The oil & gas business can’t function without lawyers. The oil-fields are booming and have perpetual needs for lawyers who:
- Understand how the oil and gas industry works
- Are able to recognize the legal issues that accompany day-to-day operations
- Can offer practical legal solutions for the industry’s problems and disputes
This seminar is Accredited for 11 CLE credits in Colorado, and submitted for CLE Accreditation in Louisiana and Texas
What You Will Learn
- The oil industry created and continues to use an extensive, unique, and colorful language that can confuse and impede those outside of the oil-patch. The most successful lawyers in this industry understand the business and its language and are able to identify legal issues that arise from the well-site to the gas pump. Clients gravitate toward lawyers that can speak their language and help them solve problems.
- Lawyers deal regularly with the major stakeholders in the oil and gas business. In addition to the industry itself, interested parties include landowners; developers; royalty owners; realtors; banks; local, state, and federal governments; foreign governments; regulatory agencies; non-governmental organizations; and shipping companies. Business men, accountants, economists, geologists, engineers, environmental scientists, public officials, and of course lawyers, make full time careers in the oil business. Others find themselves in positions to regularly and professionally interact with, and represent, people who do so.
- This short-course teaches oil industry business basics and terminology. It teaches concepts of exploration, production, and pipeline operations that are known by the majority of operating and business people in the oil industry. Knowing these basics will equip the lawyer to better negotiate and advocate for his or her client and more easily identify legal issues, opportunities, causes of action, and remedies. Areas of common legal disputes and “opportunities” are highlighted throughout the presentation.
- Oil companies often take varying and conflicting positions with respect to environmental protection, employment law, health and safety, use of independent contractors, risk taking, regulatory interpretation and legislative advocacy. Knowing how and why these positions are taken, and the legal risks associated with each position, help lawyers best serve their clients…whether those clients are part of the business or are in opposition to the industry. While knowing these business and legal rationales are crucial for lawyers representing the industry, lawyers fighting, regulating, or negotiating with the industry have to understand these rationales in order to optimally serve their clients.
- This course is taught by Lynn Bortka; a long-time engineer-turned-lawyer from Amoco and BP who has made a second career teaching a wildly popular version of this course to law students, practicing lawyers, and foreign lawyers at the University of Houston. The course will focus on attendee interaction to include pre-course attendee surveys in order to focus presentation materials. There will also be significant use of up-to-date web-based material in the course and participants will be able to revisit these sites for review, refreshment, and backup as a resource in their legal endeavors.
You Will Also Learn
- This course teaches oil industry business basics and terminology. It teaches basic concepts of exploration, production, pipeline operation and refining. The participants will acquire an appreciation of how the entire industry “works”, be able to identify legal issues that typically arise in numerous business disputes and opportunities, and be better prepared to assist his or her client with optimal legal solutions to those matters. Knowing this material will help you get clients…and keep them.
The full agenda is not yet available for this event.
Follow this event to receive an alert when the agenda becomes available.
Seminar Agenda
Tuesday, July 22, 2014
7:30 - 8:00 am: Registration and Continental Breakfast
8:00 am: Overview, Structure & Operation of Oil & Gas Corporate Legal Departments…- ”Who does what in-house”
- How much do they do?
- Legal decision making in O&G companies
Why lawyers need to speak O&G: You can’t work in a steak house if you don't know a sirloin from a chuck steak. Where the clients are … why they need you … where you have to be
8:40 am: Geology Petroleum Traps and Reservoirs- Don’t get sloppy with contract language
- Who owns what? … (beneath your feet)
- Don’t give it away
9:15 am: Ten Minute Break
9:25 am: The Players…and Their Liabilities- The business would die without independent contractors…
- And out-house lawyers
- Types of drilling contracts
- Operating agreements: Who gets to lead and when to be a follower
- Partnerships?...Really?
- Who takes the blame when things go wrong
- Indemnity - part I
10:15 am: Drilling- The Wild Part of the Business- Types of drilling contracts: Plusses and minuses
- Hydrostatic pressure: The giant awaits
- How drilling works
- Negligent acts that accompany the drilling process
- Blowouts – there are no accidents – who’s to blame?
10:45 am: Ten Minute Break
10:55 am: Completions: Cementing, Perforating, and Fracing --- AKA Lawyers’ Retirement Funds?- How it happens
- What goes wrong…and what do ask in depositions
- Is it fracing….or fracking? Why lawyers care
- Does fracing pollute the groundwater? If so, how? Who’s to blame?
12:00 pm: Group Lunch
1:15 pm: Marketing the Deal- Be creative – your client will love it
2:00 pm: From the Rock to the Surface - Drive mechanisms
- Life of O&G reservoirs
- Artificial lift
- Secondary & tertiary recovery (water-flooding & carbon dioxide floods) and a whole new universe of legal problems
2:50 pm: Ten Minute Break
3:00 pm: Pumps & Compressors- Why lawyers should care
3:45 pm: Use of Trial Exhibits – Case Studies
4:10 pm: Ten Minute Break
4:20 pm: At the Surface - What goes where? How does it happen?
