Program Chair
KEITH B. HALL is the Campanile Charities Professor of Energy Law at Louisiana State University, where he serves as Director of the Mineral Law Institute and as Director of the John P. Laborde Energy Law Center. He teaches Mineral Rights, Civil Law Property, International Petroleum Transactions, and Energy Law & Regulation. His publications have focused on oil and gas leases, pooling and unitization, hydraulic fracturing, induced seismicity, and the management of produced water. He is co-author of three books on oil and gas law. These include a national casebook on oil and gas law, a book on legal issues relating to hydraulic fracturing, and a book on International Petroleum Law and Transactions. In addition to teaching at LSU, Professor Hall has taught energy law classes as a visiting professor at Baku State University in Azerbaijan, as a visiting professor at the University of Pittsburgh, and as an adjunct professor at Loyola School of Law. Before joining the LSU faculty, he practiced law at a major firm in New Orleans for sixteen years, and before that he worked for eight years as a chemical engineer in the petrochemical industry. He serves on the Trustees Council of the RMMLF, the Executive Committee of the Energy & Mineral Law Foundation, the Education Advisory Board of the Association of International Petroleum Negotiators, and as Editor-in-Chief of the Institute for Energy Law’s Oil & Gas E-Report.
Faculty
OWEN L. ANDERSON is a RMMLF life Honorary Trustee, former Board member, former Treasurer, and an awardee of the Clyde O. Martz Professorship. He is a Distinguished Oil & Gas Scholar at the University of Texas School of Law, Co-Academic Director of the Kay Bailey Hutchison Center for Energy Law & Business at the University of Texas, and is the Eugene Kuntz Chair in Oil, Gas, & Natural Resources Emeritus and George Lynn Cross Research Professor Emeritus at the University of Oklahoma College of Law. He is an Honorary Senior Fellow at the University of Melbourne Faculty of Law and an Honorary Lecturer and Principal Researcher for the Centre for Energy, Petroleum and Mineral Law and Policy at the University of Dundee. He served as Fulbright Scholar at the University of Sao Paulo in 2019. He has authored or co-authored over 100 articles, several books, and treatises on water law and domestic and global petroleum law, including International Petroleum Law and Transactions (RMMLF 2020), A Student’s Guide to Estates in Land and Future Interests (Carolina Acad. 2020), Cases and Materials on Oil and Gas Law (West Acad. 7th ed. 2018 and six prior editions), Oil and Gas Law and Taxation (West Acad. Hornbook 2017), the updates to Kuntz on Oil and Gas Law (Matthew Bender, since 1995), and Texas Law of Oil and Gas (LexisNexis Matthew Bender, since 2019). He is Editor in Chief of the Texas Title Standards, a trustee of the Energy and Mineral Law Foundation, a member of the Academic Advisory Board of the Institute for Energy Law, and a member of the Legal Committee of the Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission. He is a member and former Vice President of the Association of International Petroleum Negotiators (AIPN), form and style editor of AIPN model contracts, and founding member of the Editorial Board of the AIPN-Oxford University Journal of World Energy Law and Business. He is a faculty advisor to the Texas Journal of Oil and Gas Law and the Oil and Gas, Natural Resources and Energy Journal (ONE J). Professor Anderson served as an international legal advisor for petroleum issues in the Commercial Law Development Program of the U. S. Department of Commerce and has lectured at numerous universities and venues on six continents and throughout the United States. He a life member of the Uniform Law Commission, a member of the American Law Institute, a member of the Texas, Oklahoma, and North Dakota bars, and a consultant and arbitrator on oil and gas law and policy.
