Agenda

Sunday, June 14, 2026

1:30 p.m. – 3:00 p.m.

Executive Committee Meeting Middleton Room

2:00 p.m.

Registration Check-In Opens

3:30 p.m. – 5:00 p.m.

Board of Trustees Annual Meeting Gold Ballroom

5:00 p.m. – 7:00 p.m.

Networking Event: Hosted Welcome Reception Lobby Bar

Sponsored by:

Please click here for information about sponsoring this event.

9:00 p.m. – 11:00 p.m.

Networking Event: Young Professionals Gathering 

Monday, June 15, 2026

General Session

7:00 a.m.

Registration Check-In Opens Registration Booth, Meeting Level

7:30 a.m. – 8:30 a.m.

Continental Breakfast Gold Ballroom — Please click here for information about sponsoring this event.

8:30 a.m. – 8:45 a.m.

Conference Welcome

8:45 a.m. – 9:15 a.m.

Keynote Address

Will Jordan, EQT Corporation’s Chief Legal and Policy Officer, in a far-ranging conversation with EQT Head of Government Relations and Public Affairs Courtney Loper about Appalachia’s role in the global energy landscape, and the decisions being made that will shape the future.

9:15 a.m. – 9:45 a.m.

Fireside Chat with PHMSA’s Chief Counsel: Navigating Today’s Pipeline Safety and Regulatory Landscape

Join us for an engaging fireside chat with the Chief Counsel of the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA), offering a rare opportunity to hear directly from one of the agency’s top legal leaders. This conversational session will explore current regulatory priorities, enforcement trends, and emerging legal challenges impacting pipeline and hazardous materials safety. Attendees will gain valuable insights into PHMSA’s approach to compliance, risk management, and the evolving legal landscape affecting the energy and transportation industries.

9:45 a.m. – 10:30 a.m.

From Boardroom to Courtroom: How Financial Realities Drive Energy Disputes

This program examines how financial decision‑making inside energy companies often determines when, and how, commercial disagreements evolve into legal negotiations or disputes. Focusing on liquidity constraints, covenant compliance, and capital structure, the session analyzes how financial metrics such as EBITDA, leverage ratios, and reserve impairments shape defaults, renegotiations, mergers, and litigation outcomes. Drawing on practical experience from capital markets transactions, private‑equity backed operations, and public company environments, the presentation explores how financial stress reallocates risk and alters contractual performance across the energy value chain. The discussion integrates upstream, midstream, and downstream examples to show how financial realities influence dispute/negotiation posture, strategy, and resolution. Attendees will gain insights into how financial fluency enhances legal analysis, contract drafting, and effective negotiation/dispute management in the energy sector.

10:30 a.m. – 10:45 a.m.

Hosted Break — Please click here for information about sponsoring this event.

10:45 a.m. – 11:15 a.m.

Navigating Community Impacts in Data Center Development

This fireside discussion lets you join data center developer and its land use counsel to explore how successful data center projects are planned with community impact front and center. The conversation will focus on practical strategies for addressing local concerns around land use, infrastructure, environmental impacts, and long-term community compatibility. Panelists will share real-world perspectives, on early engagement, navigating entitlements and approvals, and building trust with stakeholders to move complex projects forward responsibly and efficiently.

11:15 a.m. – 11:45 a.m.

Utility Perspective on Today’s Energy Challenges

This presentation provides a high-level overview of the most pressing issues currently shaping the energy industry from the perspective of utility companies. It will explore evolving regulatory frameworks, grid reliability challenges, infrastructure investment, and the transition to cleaner energy sources. Attendees will gain practical insights into how utilities are navigating uncertainty while balancing reliability, affordability, and sustainability.

11:45 a.m. – 1:00 p.m.

Hosted Lunch Gold Ballroom

EMLF Scholarship Recipient Recognition Anna Girard Fletcher, EMLF Executive Director

Lunch Presentation: International Developments in Energy and Mineral Law

This presentation provides an overview of recent developments in energy and mineral law across Central and Latin America, with emphasis on Venezuela and Cuba, highlighting key legislative, regulatory, and policy trends shaping the region.

