Sectors
Foley & Lardner LLP is featured across media for the firm’s recent roundtable discussion on energy trends across grid reliability, data centers, and capital investments.
Moderated by Foley partner Eric Blumrosen and featuring partners Scott Ellis, Daniel Farris, Jessica Glatzer Mason, and Nicholas Peters, the discussion’s focus on major energy challenges facing Texas and the nation generated widespread engagement.
Westlaw Today assessed Foley’s key takeaways in the article, “Foley & Lardner attorneys discuss energy challenges, from Iran conflict to data centers,” citing Peters’ commentary on how oil and gas operators have been caught off guard by the conflict in the Middle East.
“Nobody imagined a couple months ago that we’d be in this high-price environment,” he commented. Blumrosen said grappling over the Strait of Hormuz is a “choke point” driving price volatility, and panelists also noted that states like Texas are increasingly turning to renewable energy to meet growing demands.
On the data center boom, partner Daniel Farris shared by 2030 data centers are expected to consume 10% of the state’s electricity, pushing operators to seek power sources that won’t undermine grid reliability.
He said operators “don’t want to be seen as this villain in the local community,” and many are investing heavily in energy infrastructure, with newer facilities often using renewables. Addressing concerns around data center water usage, Farris explained that data centers “don’t use nearly as much water as people think,” particularly as newer sites use closed-loop systems, recycle nonpotable water, and even harvest rainwater to operate “in a more efficient and responsible way.”
Farris added that a major challenge is a shortage of diesel generators for backup power. “In the past if you were building a data center, you might need five or 10 generators in order to do that; maybe now you need 50,” he said. “And if you’re a manufacturer of generators, there’s only so much you can do to ramp up to meet that demand.”
In Bloomberg Law, Peters described how the war was impacting clients as oil prices remain high. He said his clients are “trying to get as much production back online as possible so they can start selling into this market.”
“The short-term capital expenditure decisions like that are moving as quickly as they can,” he continued. In respect to drilling, his clients are “taking a far more conservative, let’s wait-and-see approach, because the last 24 hours is really indicative of how quickly things change.”
Peters also noted in the Houston Business Journal that “most of my clients are calling and saying, ‘I’ve got oil that I’m producing; I want to sell as quickly as I can right now. Help me enter into this contract to do it,’ or, ‘Help me sign a contract with a completions rig that’s going to allow me to complete this 3-mile lateral so they can get online to produce that.’”
“So that’s what we’re seeing is a rush to get barrels out there,” he added.
Insights from the media roundtable also appeared in a second Bloomberg Law article.
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