Energy & Infrastructure

Locke Lord has one of the premier energy transactional practices in the United States and represents a wide range of industry clients in M&A and project development activities. Our work also includes a broad array of commercial and operational agreements.

In addition, our lawyers are extremely active in private equity transactions and fund formation engagements. We frequently represent private equity clients with interests in the energy industry, including funds, management teams, buyers, sellers and lenders, in all aspects of buyouts, portfolio company operations and strategic initiatives and exit transactions.

Locke Lord’s energy regulatory team is composed of skilled practitioners with decades of experience in federal and state regulation of the energy industry, including natural gas, product and oil pipelines, electricity, power plant and transmission facilities, and other energy infrastructure assets. Our lawyers regularly represent energy clients before administrative and regulatory authorities, including the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, Department of Energy, Public Utility Commission of Texas and Railroad Commission of Texas.

Lawyers in our energy litigation group handle virtually every kind of energy-related dispute, both domestic and internationally. Our lawyers routinely handle investigations, contested administrative hearings, arbitrations, lawsuits, appeals and other conflicts involving:

• Accounting
• Antitrust
• Breach of contract
• Employment
• Environmental
• Failure to develop
• Gas processing
• Indemnity
• Injury to reservoir
• Joint venture
• Patent and copyright infringement
• Pipeline
• Personal injury
• Regulatory
• Royalty
• Severance tax
• Trade secrets
• Trespass
• Securities
• Take or pay
• Wrongful death issues

Locke Lord serves some of the world’s leading financial institutions as well as a variety of regional and local banks and direct lenders, including private equity and hedge fund investors, in their many roles as arrangers of syndicated and club credits, lenders, issuers of letters of credit and investors. We also advise some of the industry’s major public and private borrowers and issuers, sponsors, many mid-size and smaller companies and businesses, and individuals. Our energy finance professionals have experience across the entire energy finance spectrum, including upstream, midstream, downstream, exploration and production, refining, storage, oilfield services, power, chemicals and renewables.

We are experienced with the full range of secured and unsecured financing arrangements, including:

• Syndicated and single lender credit facilities, including revolving credit facilities, pro rata term loans and term loan A and term loan B structures
• Exploration and production financings, including reserve borrowing base credits
• Leveraged and acquisition financings
• Asset based financings
• Project financings
• Second-lien facilities
• Volumetric production payment financings
• Net profits interest financing
• Crude oil and natural gas prepayment arrangements
• Mezzanine and high-yield debt financings
• Debtor-in-possession financings
• Accounts receivable securitizations
• Multi-currency credit facilities