JOHN S. DZIENKOWSKI is the John F. Sutton, Jr. Chair in Lawyering and the Legal Process and a Professor of Law at the University of Texas School of Law in Austin, Texas. John is a summa cum laude graduate of the University of Miami with a Bachelor of Business Administration and a high honors graduate of the University of Texas School of Law. While in law school, John served as the Editor-in-Chief of the Texas Law Review and received the honors of a member in the UT Chancellors and the Order of the Coif. He served as a judicial law clerk for Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Joseph Sneed (1983-84) and for District of Massachusetts Judge Robert Keeton (1984-85). John began his teaching career at Tulane Law School in New Orleans and joined the Texas faculty in 1988. He has been a visiting professor at several law schools around the country. John teaches and writes in the areas of professional responsibility of lawyers, real property, international energy transactions, and oil and gas taxation. He also was the recipient of the Texas Exes Faculty Teaching Award at the Law School in 2005. John is a four-term member of the drafting committee of the Multistate Professional Responsibility Examination. John has authored and edited numerous books and articles on a variety of legal ethics and natural resource topics. John is the long-time co-chair (with Bob Peroni) of the bi-annual Parker Fielder Oil and Gas Taxation Conference, co-sponsored by the University of Texas School of Law and the Internal Revenue Service.
MONIKA U. EHRMAN is Associate Professor of Law at the University of North Texas at Dallas College of Law. Prior to joining UNT Dallas in Summer 2021, she was Professor of Law and Faculty Director of the Oil & Gas, Natural Resources, and Energy Center (ONE C) at the University of Oklahoma College of Law, where she led the energy program. Her scholarly interests are in the areas of natural resource and oil and gas real property issues; the intersection between law and energy technology; and energy policy. Her teaching courses have included Property, Oil & Gas Law, Remedies, Oil & Gas Contracts, International Petroleum Transactions, Negotiations, and Water Law. Prior to teaching, she served as general counsel of a privately held oil and gas company in Dallas; senior counsel with Pioneer Natural Resources; and associate attorney at Locke Lord LLP in its Energy Litigation and Corporate Energy practice groups. Before law school, Professor Ehrman worked as a petroleum engineer in the upstream, midstream, and pipeline sectors of the energy industry. In addition to her technical experience, she also worked as an analyst in the areas of commodity risk management and energy trading. In 2019, Professor Ehrman was appointed to the Board of Directors for Matador Resources Company, where she sits on the Audit, ESG, and Operations and Engineering Committees. She is active with the Rocky Mountain Mineral Law Foundation, the Institute for Energy Law, and the Association of International Petroleum Negotiators, where she was most recently the Vice President Education. Professor Ehrman received her B.Sc. in Petroleum Engineering from the University of Alberta; J.D. from SMU Dedman School of Law; and Master’s in Law from Yale Law School. During law school, she was Research Assistant to Professor John Lowe at SMU and to the Yale Center for Environmental Law & Policy.
BURKE GRIGGS teaches property and natural resources law at the Washburn University School of Law in Topeka, Kansas. He specializes in American water law. Prior to joining the Washburn faculty, Professor Griggs practiced in both the public and private sectors. As an assistant attorney general, he represented the State of Kansas in federal and interstate water matters, most prominently Kansas v. Nebraska, an original action to enforce the Republican River Compact. Professor Griggs also served as lead counsel for Kansas in the negotiations over the Kickapoo Tribe reserved water rights settlement, the first of its kind in Kansas. Outside of the litigation arena, Professor Griggs has advised Kansas’s natural resources agencies on matters of law and policy. He is an affiliated scholar with the Woods Institute for the Environment and the Bill Lane Center for the American West, both at Stanford University. One of his articles, Water: Practical Challenges and Legal Rights to Acquire and Recycle Water for Hydraulic Fracturing, was selected for publication in 56 Rocky Mtn. Min. L. Fdn. J. 69-109 (2019).
