In Bacanora Lithium v. Mexico, the claimants, Bacanora Lithium Limited, Sonora Lithium Ltd., and Ganfeng International Trading (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., initiated arbitration proceedings against the United Mexican States under the auspices of the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID). The dispute, registered as ICSID Case No. ARB/24/21, concerns investments in the Sonora Lithium Project, a lithium extraction project in Mexico. The arbitral tribunal was formally constituted on January 13, 2025, and is composed of Eduardo Zuleta Jaramillo as President, with Donald Francis Donovan and Pierre Mayer serving as co-arbitrators. The tribunal held its first session with the parties via videoconference on March 11, 2025. Following this session, the tribunal issued several key procedural orders. Procedural Order No. 1, issued on March 28, 2025, establishes the primary rules that will govern the proceedings. It confirms that the arbitration will be conducted under the ICSID Arbitration Rules (2022), with Washington D.C. designated as the legal seat, and that proceedings will be bilingual in Spanish and English. The order sets forth a comprehensive procedural calendar with potential scenarios, including a unified phase or a bifurcated track depending on a potential request from the respondent. Procedural Order No. 2, issued on April 8, 2025, addresses transparency and confidentiality. This order clarifies the substantive legal framework, identifying the United Kingdom-Mexico Bilateral Investment Treaty (2007) and the China-Mexico Bilateral Investment Treaty (2009) as the applicable instruments. It establishes a detailed procedure for the publication of key documents, balancing transparency with the protection of confidential information. Following the submission of the Claimants' Memorial in April 2025, the Respondent filed a Request for Bifurcation on June 10, 2025, advancing five jurisdictional objections and one admissibility objection. In Procedural Order No. 3, dated August 25, 2025, the Tribunal rendered its decision on this request. After considering the parties' submissions, the Tribunal analyzed the Respondent's objections against the criteria set forth in Rule 44(2) of the ICSID Arbitration Rules. The Tribunal concluded that bifurcating the proceedings would not materially reduce the time and cost of the arbitration, nor would it dispose of a substantial portion of the dispute. It found that several of the objections were intertwined with the merits of the case and that considering them in a preliminary phase would not serve the interests of procedural efficiency. Consequently, the Tribunal rejected the Request for Bifurcation in its entirety and ordered the case to proceed in a single, unified phase. The dispute also has a parallel dimension in Canadian domestic courts. In a related case, Bacanora Minerals Ltd v Orr-Ewing (Estate), before the Court of King's Bench of Alberta, Bacanora sought to stay a domestic action concerning the validity of a gross overriding royalty on its former Mexican lithium properties. Bacanora argued the domestic case was effectively moot pending the outcome of the ICSID arbitration against Mexico, which was commenced on May 22, 2024, following the nationalization of the lithium industry. In a decision dated October 6, 2025, the Alberta court denied the stay, finding the legal issues were not duplicative and that the domestic litigation should proceed to be trial-ready, even if the trial itself might be scheduled to await the result of the ICSID proceeding.