Expecting the Unexpected: How International Energy and Oilfield Services Companies Manage Front Page Geopolitical Events - WAMR 2015 Vol. 9, No. 2

Author(s):

James Lloyd Loftis

Michol L. Ecklund

Jay G. Martin

Steven S. Runner

Page Count:

16 pages

Media Description:

1 PDF Download

Published:

July, 2015

Jurisdictions:

International

Practice Areas:

Energy,

International Public Order,

Arbitral Process

PDF598.59 KB

$40.00

Description:

Originally From World Arbitration and Mediation Review (WAMR)

Preview Page

Navigating international operations in a time of global

upheaval can be a tricky business. Civil unrest such as the Arab

Spring, the 2014 Libyan Conflict, the current violence engulfing

Iraq, and the annexation of Crimea implicates oil production, can

invoke dramatic and wide-spread sanctions, and has a tendency

to spawn competing claims to energy resources. You will hear

from three experienced panelists who are tasked with managing

and protecting their company’s assets in hot spots around the

world.

JAMES LOFTIS: We have, as a topic today, “Expecting the

Unexpected.” It is one of those titles that conference organizers

think up when they are trying to figure out what will get people

interested in coming to a conference. But it is no less interesting

and valuable because of the speakers we have today and what

they are going to share with us. Jay Martin, Vice President,

Deputy General Counsel, and Chief Compliance Officer at Baker

Hughes, will begin for us. Before his current role, he was a

partner at Winstead Sechrest & Minick, Phelps Dunbar, and

Andrews & Kurth, and, prior to that, Assistant General Counsel at

the Mobil Oil Corporation. He has a tremendous amount of

experience both domestically and internationally, in energy

transactions across the spectrum, and in regulatory work. He has

degrees in business, public administration, and law from SMU.

His topic today will be common elements in crises and crises

management across geographic regions.

Next will be Steven Runner, who is substituting for Rick Vent.

He is the Assistant Chief Attorney for the Exploration/Upstream

Ventures Unit at ExxonMobil here in Houston. After turning away

from an academic career in Middle Eastern Studies, he confirmed

to me that, if he works very hard at it, he can speak poor Arabic.

He obtained his law degree from the University of Texas in 1999

and, since then, has been with ExxonMobil in such garden spots as

Qatar for five years and Angola for three years. He is happy to be

back here in Houston. He will talk to us about ExxonMobil – not

about any particular crisis, but, rather, about ExxonMobil's

playbook for marshalling its resources in developing a response
to a crisis.