COLIN HARRIS has over 25 years’ experience helping clients in litigation, enforcement and regulatory matters arising under environmental, pipeline safety, and public lands statutes. As recognized by the top lawyer ranking service (Chambers and Partners USA), Colin’s “strong reputation in the oil and gas space” is why leaders in the upstream, midstream, and downstream industry consistently select him to meet environmental-related challenges and capitalize on 21st century opportunities. Colin’s air quality experience includes groundbreaking cases, such as EPA national enforcement initiatives, methane regulation, permit appeals, novel injunctive relief claims, Indian Country disputes, and he represents a major oil and gas company in precedent-setting climate change litigation. He advises oil and gas, utility and other clients in wide-ranging Clean Air Act matters throughout the Inter-Mountain West. Colin’s Clean Water Act and Oil Pollution Act experience includes high-profile pipeline rupture incidents, and he is a recognized leader in PHMSA compliance and litigation for the pipeline industry. His diverse practice includes complex issues in mining, manufacturing, agriculture, and other industries. Colin recently settled two natural resource damages cases for significantly less than government demands, and his remediation experience includes legacy liabilities at Superfund-listed mining sites from Missouri to Colorado and the West Coast. He is a battle-tested litigator able to combine his substantive environmental and industry knowledge with skilled advocacy, and he has a proven track record of negotiating extremely favorable settlement terms for his clients in penalty and injunctive relief enforcement cases. Colin’s environmental law policy, compliance and enforcement know-how, energy and climate change experience, and board room counseling acumen, helps clients navigate the turbulence and opportunities presented by the “E” in Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) issues. Colin treats every client as the only client.
BRUCE M. KRAMER received his B.A. in International Relations from UCLA in 1968, his J.D. from the UCLA School of Law in 1972 and an LL.M. in Environmental and Natural Resources Law from the University of Illinois College of Law in 1975. From 1974 through his retirement at the end of 2006 he taught at the Texas Tech University School of Law. He is now the Maddox Professor of Law Emeritus. From 2007 through the present, he is of counsel to the Texas-based law firm of McGinnis, Lochridge & Kilgore. He has taught at Colorado University School of Law from 2008-2018. He is the co-author of several treatises including The Law of Pooling and Unitization, Williams & Meyers Oil and Gas Law (since 1996), Cases and Materials on Oil and Gas Law and International Petroleum Transactions. He is also the author of numerous law review articles in the field of oil and gas law. His works have been cited by numerous state and federal courts over the past 35 years. He is an honorary trustee of the RMMLF, a member of the Institute for Energy Law of the Center for American and International Law, and a trustee to the Energy and Mineral Law Foundation.
CHRISTOPHER KULANDER is a professor of law at South Texas College of Law – Houston and Director of the school’s Harry L. Reed Oil & Gas Law Institute. At South Texas, he teaches courses covering oil and gas, energy, and property law. He received his J.D. from the University of Oklahoma, where he was managing editor for the Oklahoma Bar Mineral Law Newsletter and note editor and assisting managing editor for the American Indian Law Review. Before teaching, Professor Kulander practiced full-time for four years in the Houston office of Haynes and Boone LLP within the Energy Practice Group, focusing on energy lending, finance, and bankruptcy. Prior to that, he practiced with Cotton & Bledsoe in Midland, Texas, focusing on oil and gas title and leasing. Before law school, he received his B.S. and M.S. in geology from Wright State in Dayton, Ohio, and his Ph.D. in geophysics (petroleum seismology) from Texas A&M, after which he worked as a geophysicist for the U.S. Geological Survey. He has written and published in the fields of oil and gas law, land use control, American Indian law as well as in geology and petroleum seismology.
