Energy disputes — disagreements arising from contracts for generation, transmission, supply and infrastructure — are often high-value, technically complex and time-sensitive. The use of arbitration in this field in Georgia is regulated by the Law on Arbitration: the individual statutes of the energy sector contain no norms of arbitral procedure, so the referral of a dispute to arbitration, its conduct and security are governed precisely by that law. On this page we explain Articles 1, 17 and 18 of the law: which disputes are arbitrable and how the category of public-private partnership contracts is described, and how interim measures operate in high-value supply and infrastructure disputes.
Which Disputes Are Arbitrable (Article 1)
Under paragraph 2 of Article 1, the arbitration is competent to examine property disputes of a private nature based on the equality of persons, which the parties are able to settle between themselves. In the energy market this means that property claims arising from supply, procurement, service and technical cooperation contracts — unpaid amounts, contractual defects, quality disputes — are resolved through arbitration where an arbitration agreement exists. The next sub-paragraph of the same paragraph is particularly important: disputes connected with a public-private partnership contract provided for by the Law of Georgia on Public-Private Partnership are also subject to arbitration. For generation and transmission projects this category is the usual format: large infrastructure contracts in which a state party and a private investor take part are directly recognised by the law as arbitrable.
The practical consequence is that qualification starts from the content of the contract and the status of the parties. As a rule, a dispute between private operators falls directly within the competence of the arbitration, while contracts concluded under the law on public-private partnership are protected by a separate sub-paragraph. At the same time, make sure the arbitration agreement is valid and clearly formulated: in energy projects the contract package often spans many documents, and if the arbitration clause is unevenly distributed among them, the arbitrability of the dispute becomes a subject of separate argument.