Interpreting GATS Schedules: Saudi Arabia and Crude Oil Energy Services

The world has become increasingly sensitive to the need to shift away from the utilization of crude oil and other fossil fuels. Nonetheless, the former continues to be a major contributor to the energy industry. Many crude oil-rich nations rely on foreign suppliers to provide them with production know-how and technology services within the ambit of the 1994 General Agreement on Trade in Services. While the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) contains several obligations of importance, the focus here is on the agreement’s market access and national treatment obligations. More narrowly, the Schedule of service sector commitments agreed to by Saudi Arabia, the world’s single largest crude oil exporter, is examined in the context of three important sectors essential to the crude oil industry. The examination is conducted through the lens of the basic interpretive principles articulated in and gleaned from the small handful of World Trade Organization (WTO) adjudicative decisions addressing the matter of GATS Schedule interpretation. This approach illustrates how those principles operate in the context of real language deployed in the actual Schedule of an important energy supplier. market access, national treatment, MA, NT, ‘bound’, ‘unbound’, ‘none’, horizontal, engineering, mining, construction, pipelines, Vienna Convention, CPC, Sectoral Classification, Article XVI, Article XX, Saudi Arabia