PATRICK H. MARTIN is Campanile Professor of Mineral Law, Emeritus, at Louisiana State University Law Center. Professor Martin taught at the LSU Law Center from 1977 to 2011, including courses in Jurisprudence, Contracts, and Mineral Law. From 1982 to 1984, he served as the Commissioner of Conservation for the State of Louisiana. Professor Martin holds the B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. degrees from Louisiana State University and the J. D. degree from the Duke University Law School. His publications include Pooling and Unitization (with B. Kramer) and Williams & Meyers Oil and Gas Law (update and revision author with B. Kramer) and three casebooks, Jurisprudence: Text and Readings on the Philosophy of Law (with Christie & MacLeod), Oil and Gas Cases and Materials (with Kramer, Hall, Righetti & Schremmer) and Economic Regulation: Energy, Transportation and Utilities (with Pierce and Allison, 1980) as well as numerous articles on oil and gas law, energy regulation, and early modern English history. McFarland & Company, Inc., published his Elizabethan Espionage: Plotters and Spies in the Struggle Between Catholicism and Crown, in 2015. Professor Martin has served as an arbitrator, mediator, and consultant in the oil and gas industry.
JUDITH M. MATLOCK is a partner in the Energy Group of the Denver law firm of Davis, Graham & Stubbs LLP. For over thirty-five years she has represented companies in the oil and gas industry. Her practice has emphasized the post-production side of the business. She is involved in all aspects of the gathering, transportation, processing, fractionation, and marketing of natural gas, liquids, and crude oil and represents producers in connection with the calculation, payment, and reporting of royalties and production taxes. Her practice also includes public utility law involving both gas and electric utilities. She has been involved in numerous public utility proceedings involving the acquisition of gas-fired electric generation for base load and peaking needs and to backup intermittent renewable energy resources and is currently representing natural gas interests in Public Service Company of Colorado’s clean energy plan that must achieve an 80% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030. She received her undergraduate degree (B.A. 1979) from the University of Colorado at Denver and her law degree (J.D. 1982) from the University of Colorado at Boulder. She is a member of Phi Beta Kappa, Order of the Coif, and the Denver, Colorado, and American Bar Associations. She has been named in The Best Lawyers in America® (oil and gas) since 1995. She is an active participant in the RMMLF and has served on the Executive Committee, co-chair of the Special Institutes Committee, chair of the RMMLF scholarship committees, program chair for several RMMLF special institutes and short courses and was the program chair for the 2010 Annual Institute. In 2020 she became an honorary trustee of RMMLF. She is a frequent lecturer and writer on energy topics including over a dozen institute papers for the RMMLF, and numerous other papers for various oil and gas associations.
GREGORY J. NIBERT is a partner in Hinkle Shanor LLP in Roswell, New Mexico. He received a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of New Mexico in 1980 and received a Juris Doctor degree, cum laude, from Pepperdine University in 1983. He was Editor in Chief of the Pepperdine Law Review for 1982-83. He was named as Lawyer of the Year in 2015 by the New Mexico Bar Section on Natural Resources, Energy and Environmental Law, and has been listed in The Best Lawyers in America since 1993 and Chambers USA America’s Leading Lawyers for Business since 2005. Greg is a former Trustee and Treasurer of the Rocky Mountain Mineral Law Foundation and a past president of the Independent Petroleum Association of New Mexico. He is a former Chaves County Commissioner and currently serves as a State Representative in the New Mexico Legislature. Greg serves on the Executive Board of The Energy Council, representing the State of New Mexico, and is a Uniform Law Commissioner.
ROBERT J. PERONI is the Fondren Foundation Centennial Chair for Faculty Excellence and a Professor of Law at the University of Texas School of Law in Austin, Texas. His research and teaching interests are in the areas of federal taxation (including natural resource taxation and international taxation), law and economics, and professional responsibility and legal ethics. He is a frequent speaker at academic conferences and continuing legal education programs throughout the country. Bob is the recipient of awards for outstanding law school teaching at Tulane, George Washington University, and the University of Texas. He has written extensively, having authored or co-authored numerous articles and books, including, with Anderson, Dzienkowski, Lowe, Pierce, and Smith, the most recent edition of Hemingway’s treatise on Oil and Gas Law and Taxation (published by West Academic Publishing in 2017). He earned a BSC from DePaul University; a JD from Northwestern University; and an LLM (in Taxation) from New York University. He was a Professor-in-Residence, Internal Revenue Service, Office of Chief Counsel, Washington, D.C., 1985-86. He is also the co-chair (with John Dzienkowski) of the bi-annual Parker Fielder Oil and Gas Taxation Conference and is the long-time academic co-chair of the Annual Institute on Current Issues in International Taxation. Bob also is the long-time Vice-Chair and Academic Liaison of the Foreign Activities of U.S. Taxpayers Committee of the ABA Section of Taxation, a long-time member of the planning committee for the Tulane Tax Institute, and a Fellow of the American College of Tax Counsel.
