The Legal Nature of Oil Concession Contracts Between Legal Jurisprudence and Islamic Law

Abstract

In order to achieve its development goals, some developing countries are forced to nationalize the foreign oil companies with which it has  concession contracts, so the companies resort to the arbitration to fulfill its  rights, which prompts  the arbitrators to make adaption to  these contracts and determining its legal nature, which oscillates between the national law, that  represents (the Government’s desire) and the international law, which represents (The foreign company’s desire), here the problem lies. So the problem of this study is the ambiguity of the legal nature of the oil concession contract, and its oscillation between the international and the national law. This resulted in ambiguity to determining the legal and judicial jurisdiction to rule the contract. This ambiguity made the task of the arbitrators difficult, and spread fears among the parties of  the contractual relationship, whereas the parties of the relationship (Government on the one hand, and foreign companies on the other hand) want to establish compatible legal and judicial systems. With the interest of both, to obtain the positive legal results from the contract. The importance of the subject is that the determining of the legal nature of such contracts affects the sovereignty of the hosting country of the foreign oil investments that wishes to nationalize its oil concession contracts to control its natural resources and wealth. Therefore, the aim of the study was to research of the contradictory trends of objective legal jurisprudence , regarding its adaptation to such contracts, which were limited to (administrative contracts - international contracts),  based on jurisprudential jurisprudence , arbitration and judicial precedents, which is the first goal, while the second goal is to know the concept of concession and its adaptation in the Islamic law.