J William Rowley QC, Doak Bishop and Gordon Kaiser (eds), The Guide to Energy Arbitrations

Abstract

The first edition of this reference work was published in 2015. This second edition of The Guide to Energy Arbitrations is a welcome update to the literature on energy disputes. Once again, it primarily focuses on arbitration in the international oil and gas industry but adds some interesting new chapters. It has expanded with chapters on price revisions in long-term gas and LNG purchase agreements, Energy Charter Treaty disputes, renewable energy disputes, and offshore vessel construction disputes. There is a very good reason why there is a demand for such a book in the arbitration community. The energy sector is the biggest and most sophisticated user of international arbitration for the resolution of its commercial and investor state disputes. As the editors of this well-researched book proclaim: ‘It is the poster boy of arbitral liberalization.’ This Guide clearly illustrates that the oil and gas business has driven major growth in international arbitration over the last 50 years. Oil and gas arbitrations still make up the largest portfolio of international disputes in the caseloads of major arbitration institutions around the globe. The oil and gas sector has enormously complex, long-term, and capital-intensive projects in politically unstable regions of the world, which invariably result in enormously complex and difficult disputes. It is a rare international oil and gas agreement that does not use arbitration as its dispute resolution mechanism and very few of its disputes end up in national courts. As a result, the international energy sector is a natural user of international arbitration and in response, international arbitration devotes a lot of time on the energy sector. This book confirms that fact.