillips and ExxonMobil
ConocoPhillips and ExxonMobil launched the most consequential treaty‑based arbitrations arising from Venezuela’s oil nationalizations, with ConocoPhillips seeking multibillion‑dollar relief and ExxonMobil pursuing claims invoking Netherlands‑Venezuela bilateral treaty protections through Dutch holding companies [1] [2] [3]. These disputes moved to ICSID and related World Bank forums and produced large awards and protracted enforcement and annulment skirmishes that remain central to the catalogue of investor‑state cases against Venezuela [2] [7].
2. Mobil and “mixed” treaty/contract fights that persist in records
Mobil (parts of ExxonMobil’s historical corporate family) brought ICC and ICSID proceedings over the Cerro Negro nationalization and related measures, and the case history illustrates how treaty access, jurisdictional limits and corporate restructurings shape what counts as a “pending” treaty claim — UNCTAD and legal commentaries show Mobil‑linked matters as enduring entries in dispute navigators [8] [5]. Tribunal rulings in this cohort have repeatedly turned on whether corporate reorganizations legitimately conferred treaty protection, underscoring why Mobil‑branded proceedings continue to appear in tracker databases [9] [8].
3. Halliburton’s December 2025 filing and the Barbados route
Halliburton, the U.S. oilfield‑services giant, filed an ISDS claim against Venezuela in December 2025 using a Barbados subsidiary to rely on a Barbados‑Venezuela bilateral investment treaty, a move explicitly reported as a strategy to access treaty protections even after Venezuela withdrew from ICSID in 2012 [1] [4]. Coverage highlights that claimants are using subsidiaries and third‑country treaties — sometimes called “treaty‑shopping” — to pursue disputes, a pattern visible across recent filings [1] [4].
4. The wider docket: UNCTAD, ICSID records and the limits of public reporting
Institutional trackers such as the UNCTAD Investment Dispute Settlement Navigator list multiple treaty‑based and mixed claims involving Venezuela and catalogical entries for investor names and case statuses, but public reporting and the ICSID site together show that cases are spread across arbitral fora and procedural stages, making an authoritative, up‑to‑the‑minute list difficult without direct access to registry databases [5] [6] [10]. The UNCTAD and ICSID materials thus corroborate the presence of major players — and signal there are other claimants and follow‑on proceedings beyond the most publicized suits [5] [6].
5. Competing narratives, incentives and what the coverage emphasizes
Mainstream pieces emphasize payments owed and large awards to U.S. oil majors, while critical outlets frame the wave of litigation as corporate opportunism or neocolonial leverage; both frames find support in the same facts — companies invoking BITs or ICSID and using foreign subsidiaries to secure jurisdiction [1] [11]. Legal advisories push a different practical angle: for U.S. firms, sanctions, corporate structure and treaty access determine whether litigation is possible and profitable, revealing an implicit industry incentive to preserve treaty‑route options even amid geopolitical friction [12] [1].
6. What reporting does not (yet) show
Public sources in the collection document ExxonMobil, ConocoPhillips, Mobil‑related cases and Halliburton’s 2025 claim and point to numerous treaty mechanics, but they do not assemble a definitive, exhaustive roster of every foreign company currently pursuing ICSID or BIT claims against Venezuela; compiling such a list would require direct queries to ICSID, UNCTAD’s full database and claimants’ filings beyond the excerpts provided here [6] [5].