Oil & Gas Lawyers Worldwide.

An Oil & Gas lawyer handles a distinct “food chain” of contracts that tracks the life of a barrel of oil. This starts with Mineral Leases to secure the right to drill, moves to Joint Operating Agreements (JOA) to split the massive costs between partner companies, and Drilling Services Contracts (like IADC forms) to hire the rig crews. Once production starts, they draft Gas Balancing Agreements to manage uneven sales between partners and Offtake Agreements to sell the crude to midstream transporters, ensuring every drop is legally accounted for from the ground to the refinery.

The legal focus shifts entirely based on where the oil is in the supply chain. Upstream law is heavily property-focused, dealing with mineral rights, land titles, and drilling permits to get the oil out of the ground. Midstream law changes to a regulatory game, focusing on “eminent domain” to seize land for pipelines and Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) tariffs to set transport prices. Downstream law is primarily consumer and environmental protection, managing the strict safety regulations for refineries and the commercial contracts for selling fuel to gas stations.

Drilling a single offshore well can cost over $100 million, so companies almost never do it alone; they form a consortium managed by a JOA. This contract is the rulebook for the partnership, designating one company as the “Operator” who makes the day-to-day decisions and others as “Non-Operators” who just pay the bills. It is critical because it defines exactly what happens if a partner runs out of money (a “Cash Call” default) or if the well causes a disaster, ensuring the Operator isn’t left holding the bag for the entire loss.

A lawyer fights to maximize the landowner’s “Royalty Interest,” which is a risk-free percentage of the gross revenue (typically 12.5% to 25% in the US), ensuring the oil company cannot deduct “post-production costs” like trucking or treating fees from your check. In contrast, a “Working Interest” gives you a share of the profit but forces you to pay a share of the drilling costs and liability. Lawyers generally advise individual landowners to avoid Working Interests because one dry hole or lawsuit could bankrupt a family, whereas royalties provide pure profit with zero financial risk.

Liability for oil spills is often “strict,” meaning the company pays for the cleanup even if they were not negligent, simply because the activity is inherently dangerous. Under the US Oil Pollution Act of 1990 (passed after the Exxon Valdez crash), the “Responsible Party” must pay for all removal costs plus damages to natural resources, which can be astronomical; for context, BP’s total costs for the Deepwater Horizon spill eventually topped $65 billion. In the UK, the “polluter pays” principle is equally enforced, with uncapped fines for companies that damage marine environments.

Yes, because a PSA is not a standard lease; it is a contract with a sovereign nation where the government retains ownership of the oil and you only get paid a share of production after your costs are recovered. A lawyer negotiates the “Cost Recovery Oil” limit—the percentage of oil you can sell to pay back your drilling expenses—and the “Stabilization Clause.” The Stabilization Clause is vital because it prevents the host government from changing its tax laws halfway through the 20-year project to suddenly take a bigger cut of your profits.

Oil reservoirs do not respect property lines, so “pooling” allows a lawyer to legally combine small neighboring tracts of land into one single drilling unit to meet government spacing requirements. “Unitization” is a larger version of this, often covering an entire oil field, requiring all landowners to merge their interests and share royalties based on a mathematical formula. This prevents the “rule of capture” chaos where neighbors race to drill as many wells as possible to drain the same pool, which damages the reservoir and wastes money.

When a well runs dry, it cannot just be left there; it must be “plugged and abandoned” (P&A) to seal it from leaking into groundwater. A lawyer ensures compliance with strict regulations like the UK’s Section 29 notices, which force companies to prove they have the money to clean up before they even start drilling. Since decommissioning costs in the UK North Sea alone are estimated at £1.5 billion annually, lawyers negotiate “Decommissioning Security Agreements” to force partners to put cash into a trust fund years in advance so the taxpayer isn’t stuck with the bill if a company goes bust.