The General Licence and the Issuing Authority
The Law of Georgia on Oil and Gas regulates oil and gas operations through a system of licences, and the central figure of that system is the Agency. Under Article 15-1 of the law, the general licence for the use of oil and gas resources is issued by the Agency. The same principle is repeated at the level of activity licences: under Article 25-5, the activity licence is likewise issued by the Agency. For an investor this means that every administrative door is connected to a single authority, and it is the Agency’s decision that determines whether the project enters the implementation phase.
The general licence is not granted arbitrarily but on the basis of a contract: under Article 19, the Agency issues the general licence on the basis of the contract, within one month of its signature, and the conditions of the licence must be identical to the conditions of the contract. From this follows a practical rule: the text of the contract is not merely a commercial document — it is directly transformed into the conditions of the licence, which is why each of its provisions must be drafted with legal scrutiny. The investor pays a licence fee, and to participate in a tender or auction the applicant reimburses the costs of holding it in the manner established by the Agency. The licence fee is not compensated with compensation oil and gas.