Ancillary Energy-Related Services

PROBLEM SOLVING FOR ENERGY PROJECTS

Bright and Brown has wide-ranging experience handling a broad spectrum of issues that arise in connection with energy-related projects, including title opinions, permitting, regulatory compliance and phase I and phase II environmental assessment. Our attorneys understand the commercial aspects of the energy business and the technical aspects of environmental investigation and routinely work hand-in-hand with title companies, petroleum engineers, geologists, chemists, facilities engineers, drilling engineers, civil engineers, electrical engineers, and other engineering and earth science experts to successfully support the development, completion, operation, and termination of energy projects, such as undertaking oil and gas operations, acquiring, constructing, and operating electric generation and cogeneration facilities and acquiring, constructing, and operating pipelines.

Below are a few examples of successful results obtained for our clients with respect to ancillary energy projects:

  • Bright and Brown regularly undertakes title examination of properties proposed for oil and gas or energy development, providing legal opinions on record title ownership in circumstances in which no title insurance can be obtained.
  • Bright and Brown represented an independent oil company and worked in conjunction with the client’s engineering consultants to obtain one of the first aquifer exemption applications approved by the EPA following the EPA’s investigation of the underground injection control permitting practices followed by the State of California.
  • Bright and Brown represented a landowner in the assessment, remediation, and regulatory closure of a former oil and gas property. The historical investigation of the property revealed rare contaminants for which no federal or state cleanup levels existed. Bright and Brown worked with the client’s environmental engineer to develop and secure regulatory approval of proposed cleanup levels and a remediation methodology for the property. The property was remediated to permit and in fact was sold to a large residential developer for residential development.
  • Bright and Brown prepares site-specific environmental testing protocols tailored to resolve potential future disputes, including third-party expert certifications on findings and detailed arbitration procedures peculiar to the real property interests involved.
  • Bright and Brown routinely prepares access agreements and confidentiality agreements to facilitate environmental site investigations and energy-related property transactions.
  • Bright and Brown has served as outside counsel to the neutral engineer selected to determine tract allocation factors in a major unit arbitration between several major international oil companies and a city and the State of California, governing the distribution of hundreds of millions of dollars of oil revenues.
  • Bright and Brown has a number of reported appellate decisions affecting the energy and environmental sectors.

Call Bright and Brown today at 818-243-2121 or contact the firm online to schedule a consultation at our Glendale, California office.