Sponsored by:

1:15 p.m. – 1:45 p.m.

Getting Started with AI

This topic will discuss how GenAI products effectively can be used in the legal practice, and best practices to avoid GenAI-related pitfalls (both for lawyers using GenAI and for lawyers supervising others who are using GenAI).

1:45 p.m. – 2:15 p.m.

Leveraging AI to Streamline Factual Investigation and Case Development

This interactive discussion will explain the evolution of legal technology that empowers lawyers to more efficiently, and effectively, find relevant evidence amongst large volumes of electronically stored information.  The course, led by a litigator with over 25 years of complex-litigation experience, will explain how courts have addressed various aspects of technology-assisted review, highlight the use of generative AI, and preview how genAI technologies can save time and money, while leading to more accurate results for workflows such as document review, case mapping and chronology building.

2:15 p.m. – 3:00 p.m.

Case Update: Summaries and Trends

This presentation provides an expanded case law update covering key state decisions alongside recent rulings from the U.S. Supreme Court and federal courts of appeal impacting the energy industry. It will highlight emerging legal trends and analyze how these decisions are shaping the regulatory and litigation landscape for industry stakeholders. Attendees will also gain insight into pending cases and what to watch for in upcoming court terms.

3:00 p.m. – 3:15 p.m.

Hosted Break — Please click here for information about sponsoring this event.

3:15 p.m. – 4:15 p.m.

Ethical Considerations When Representing Joint Ventures and Other Cooperative Agreements

It is common in energy and natural resources transactions for parties to enter into cooperative arrangements like joint venture agreements, joint operating agreements, joint development agreements, earn in or farm in arrangements, and so forth. A lawyer may represent one of the parties to the venture or the venture itself. This presentation will discuss the ethical and practical implications of representing parties in cooperative arrangements, including a discussion of Model Rule 1.7, preserving the attorney client privilege, how to properly secure and document the consent of the parties, and related issues.

4:15 p.m. – 5:00 p.m.

Cyber Incident Response Workshop

This session will explore operations technology risks and vulnerabilities, an immediate and critical threat to the energy industry, especially following hostilities in the Middle East.  The speaker will discuss cyber incident prevention, preparation, response, and resiliency, offering practical guidance to help organizations prepare for and recover from malicious nation-state and criminal cyberattacks.  The session then turns to the importance of designing and executing effective tabletop exercises, an indispensable method to test response plans and strengthen understanding of organizational readiness, roles, and responsibilities before faced with a moment of crisis.

5:00 p.m. – 5:30 p.m.

Managing Risk in Response to Increased Demand

This presentation explores how developers, utilities, and investors can effectively manage risk in data center projects by addressing key regulatory, operational, and financial uncertainties. It highlights emerging state legislation and policy trends and critical contract provisions that help balance stakeholder interests and mitigate exposure across the project lifecycle.

5:30 p.m. – 7:00 p.m.

Hosted Happy Hour Lobby Bar

Sponsored by:

Please click here for information about sponsoring this event.

7:00 p.m. – 10:00 p.m.

Dinearounds

Sign up to join other conference attendees at a table at one of several local restaurants. A great opportunity to get to know new people and enjoy delicious food!  Sign up information will be sent to registrants prior to conference. Dinearound meal cost is not included in conference registration fee.

Tuesday, June 16, 2026

7:15 a.m.

Fitness Networking Event

Join conference attendees for a morning fitness activity.

7:30 a.m.

Registration Area Opens

8:00 a.m. – 9:00 a.m.

Continental Breakfast Gold Ballroom — Please click here for information about sponsoring this event.

Track One: Environmental and Regulatory

Carolina Ballroom

9:00 a.m. – 9:30 a.m.

