Energy and Environmental Law

Overview

Arent Fox provides legal services in the areas of international and domestic energy projects, infrastructure development and privatization and regulatory structures. Our clients include large multinational corporations, international financial institutions and foreign governments and governmental entities. We provide legal services for an array of energy-related transactions and regulatory proceedings and are particularly experienced in liquefied natural gas (LNG) projects and electric power generation and sales.

Liquefied Natural Gas

Arent Fox has counseled clients on LNG projects since the mid-1970's and is a leader in LNG project development. Services include:

• Structuring, negotiating, drafting and interpreting agreements for sales and ocean transportation.
• Financing.
• Plant construction and safety.
• Vessel construction, financing and chartering
• Receiving terminal arrangements.

Some representative LNG transactions include:

• Advising a national power generation company in India on LNG procurement and preparing a LNG sales contract for an international tender.
• Assisting a consortium of Japanese LNG suppliers in extending existing LNG sales contracts.
• Advising on ship construction contracts for a nine-ship El Paso LNG tanker fleet for Algeria-United States trade.
• Negotiating the financing for six LNG tankers using U.S. government-guaranteed financing.

Electric Power Generation and Sales

Arent Fox provides regulatory, transactional, adjudication-litigation, project development, financing, policy counseling and legislative legal services to clients in the electricity sector. Examples of representations include:

• Federal Energy Regulation Commission (FERC) Proceedings. Represented a municipal utility in numerous related FERC adjudications and investigations and federal court reviews of FERC decisions on wholesale energy market dysfunction and manipulation during the “Western energy crisis” of 2000-2001.
• Power Project Developers. Provided domestic and international legal services on the development, financing, licensing, permitting, construction, operation and maintenance of electricity power production projects, including alternative energy projects.
• Industry Restructuring. Counseled in investigations, proposals, legislation, and regulatory proceedings to restructure the electric utility industry. Issues included open access transmission, stranded investment, utility divestiture, independent system operators, generation market power and competitive pricing.
• Rate-related Proceedings. Participated in regulatory commission proceedings involving electric utility requests for rate increases and proposed “rate design-related” rate increases.
• Establishment of New Regulatory Agency. Reviewed existing laws, analyzed governmental policy proposals, worked with local officials and prepared draft legislation to create a new regulatory agency.
• International and Private Equity Investment Funds. Acted as outside counsel to a number of international private equity investment funds focusing on electric power generation.

Other Energy and Natural Resources Sectors

Arent Fox provides legal services to other energy-related sectors, including wind energy, biomass, coal, geothermal energy, hydroelectric power, natural gas and transportation and many others.

Environmental

Arent Fox provides counsel on broad spectrum of environmental questions, ranging from traditional regulatory and litigation areas of hazardous and solid waste management and cleanup, air and water pollution, workplace safety and health, insurance coverage, dangerous goods transportation and toxic torts, to emerging areas such as brownfields redevelopment, environmental justice, global environmental protection and biotechnology and agro-sciences regulation. We also litigate full scale jury trial multi party toxic tort suits and property damage cases, representing both plaintiffs and defendants. Services include:

Regulatory

• Chemical Regulation and Product Counseling. Assisting clients in bringing consumer, industrial and agricultural products to market.
• Environmental Justice: Counseling industry clients on avoidance of environmental justice suits, assisting in the development of corporate training programs and preparing comments on federal, state and local policy initiatives to incorporate environmental justice concerns in regulatory programs.
• Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). Assisting clients in OSHA rulemaking and enforcement proceedings, defending against alleged violations of safety standards and health-based permissible exposure limits.
• Hazardous Materials Shipment: Advising manufacturing, health services and retail companies on compliance with federal regulations and international standards applicable to the commercial transportation of dangerous goods by truck, rail and air.

Toxic Tort and Contamination Litigation

• Toxic Tort Litigation. Representing manufacturers in toxic tort cases involving exposure to contaminated groundwater, and landowners in civil litigation regarding damage to their properties caused by pollution.
• Asbestos-Related Actions and Counseling. Defending manufacturers in thousands of cases filed across the country alleging injury from exposure to asbestos-containing products.
• Superfund. Litigating major policy issues, including parent subsidiary liability, divisibility of cleanup costs, scope of contribution actions and liability of parties to recycling transactions.

Environmental Due Diligence and Real Estate Transactions

• Land Acquisition. Supervising environmental due diligence, negotiating voluntary cleanup agreements and assisting in the development of contractual provisions to protect buyers and sellers from incurring liability for existing site conditions.
• Brownfields. Developing legislation and negotiating agreements in numerous states involving brownfield redevelopment.

Insurance Coverage

• Defense and Indemnity Coverage Agreements. Negotiating agreements with insurers on payment of defense costs and reimbursement of cleanup expenses arising from contamination and products liability claims.
• Insurance Coverage Litigation: Litigating coverage disputes to obtain insurance payments for defense and indemnity of private and governmental environmental, toxic tort and product liability claims.
• Risk Management and Counseling: Providing risk management advice to clients on insurance products and policy language.