The firm is knowledgeable, responsive and can distill decades of experience into real world terms.
Chambers USA, 2024
Go-To Firm for Environmental Matters
Bracewell has one of the largest and most highly respected environmental practices in the United States. We were named a Law360 Environmental Group of the Year in 2020, and our practice and its lawyers are consistently ranked in the top bands in Chambers USA, Legal 500 US and other leading legal publications.
Our team combines legal and policy depth with knowledge in media relations and lobbying, all focused on energy, environmental and natural resources issues faced by companies across the United States. This comprehensive and holistic approach enables us to advise clients facing severe challenges that arise simultaneously in litigation, legislative debates, agency actions and public discourse. Air Liquide, Baker Hughes, Cheniere Energy, The Dow Company, Equinor and Kinder Morgan are some of the companies that regularly engage our team on environmental matters.
We provide a uniquely informed perspective based on decades of experience working at the forefront of issues facing companies in the oil and gas, refining, power generation and transmission, chemical, manufacturing, technology, mining and construction sectors. Team members include lawyers with extensive experience working in house at Fortune 100 companies, as well as lawyers who have served in the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the US Department of the Interior, the US Department of Justice (DOJ), the Army Corps of Engineers, the White House, the US Congress, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) and the US Attorney’s Office.
Clients turn to us for advice and guidance on policy matters at the top of the national agenda, including:
- offshore wind development
- renewable fuels standards
- regulation of greenhouse gases
- carbon capture utilization and sequestration (CCUS)
- Clean Water Act, Section 401 reform
- Infrastructure development
- NSR reform
- renewable energy policies
- hydrogen development
- onshore and offshore royalty disputes
- oil and gas leasing and decommissioning
- Chemical Safety Board reform
- NEPA reform
We handle regulatory matters for energy and energy-related companies before a myriad of federal agencies, including the Bureau of Land Management, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement, the Army Corps of Engineers, the Department of Energy (DOE), the Department of Transportation (DOT), Customs and Border Protection, the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA), the EPA, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), the Fish and Wildlife Service, the US National Park Service and the Surface Transportation Board.
In addition, our environmental litigation group — in collaboration with our market-leading white-collar defense, appellate and energy regulatory practices — handles some of the largest and most complicated environmental litigation matters in the nation. For example, we represented Halliburton in the federal criminal investigation that arose from the Deepwater Horizon explosion — perhaps the most significant criminal environmental investigation in a generation. More recently, we represented Kinder Morgan in connection with regulatory and litigation issues surrounding the development of the Permian Highway Pipeline, as well as RES in the negotiation and execution of an innovative fixed-price restoration agreement with Klamath River Renewal Corporation in connection with the largest dam removal in the United States.