Environmental Law Update

This presentation will provide a timely update on key environmental law developments impacting energy companies, including regulatory changes, enforcement trends, and emerging compliance challenges. Attendees will gain insight into how recent federal and state actions are shaping permitting, emissions standards, and environmental risk exposure across the energy sector.

9:30 a.m. – 10:15 a.m.

Navigating Nuclear: Understanding the Upside and Uncertainty of NRC Regulatory Revisions

Nuclear energy continues to have a resurgence as generators look for ways to meeting growing energy demands. In May 2025, President Trump issued four nuclear-focused executive orders to streamline and accelerate the deployment of nuclear power in the US. Among other things, one of these orders directed the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission to issue “wholesale” revisions of the agency’s regulations by November 2026, with proposed rules issued for public comment in early 2026. By June 2026, public comments will have been submitted on these proposed rules.

Our presentation and white paper will assess how these proposed revisions could affect existing NRC licensees, along with an assessment of likely legal challenges based on proposed revisions. The presentation will include a discussion between an experienced K&L Gates regulatory attorney and an experienced nuclear developer on the potential benefits and challenges posed by the revisions.

10:15 a.m. – 10:30 a.m.

Hosted Break — Please click here for information about sponsoring this event.

10:30 a.m. – 11:00 a.m.

Anticipating the Impacts of Changes in the Federal Government to your Projects

The most recent change in federal administration saw not only changes to regulations, but the revocation of permits and funding issued under the previous administration, resulting in litigation. What lessons can be learned from this litigation and how can you proactively protect your projects in the event that another change in federal administration brings a change in priorities and similar revocations?  

11:00 a.m. – 11:45 a.m.

Obtaining Primacy to Permit CCS Projects

In light of West Virginia’s new primacy status to permit carbon capture and storage (CCS) projects, this presentation will examine the process for obtaining primacy, and review other states with primacy and the broader federal regulatory framework governing CCS.  The session will also place these developments in context by discussing the practical implications for storage rights and drilling operations.

Track Two: Land and Litigation

Colonial Ballroom

9:00 a.m. – 9:30 a.m.

Data Centers v. Mineral Owners’ Competing Surface Uses 

American law has long recognized that the mineral owner can create express rights to use the surface for mineral extraction in deeds, leases, and other legal instruments, and it has recognized implied rights to use the surface too, even though these rights are not without legal limitations.  Now, the growing development of data centers have renewed the tension between surface uses and long-standing mineral estate rights.  This presentation will explore that tension, focusing on how competing land uses create legal and operational conflicts. Attendees will gain insight into key property law principles, recent disputes, and practical strategies for balancing infrastructure expansion with mineral development rights.

9:30 a.m. – 10:15 a.m.

Severed Estates in Energy Resources: Pore Space, Geothermal, Wind, and Beyond

The technological, economic, political, and social forces behind the energy transition have turned a number of natural phenomena into energy resources. Wind, solar radiation, geothermal heat, pore space, and brine water, to name a few of the famous examples, have in recent decades joined the ranks of coal, oil, and gas as sources of energy in the modern global economy. Among the many questions emerging as legal regimes develop for each of these new resources, is whether and what kinds of property interests a landowner may grant in any given resource apart from the land. Are landowners free to sever a separate estate in pore space, geothermal heat, wind, or sunshine, and what considerations are relevant in determining the answer to that question? This presentation will explore the history and future of separate ownership of energy resources with a focus on the doctrinal and policy constraints and implications of making wind, solar radiation, geothermal heat, pore space, and other resources severable from land. 

10:15 a.m. – 10:30 a.m.

Hosted Break — Please click here for information about sponsoring this event.

10:30 a.m. – 11:00 a.m.

Employment Law Update

11:00 a.m. – 11:45 a.m.

Going on Offense- Affirmative Litigation Strategies 

This presentation will take a look at when and how to use claims such as abuse of process or malicious prosecution in matters involving non-governmental organization lawsuits alleging greenwashing, climate change damages, and others.

Additional speakers have been invited.  Agenda subject to change.