JOSEPH A. SCHREMMER teaches courses on oil and gas, property, business, and commercial law at the University of New Mexico School of Law. He primarily writes about oil, gas, and mineral law and property rights in the subsurface of land. His articles have appeared in the Washington Law Review, the University of Colorado Law Review (forthcoming), the Utah Law Review, the University of Kansas Law Review, and the Journal of Legal Education (forthcoming), among others. Schremmer joined the law faculty in 2019 following six years in private practice with small firms. Among many other areas of civil practice, Schremmer maintained a comprehensive oil and gas practice, representing numerous producers and royalty owners in litigation and transactional matters. He also served as general counsel for a privately held oil and gas exploration, production, and service company. He is a past president of the Oil, Gas, and Minerals Section of the Kansas Bar Association. Before becoming a lawyer, Joe worked in a variety of jobs in the oil and gas industry in Kansas, where he was born and raised. He previously taught as an adjunct professor at the University of Kansas School of Law, teaching oil and gas law, and Washburn University School of Law, teaching environmental regulation of the oil and gas industry and mineral title examination. Schremmer was honored by the graduating class of Washburn Law as the 2019 adjunct professor of the year.
SARAH SORUM is a shareholder with the Denver law firm of Welborn Sullivan Meck & Tooley, P.C. She handles a variety of transactional and operational matters and counsels industry clients on the leasing of state and federal property as well as applicable land use regulation and compliance issues. She has authored stand-up and sit-down title opinions covering fee, state, and federal minerals, and has also handled numerous acquisition title due diligence projects in the Rocky Mountain region. Sarah is licensed in Colorado, Wyoming, and North Dakota, and has represented clients before the Interior Board of Land Appeals and the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission. She is a graduate of the University of Washington and the University of Colorado School of Law.
JACQUELINE L. WEAVER is Professor Emerita at the University of Houston Law Center, where she held the A.A. White Professor of Law chair until her retirement in 2017. Her teaching and research interests cover oil and gas law, energy law and policy, international petroleum, and environmental and natural resources law. She is the co-author of the Smith & Weaver treatise on the Texas Law of Oil and Gas; Energy, Economics and the Environment (a casebook on U.S. energy, including FERC regulation of pipelines); and several books on international petroleum transactions, including International Petroleum Law and Transactions (2020 RMMLF). She has lectured on topics in international oil and gas in Africa (Uganda, Namibia, and Angola), Kazakhstan and India (as a Fulbright scholar), Lisbon, Beijing, and Bangkok. She has written articles on offshore safety after the Macondo disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, energy markets, sustainable development in the international petroleum industry, comparative unitization laws, energy policy, and traditional oil and gas law topics. Professor Weaver holds a B.A. in Economics from Harvard University and a J.D. degree from the University of Houston.
BRET WELLS is the Law Foundation Professor of Law at the University of Houston Law Center. He teaches and writes extensively in the fields and tax law and oil and gas law and has spoken at numerous continuing education conferences. He received his J.D. with honors from the University of Texas Law School and his B.B.A. summa cum laude from Southwestern University. He is licensed as a certified public accountant by the Texas State Board of Public Accountancy, and is a member of the Planning Council of the Tax Section of the Houston Bar Association, a member of the Board of Directors of the Houston International Tax Forum, and an Official Observer to the United Nations Committee of Experts on International Cooperation in Tax Matters