© 2013 The Texas Lawbook.
By Mark Curriden
Senior Legal Writer for The Texas Lawbook
Fort Worth (June 17) – Range Resources will announce this week that it is expanding its corporate in-house legal department and that David Goldberg is the oil and gas company’s new deputy general counsel and vice president.
Range GC and senior vice president David Poole, who has been the Fort Worth-based company’s one and only in-house lawyer for the past five years, tells The Texas Lawbook that Range’s legal needs have increased as the company has grown.
Poole said Goldberg, currently a corporate M&A law partner at Kelly, Hart & Hallman and former general counsel at Union Drilling, Inc. in Fort Worth, is the perfect fit for Range.
“We simply have greater demand for legal services than I could handle as a solo general counsel,” said Poole. “I did a very quiet search, because I knew that if I posted the job publicly, I would have been swamped with calls and interest.
“I think it says something about the future of Range that we can attract someone with the experience and abilities of David,” he said.
A 1987 graduate of St. Mary’s University School of Law, Goldberg helped lead the sale of Union Drilling last year to Houston-based Sidewinder Drilling for $242 million. He also served as general counsel and corporate secretary at RadioShack Corporation and InterTAN, Inc., an international consumer electronics retailer.
Goldberg started his legal career with Haynes and Boone where, ironically, he worked on a transaction in 1990 for John Pinkerton and Chad Stephens that resulted in the eventual formation of LOMAK Petroleum. LOMAK is now Range Resources.
“Range officials are going to find that David and I are interchangeable,” Poole said. “I don’t think we will divide our work in the traditional litigation versus transactional manner, but we will figure out which one of us is the right person to handle each specific project.”
That being said, Poole pointed out that the two lawyers will certainly employ their strengths and experiences for the benefit of Range. He noted that Goldberg has significant expertise in the capital markets, while Poole has much more experience in litigation.
Goldberg, in an interview Sunday with The Texas Lawbook, said he and Poole have been friends for many years and have worked together on various efforts.
“Having spent over five years in the energy services industry, including doing some Marcellus drilling projects for Range, I got a great sense of David as a lawyer and leader and of Range as a company,” Goldberg said. “Up and down the batting order, Range has a terrific senior management team committed to doing business the right way. Joining a company with the proper ‘tone at the top’ was essential for me.”
The oil and gas sector, according to Goldberg, is going to be “very strong for the next few decades and it is always good to be with a company in an industry that is on the upswing.”
“With an enterprise value pushing $15 billion, I believe Range has the financial resources to do the exploration necessary to be very profitable going forward,” he said. “You don’t have to be Shell or Chevron to be active and highly successful in this space.”
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