Stabilization Clause, Unilateral Variation of Terms and the Petroleum International Agreement

Abstract

The objective of this study is to highlight the multiplicity of scenarios regarding issues of stability and underscore certain stability stipulations in the contemporaneous application, and certain developments, which gives a great cause for concern to parties to Petroleum International Agreements (PIAs) Amongst which are the recurrent problem of the impossibility of performance occasioned by supervening circumstances and disequilibria in relationships occasioned by events, which render the possibility of performance onerous. The study found that pacta sunt servanda cannot apply in absolute terms when ranged against the consideration of sovereignty of the state party over the natural resources in situ within its territorial sovereignty. It concluded that it is inconceivable to have immutable PIAs whose terms are frozen in time and or incorporate stabilization clauses that are contrived to freeze the HC’s laws; or remove the PIA from the purview of the municipal law of the HC.