Insights Search

Vinson & Elkins is a sponsor of the Edison Electric Institute's (EEI) 2025 Spring Legal Conference taking place in Chicago from April 9-11, 2025.

A series of recent actions undertaken by President Biden, near the end of his term, and President Trump, in the early days of his presidency, have called into question a key issue under the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act (“OCSLA”) — whether the President can revoke a previous President’s withdrawal of areas of the United States Outer Continental Shelf (“OCS”) from oil and gas leasing.

This program will provide an overview of how proposed Texas Senate Bill 6, if enacted, could impact large load projects within ERCOT, including data centers, industrial plants, and more.

On February 19, 2025, the Council on Environmental Quality (“CEQ”) released a pre-publication version of an interim final rule (the “Interim Rule”) to rescind all of CEQ’s previous and current regulations implementing the National Environmental Policy Act (“NEPA”) alongside a memorandum (the “Memo”) to federal agencies providing guidance on how agencies should revise their individual NEPA regulations and how they should manage NEPA reviews in the meantime.

For more than twenty years, the North American Free Trade Agreement (“NAFTA”), and later, the United States‑Mexico-Canada Agreement (“USMCA”), have facilitated cross-border trade and investment among the United States, Mexico, and Canada through the elimination of virtually all financial barriers to trade.

Darren Tucker and Jason Powers discussed recent antitrust developments in the energy sector and what lies ahead for companies in 2025.

After little more than a week in office, there is still plenty of speculation, but priorities of the Trump 2.0 Administration are becoming more concrete.

In 2016, a new play called Hamilton was dominating Broadway, Pokémon Go was all the rage, and the Summer Olympics were held in Rio.

On December 17, 2024, the Office of Fossil and Carbon Management of the Department of Energy (“DOE”) released the long-awaited Liquefied Natural Gas (“LNG”) Export Study (“Study”). The Study was released 11 months after the Biden administration paused pending decisions to export LNG to non-Free Trade Agreement (“FTA”) countries on January 26, 2024.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s (“FERC” or “Commission”) Office of Enforcement (“Enforcement”) continues to focus on enforcing its duty of candor rules, with a recent action resulting in a $6.6 million civil penalty and a requirement to file at least one compliance monitoring report to settle alleged violations of 18 C.F.R. § 35.41(b) of the Commission’s regulations.

The International Court of Justice has been asked to issue an advisory opinion on this question, and is currently hearing submissions from States, NGOs and international organisations.

In an Enforcement Notice released on December 5, 2024, the California Air Resources Board (“CARB”) announced that it will not take enforcement action against companies subject to California’s Climate Corporate Data Accountability Act (“CCDAA”) for inaccurate or incomplete reporting of Scope 1 and 2 greenhouse gas (“GHG”) emissions for the first reports due in 2026, covering the reporting entity’s prior fiscal year.