The Energy Charter Treaty is a multilateral teaty providing
legal/regulatory framework enabling trade, transit and efficiency in
energy products, materials and services. The Energy Charter Treaty
envisages energy market restructuring and provides legal safeguards to
investment, transit and trade of energy sources including oil, gas,
coal, uranium, electricity and renewable energy among the participating
states. The importance of ECT increases with the level of export and
import dependence of each participating states as is the case of most of
Asian countries. Ever increasing membership of ECT indicates its
effectiveness for protection of investment and facilitation of trade and
transit across borders. In a nutshell, the ECT has developed into an
international organization carrying considerable weight in facilitiation
of international energy trade and resolution of energy trade disputes.