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US en­er­gy com­pa­ny Cono­coPhillips and its sub­sidiaries have been grant­ed per­mis­sion to reg­is­ter lo­cal­ly an over US$10 bil­lion ar­bi­tra­tion award against Venezuela.

De­liv­er­ing a de­ci­sion af­ter sub­mis­sions from lawyers for the com­pa­nies at the Wa­ter­front Ju­di­cial Cen­tre, yes­ter­day morn­ing, Jus­tice Frank Seep­er­sad up­held their ap­pli­ca­tion to reg­is­ter the award grant­ed by the World Bank’s In­ter­na­tion­al Cen­tre for Set­tle­ment of In­vest­ment Dis­putes (IC­SID) in 2019.

The ap­pli­ca­tion came less than a year af­ter the com­pa­nies were al­lowed by Jus­tice Seep­er­sad to reg­is­ter a sep­a­rate US$1.3 bil­lion ar­bi­tra­tion award grant­ed by the In­ter­na­tion­al Cham­ber of Com­merce (ICC) against Venezue­lan State-owned en­er­gy com­pa­ny Petroleos de Venezuela SA (PDVSA) in April 2018.