Houston corporate attorney Byron Romain, who led the North American oil and gas acquisition and divestiture practice at Simpson Thacher & Bartlett, has jumped to White & Case, the firm announced on Monday.
Romain represents major and independent oil and gas companies, sovereigns, quasi-governmental agencies, private equity sponsors and portfolio companies in acquiring, disposing of and developing oil and gas projects in the upstream and midstream sectors.
Prior to his tenure at Simpson Thacher, Romain worked for five years as a senior attorney at Marathon Oil, where he was the sole legal support to the company’s business development group. While there, he handled projects in the Gulf of Mexico, Oklahoma, Colorado, West Texas, New Mexico and Canada.
Romain advised on two Marathon deals while at Simpson: The company’s purchase of 21,000 net surface acres largely in the Permian Basin’s northern Delaware basin of New Mexico from NGP-backed Black Mountain Oil & Gas and others for $700 million; and 70,000 net surface acres in the Permian from Midland-based BC Operating Inc. – which was owned by Quantum Energy Partners, Post Oak Energy Partners and Wells Fargo Energy Capital – for $1.1 billion. Both were cash deals.
In an interview with The Texas Lawbook, Romain said he wasn’t planning a move to another firm, but when White & Case opened its office last year with lawyers he knew, he was intrigued. “I got a call in November from a friend who asked if I wanted to talk to them,” he said.
Romain said he met with several different partners in Houston and elsewhere and the fit was “quite apparent.”
“If you look at what I’ve done my entire career, upstream oil and gas, starting in Moscow, then Houston, then the Middle East and Southeast Asia, I can’t think of another firm that has the same touch points along with what I do. It was an easy decision.”
From 2009 to 2012, Romain worked in the United Arab Emirates for two different companies – Supreme Global Services and Mubadala Development Co. – and for King & Spalding. He also was an associate at Baker Botts for four years in Russia and Houston.
Going forward, Romain expects to see a strong emphasis on domestic deals. “That’s where a lot of the money is going now in the industry,” he said.
Romain also anticipates working on large international projects as well. “I think it’s going to be a mix of M&A and projects,” he said. “A lot of the work in the U.S. has been on the M&A side, but there also has been a large percentage of helping clients on all of their assets. It’s a fairly good mix.”
The attorney said he’s seeing the emergence of a different model by private equity firms investing in the oil and gas industry: Buying producing properties and developing them further, giving them the ability to collect a return on the assets before they eventually exit them. “It used to be that private equity wasn’t willing to spend money on the development phase,” he said.
Romain cites as an example Southwestern Energy Co.’s sale of its Fayetteville assets to Kayne Anderson-backed Flywheel Energy last fall for $1.865 billion. “There have been some rather large deals,” he said.