Naked Capitalism | 30 December 2025
Halliburton files ISDS suit against Venezuela for damages resulting from… US sanctions on Venezuela
by Nick Corbishley
Talk about making the victim pay…
On December 11, as the Trump administration was escalating its military campaign against Venezuela by trying to impose a total siege on the country’s oil and gas sector, the US oilfield services company Halliburton quietly filed a suit against Venezuela at the World Bank’s international arbitration court, ICSID.
Long-standing readers are well-versed on investor-state dispute settlements (ISDS), a topic we’ve covered in depth over the past decade or so. As Yves pointed out in a recent post on Russia’s decision to use ISDS to go after the EU’s attempts to permanently confiscate Russian assets, the judgments made in these dispute settlements overwhelmingly benefit investors:
What makes this case particularly pernicious is that a large part of the losses and foregone profits Halliburton is seeking to claw back stems from Washington’s economic sanctions on Venezuela. What’s more, the case was filed at the World Bank’s International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes, to which Venezuela has not even been party since 2012.
The move serves as a reminder of just how difficult it is for nation states to extricate themselves from the ISDS commitments established in many bilateral trade treaties, despite the clear threat they pose to national sovereignty. Latin America has been one of the most important sources of income for (mostly Western) corporations seeking legal damages against national governments, as well as their highly paid arbitration lawyers.
There is currently very little information available on the ISDS case filed by Halliburton. The following is an excerpt of a firewalled article published by the Global Arbitration Review that was translated into Spanish and posted by the Madrid-based legal firm Bullard Falla Excurra on its LinkedIn page (translated back into English by yours truly, emphasis also my own):
The arbitration is in its initial phase. Details regarding the specific claims and the exact amount claimed have not yet been disclosed. This case is one of seven pending ICSID arbitrations against Venezuela.
Halliburton was one of a number of US oil services companies that was forced to cease all operations in Venezuela in April, 2020 — not due to rules set by the Venezuelan authorities but rather to the first Trump administration’s ratcheting sanctions on the country.
Just over a year earlier, the US — and dozens of other countries — had recognised Juan Guaidó as Venezuela’s interim president. The next step was to make Venezuela’s economy scream as loud as possible.
As part of that mission, the US Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) prohibited US companies from any activity related to the drilling, refining, purchase, sale or transportation of Venezuelan crude oil. Companies were also forbidden from participating in the design, construction or installation of oil wells.
So, Halliburton, like all other US oilfield services companies, ceased its operations in Venezuela, packed up what it could and laid off its 400 local workers by email. The company indicated that any “assets” left behind would be “expropriated” by Venezuelan authorities.
A New Global Low?
Now, Halliburton is trying to hold Venezuela’s government responsible for any losses or foregone future profits incurred partly, or even largely, as a result of the US government’s actions. In so doing, it threatens to set a new global low — that of corporations seeking damages for lost business resulting from US sanctions, not from the US itself but from the sanctioned countries themselves.
The US’ sanctions against Venezuela, first launched in 2005, have already exacted a deadly toll on Venezuela’s economy, as Jeffrey Sachs and Mark Weisbrot documented in their 2019 CEPR study, “Economic Sanctions as Collective Punishment: The Case of Venezuela“:
Even more severe and destructive than the broad economic sanctions of August 2017 were the sanctions imposed by executive order on January 28, 2019 and subsequent executive orders this year; and the recognition of a parallel government, which as shown below, created a whole new set of financial and trade sanctions that are even more constricting than the executive orders themselves.
We find that the sanctions have inflicted, and increasingly inflict, very serious harm to human life and health, including an estimated more than 40,000 deaths from 2017 to 2018; and that these sanctions would fit the definition of collective punishment of the civilian population as described in both the Geneva and Hague international conventions, to which the US is a signatory. They are also illegal under international law and treaties that the US has signed, and would appear to violate US law as well.
Sachs and Weisbrot’s study was published in 2019. After that, the economic noose was further tightened under Trump 1.0, only to be loosened briefly by a Biden administration desperate to offset the surging global energy prices sparked by the war in Ukraine and the collective West’s subsequent endless rounds of sanctions on Russian energy.
Trump then reimposed the restrictions, and then some, in May:
Venezuela has, however, found ways to adapt to the economic asphyxiation, as Michelle Ellner points out for Venezuela Analysis:
Indeed, in part thanks to the Biden administration’s loosening of sanctions in 2023, Venezuela is now the fastest growing economy in South America, albeit from an extremely low base and with a triple-figure inflation rate:
It is precisely this endurance that the Trump administration is trying to break, notes Ellner:
In recent months, U.S. actions in the Caribbean Sea, including the harassment and interdiction of oil tankers linked to Venezuela, signal a shift from financial pressure to illegal maritime force. These operations have increasingly targeted Venezuela’s ability to move its own resources through international waters. Oil tankers have been delayed, seized, threatened with secondary sanctions, or forced to reroute under coercion. The objective is strangulation.
This is illegal under international law.
So too, of course, are the drone strikes allegedly being launched by the CIA against targets inside Venezuela with the help of Special Operations forces:
Interesting Timing
Now, to cap things off, it turns out that Halliburton, the company formerly headed by Dick Cheney that made serious bank from the US’s second war in Iraq, is suing Venezuela for the money it lost as a result of US sanctions on Venezuela — more than five years after the company was forced out of Venezuela by Washington’s own policies.
The delayed timing of the move speaks volumes. As the writer(s) of the La Tabla blog recently posited, the most likely scenario is that Halliburton is jockeying for position as a preferred creditor in the event of a change of government in Venezuela and/or an external takeover of the Venezuelan oil industry — an area in which Halliburton has plenty of form (machine translated):
For this reason, the ICSID claim is less like a legitimate legal claim and more like a calculated move upon the geopolitical chessboard. Halliburton seeks to capitalise on losses stemming largely from its nation’s foreign policy, while concealing a history of disregard for labour rights and war profiteering. Its case is a cynical reminder of how, in the geopolitics of oil, corporations shift their risks to sovereign states, rewriting history to evade their own responsibility and paving the way for future profits.
Suffice to say, if the Maduro government is toppled and replaced by a US-imposed Maria Corina Machado puppet regime, whatever Halliburton wants, it will get, including the money it feels it is owed — assuming said Machado regime is able to stay in power long enough.
The recent appearance of former CIA Director Mike Pompeo on FOX News certainly seems to support this thesis. In an interview just before Christmas, Pompeo named Halliburton as one of the companies that should help rebuild Venezuela’s oil industry once the US is able to reimpose a “capitalist model” on Venezuela.
Once again, US foreign policy under “Peace” President Trump has come full circle. The Gray Zone’s Wyatt Reed points out some of the parallels with the second Gulf War, during which time Cheney’s Halliburton not only feathered its nest but also tried to pass off more than $1.4 billion in “questioned” and “unsupported” charges onto the US government:
As… the lives of 1,000,000+ Iraqis and thousands of US troops were being claimed in a US war of choice launched on false pretences, Halliburton quickly set to work defrauding American taxpayers.
Within 2 years, Pentagon auditors found the company tried to pass off over $1.4 billion in “questioned” and “unsupported” charges onto the US government. The most vocal neocons may be gone from the Trump administration, but the game remains the same: massive profits for the chosen few, and endless resource wars for everyone else.
