Second edition of the Charter's Model Agreements

The aim of the Model Agreements is to facilitate project-specific talks by providing a neutral and non-prescriptive starting point for negotiations. In 2004, for example, they helped to provide a basis for negotiations between Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan on the trans-Caspian Aktau-Baku transport system, which would provide an additional export route for Kazakh energy resources through the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline.

The two Model Agreements are:

• a Model Intergovernmental Agreement (IGA) for state-to-state agreements
• and a Model Host Government Agreement (HGA) for agreements between an individual state and the project investors.

This second edition of the Model Agreements welcomed by the Energy Charter Conference in December 2007 includes an explanatory note which gives a brief account of the purpose, nature and structure of both Model Agreements.

Work on the second edition

Since 2005, the Legal Advisory Task Force chaired by the Secretariat has worked to revise and update the Model Agreements, in order to bring them into line with best international practice and to reflect as much as possible the interests of the different parties concerned. The Task Force is made up of senior legal experts from private practice and from industry. The provisional results of their deliberations were presented to a workshop in Brussels in October 2006.