Oil & Gas

Alston & Bird’s interdisciplinary team of attorneys combines extensive legal skills with in-depth business knowledge of the oil and gas industry to best serve your needs. Whether you are a major oil company or independent producer and refiner, a private equity sponsor or management team, a storage terminal facility or local distribution company, we have the experience to serve your legal needs. Our robust team provides you with strategic counsel on every aspect of the oil and gas supply chain, including upstream (exploration and production), midstream (transportation and storage), and downstream (distribution, fuels and lubricants, marketing and refining, retail and chemicals) and in litigation, transactions, corporate structuring, permitting, and tax-exempt financing.

Litigation 

Our oil and gas litigation attorneys represent clients as defendants and plaintiffs in environmental disputes. Our environmental oil and gas litigation team represents and advises oil and gas clients on the ever-changing regulatory landscape – particularly in California as state and local jurisdictions aggressively seek to regulate and, in some instances, eliminate oil and gas operations. We challenge improper regulatory actions at the state and local levels and defend your interests at both the trial and appellate levels in matters involving property damage, personal injury, and toxic tort claims. Our team also has a substantial track record of defending clients facing citizen suits from well-funded NGOs.

Transactions

We frequently represent public and private oil and gas companies and their equity sponsors on mergers, acquisitions, divestitures, restructurings, recapitalizations, joint ventures, unitizations, project design, development and operations, financings, and investments. We help you structure and finance projects, negotiate government agreements, and navigate project and construction contracts.

Regulatory

Alston & Bird’s Oil & Gas Team has cultivated strong working relationships with local, state, and federal regulators, enabling us to bring prompt, informed insight to your business decisions. We are nationally recognized and respected by industry peers as well as the regulators we work with. Our team’s knowledge, connections, and experience allow us to identify, develop, and execute strategies that others miss. Whether you need help securing necessary certifications and permits or advice on enforcement actions by federal and state environmental agencies, our lawyers bring their decades of experience to bear in advocating on your behalf.

Please follow the links provided for our representative experience in:

Commercial Litigation
Environmental Litigation
Transactions
Regulatory

Environmental Litigation

• Lead trial counsel in securing a victory for an oil and gas company headquartered in Bakersfield, CA, when the court of appeal affirmed a defense judgment in the company’s favor stemming from a lawsuit filed by several environmental groups against the State of California seeking to revoke permits that were issued to the company for over 200 new wells in the South Belridge Oil Field. AIR v. California Department of Conservation.
• Represented Sentinel Peak Resources in a lawsuit against the City of Los Angeles involving one of its oil and gas production sites in the city. The case was dismissed as part of a re-permitting of the site. Sentinel Peak Resources California LLC v. City of Los Angeles, L.A. Superior Court, No. BS 173410.
• Lead appellate counsel in a case where the Eleventh Circuit unanimously held that district courts are authorized to grant pipeline companies injunctive relief to immediately access properties for Natural Gas Act pipeline constructions upon FERC’s approval. Transcontinental Gas Pipe Line Co. v. 6.04 Acres, 910 F.3d 1130 (11th Cir. 2018).
• Lead trial and appellate counsel for a pipeline company in litigation filed by property owners in Alabama, North Carolina, and Tennessee. The various matters arose from spills and releases from the company’s interstate pipeline that allegedly diminished the value of property and caused other injuries to the plaintiff property owners.
• Represented seven oil companies (responsible for generating around 90% of California’s oil production) as interveners defending a lawsuit brought by environmental organizations against the state oil and gas agency. The petitioners argued that the state’s implementation of a compliance schedule violated the Safe Drinking Water Act and sought the immediate shut-in of thousands of injection wells across the state. The trial court denied all claims, which was affirmed in full by the First District Court of Appeal. The California Supreme Court denied review. Center for Biological Diversity, et al. v. California Department of Conservations, et al.
• Representing the second-largest U.S. oil and gas company, along with certain impacted business partners and royalty owners, in a challenge to a countywide ballot initiative that would immediately prohibit well stimulation and the drilling of new wells and would impose a sunset date for the injection or impoundment of produced water. If implemented, the ballot initiative would have shut down all operations at the eighth-largest oilfield in California. The trial court held that the initiative was preempted by federal and state law and enjoined implementation. Chevron U.S.A. Inc., et al. v. County of Monterey, et al.
• Represented an oil and gas company headquartered in Los Angeles in a lawsuit challenging the issuance of drilling approvals for five exploratory wells that alleged that the approvals were issued in violation of CEQA. After a hearing, the court dismissed the claim without leave to amend in response to the company’s demurrer. Sierra Club v. California Department of Conservation, et al.

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Transactions 

• Represented a private equity fund in the approximately $1.6 billion sale of a midstream oil and gas company.
• Represented a privately held oil and gas company in its approximately $2.4 billion merger with an NYSE-listed oil and gas company, which included properties within the Permian Basin.
• Represented a midstream oil and gas company in the dissolution of a joint venture.

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Regulatory 

• Advised an oil and gas company headquartered in Inglewood, CA, in the implementation of a plan to consolidate oilfield operations to provide acreage for residential development.
• Advising an oil and gas company headquartered in Bakersfield, CA, in regulatory issues concerning drilling operations, well stimulation, injection, CEQA, and responding to state investigative orders.
• Advising an independent oil and gas company on several matters involving its facilities throughout California, including regulatory issues with regulating programs by the City of Los Angeles; California Division of Oil, Gas, and Geothermal Resources (DOGGR), now known as CalGEM; and U.S. Bureau of Land Management and U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service.
• Advising oil and gas producers and pipeline companies on the acquisition of environmental and land use approvals and compliance with release prevention and response laws, endangered species laws, and other regulatory programs affecting pipelines.

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