Oil & Gas Companies in Crisis: Working with Lenders, Contractors, Suppliers, and Regulatory Agencies

MARCELLA BURKE is an energy lawyer and strategic advisor in the Houston and Washington DC offices of King & Spalding LLP. With a background in corporate upstream mergers and acquisitions, she counsels clients across the energy sector, including conventional oil and gas, hydraulic fracturing, renewables, and offshore wind on high stakes environmental and regulatory matters. Marcella served at the U.S. Department of the Interior as the Deputy Solicitor for Energy and Natural Resources, and Senior Counselor to the Assistant Secretary for Land and Minerals Management. In these roles, Marcella was lead counsel for BLM, BOEM, and BSEE. She oversaw all BLM, BOEM, and BSEE rulemakings and enforcement matters, and high-stakes, complex energy disputes. She served as Counsel to the Royalty Policy Committee and received appointments with the Regulatory Reform Task Force and as National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) team lead for all energy project approvals. In these roles, she worked closely with the Department of Justice, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the Office of Management & Budget’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA), and other federal agencies.

PETER HAYS is a partner and commercial oil and gas lawyer at King & Spalding in Houston, Texas. He represents companies and entrepreneurs in upstream, midstream, and downstream hydrocarbons transactions, including mergers and acquisitions, joint ventures, and project development. Pete practices both domestically and internationally, onshore and offshore. He is board certified in Oil, Gas and Mineral Law by the Texas Board of Legal Specialization. Midway through his private practice, he worked as the sole lawyer at a start-up oil and gas company, where he experienced the types of issues that often face oil and gas entrepreneurs, like financing, systems and compliance.

JASON A. HILL currently serves as the Deputy Solicitor for Energy & Mineral Resources. In this capacity he is the principle adviser to the Solicitor for issues that arise from energy and mineral resources law such as coal leasing, OCS oil and gas leasing, prototype oil shale leasing, geothermal resource leasing, onshore oil and gas leasing, other minerals leasing, renewable energy projects on federal land, administration of the Mining Law of 1872, royalty management, and implementation and enforcement of the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act of 1977. Prior to this role, Mr. Hill served as Senior Counselor to the Director of the Bureau of Land Management. Before joining the Administration, Mr. Hill served as a trial attorney with the Natural Resources Section of the Department of Justice's Environment and Natural Resources Division for a decade, where he defended a wide-range of cases challenging federal land management decisions, and developed an expertise litigating extractive mineral cases.  Prior to his work for the government, Mr. Hill practiced law for several private firms in Houston for seven years. Mr. Hill earned an LL.M. in Environmental and Natural Resources Law from Lewis & Clark College of Law, a J.D. from the University of Houston Law Center, and B.A. and M.E.S. degrees in Environmental Studies from Baylor University.

CHRIS RICHARDSON is a partner at Davis Graham & Stubbs in Denver, Colorado. He has worked with secured and unsecured creditors, debtors, and creditors’ committees in numerous Chapter 11 proceedings. He has also assisted clients and debtors in buying and selling companies out of Chapter 11, as well as reorganizing or liquidating debtor companies, and has represented purchasers of oil and gas assets in Chapter 11 Section 363 auctions in bankruptcy proceeding in Wyoming, Colorado, and Delaware. Mr. Richardson has lectured on acquisition agreements, deal structures, and debtor-creditor issues, including the impact of bankruptcy on environmental laws, lessor-lessee relationships in bankruptcy, bankruptcy current developments, and asset sales in a bankruptcy.