- Royalty owners (often) get 1/8th…but of what?
- Kind of depends on how you wrote the contract
- Getting rid of the bad stuff…like salt water and poisonous gasses
- Water disposal leases
- Help your client make (or save) money disposing of the bad stuff
- How clean is clean?
- Pits and leaks and spills….oh my!
5:30 pm: End of Day One
5:30 – 5:45 pm: Traditional Post-Class Arguments with the Instructor Wednesday, July 23rd, 2014
7:30 am: Continental Breakfast, Regroup and Legal Arguments from Day One
8:00 am: What’s It Worth?- Write better contracts when you know what your client is selling
- Hydrocarbons: good ones….and not-so-good ones
- Is it an oil well or a gas well … and how the lawyer can make a difference
- A little bit of chemistry
- Barrel oil equivalents…and what they’re worth
- NGLs, LNGs, and LPGs
- What about ethane? Don’t let your client lose money (like many others have done)
9:15 am: Ten Minute Break9:25 am: Oil Company Records – Get Ready for the Depositions- A gold mine for lawyers in-the-know
- Document retention…how it really works
- What’s hidden in the attic
- Notebooks and day planners
- Well files
- Field & reservoir studies
- Special reports
- Where do the documents go after a merger or acquisition?
10:00 am: Gas Processing and Distillation- Help your client maximize revenue – it’s worth more as a liquid
- Gas plant ownership and operation
- Historical contamination below gas plants
- What’s going on in those towers?
- Super-cooling stuff…like Walt Disney (and Michael Jackson?)
10:45 am: Ten Minute Break
10:55 am: Pipeline Operations Gathering Systems, Transportation Lines, and Local Distribution Companies- Repair v replace…at what point is this (gross) negligence?
- Right of way Agreements
- Safety and mechanical Integrity
- Legal issues regulation
- Who has legal jurisdiction?
12:00 pm: Group Lunch and Arguments with Lynn Bortka
1:15 pm: Forced cessation of arguments with Lynn Bortka
1:16 pm: More Pipelines- Interconnects
- Receipt & delivery points
- Backhauls
- Compressor operations
- Straddle gas plants…picking off the leftovers
1:50 pm: O&G Storage, Transportation, Exchange, and Marketing- Salt Caverns and depleted reservoirs
- Storage and trading hubs – are these ‘contracts’ legal?
2:15 pm: Ten Minute Break
2:25 pm: Indemnity, Part II- Anti oil-field indemnity statutes
- Negotiating the indemnity clause
3:00 pm: Safety- Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s (OSHA’s) oversight in the oil-field
- When, if ever, the operator is responsible for the safety of its contractors
- Formation & use of company safety policies
- Reporting of significant incidents
3:30 pm: Environmental- A review of the legal breaks, loopholes, “distinctions” enjoyed by the O&G business
- Carbon sequestration
- How the definition of “Waters of the U.S.” impacts the O&G business
- Groundwater contamination
- Oil-company-drilled water wells
4:00 pm: Ten Minute Break
4:10 pm: Risk Matrices…All the Rage- How and why they are used
- How they are built
- Legal liabilities are everywhere you look…once you know what you’re looking for
4:55 pm: Mexico…Coming Soon!- Quasi-privatization of the upstream business?
- Offshore opportunities
- Eagle-Ford shale development opportunities for lawyers and their clients
5:30 pm: End of Day Two5:31 pm Thru ???: Bantering and Cajoling
Venue
The venue is not yet available for this event.
Follow this event to be informed when the venue is available and stay informed on other changes.
Who Should Attend this Seminar
- Attorneys - Especially Those New to the Industry
- In House Counsel
- Paralegals
- Regulators, Lawmakers and Their Staff
- Landmen
- Support Staff for Any of the Above
Prerequisites and Advance PreparationNone
Program LevelBasic level. This fundamental course begins with basic material and then proceeds to the intermediate level.
Delivery MethodGroup-live.
Hotel and Seminar Information
The seminar will start promptly at 8:00 AM and will finish at 5:30 PM on the first day. On the second day, the seminar will resume at 8:00 AM and will finish at 5:30 PM. The program includes continental breakfast, lunch, and coffee breaks. Dress is casual for all seminars.
Denver Magnolia Hotel818 17th Street
Denver, CO 80202
Telephone: (888) 915-1110
View Seminar Location WebsiteThe room rate is $209.00 single or double plus applicable taxes.
To reserve your room, please call the hotel directly at 303.607.9000 and be sure to indicate that you are attending the Kinetic event to receive the group rate. Please make your reservations prior to June 27, 2014 as there are a limited number of rooms available at the conference rate.
