William P. Utt
Analyst · Vertical Research.
Well, we kind of watch this with great interest, as do you, and it's really interesting. And for us, I'm trying to temper my comments a bit, in that when you enter into a contract with a branch of a sovereign government that's part of NAFTA and as part of the contract, it has a dispute resolution that gets to both parties accepting international arbitration. And having completed the project with our disputes, we followed the contract to go to international arbitration. We get a ruling that is obviously very favorable for KBR. And then the customer starts forum-shopping in Mexico to find a court, any court that might allow them to overturn the contract and, in their mind, void the entirety of the contract including the international arbitration after the international arbitration has taken place. So we kind of watch this and we understand what they're doing and why, but it really borders on just trivializing the whole status of the country as a place where it's good to do business. Now we've had our district court finding that was -- that affirmed the arbitration award. It went to the appellate court. The appellate court said they want the first court now to consider PEMEX's actions after the arbitration, after the first court made its ruling, to see if it has any impact on the initial ruling by the first court. We think that the court will take a look at the award, which they, in the first case, deemed it to be enforceable. We don't believe there is a strong basis for the first court to reverse its initial ruling, and I think they will affirm the initial ruling that the order was enforceable or is enforceable. It will be appealed again back to the appellate court. The appellate court will say, "Thank you for your ruling." And we expect the appellate court to dismiss this and get it back to -- and allow us to get the monies that we were awarded through the international arbitration, which are supported by a bond posted by our customer in the New York courts. That being said, we think the issues that are in front of us today are relatively rifle-shot issues. We are optimistic that we will get this resolved during 2012 and put this -- the saga behind us. But it's been something to watch, to see an entity of a sovereign government try to void a contract that it entered into willingly, which included provisions for international arbitration, and try to void the contract after the arbitration award has been made. So a little bit on a soapbox, but yes, we think we'll get it done later this year. It's our expectation.