Energy & Critical Minerals · Texas
Oil and gas transactions, Smackover lithium brine, mineral title, geothermal, Railroad Commission practice, and the capital formation that funds all of it — from two partners who have spent their careers on the principal's side of the table.
Energy is not one of our practice areas; it is the reason the firm exists. Between them, our two partners bring more than forty-five years in oil and gas title, energy transactions, and capital formation — including the current wave of lithium-brine and geothermal development in the East Texas Smackover trend, where the ownership, permitting, and title questions are being answered in real time.
We organize the energy practice around the questions our clients actually bring us. Each lane below has its own page, its own defined-scope flat-fee menu, and a partner who has done the work on the principal's side of the table.
Brine leases and amendments, brine mineral title, Railroad Commission brine production permits under 16 TAC §3.82, Class V spent-brine injection, and project-level structuring for Smackover lithium development in East Texas.
Non-operated working interest acquisitions and funds, mineral and royalty purchases, PSAs, joint operating agreements, farmouts, contract operating agreements, and midstream gathering and processing agreements.
Drillsite, division order, acquisition, and supplemental title opinions; brine and geothermal title characterization; curative programs; and title due diligence for acquisitions across Texas.
Geothermal ownership under Natural Resources Code Chapter 141, leases and surface-use agreements, RRC geothermal well permitting, and the resource-characterization questions where geothermal, brine, and oil and gas overlap.
Permit applications and protests, Rule 37 and Rule 38 exceptions, brine production and injection permits, P-5 and organization matters, and hearings before the RRC and SOAH.
Regulation D 506(b) and 506(c) offerings for drilling programs, non-op funds, mineral funds, and critical-minerals ventures; convertible notes; GP/LP fund formation; and the Form D and blue-sky work that follows.
Independent E&P companies, lithium and geothermal project developers, and contract operators who need title, permits, and agreements that hold up.
Family offices, fund sponsors, and private buyers acquiring non-operated working interests or building a non-op vehicle.
Acquirers doing title diligence on mineral and royalty packages in the Permian, Anadarko, and East Texas plays and the Uinta Basin.
Sponsors raising capital for energy and critical-minerals ventures, and landowners with brine or geothermal offers who need counsel on the developer's side of the table.
The Smackover is the headline, not the boundary. Our energy work runs across four regions, and the same title, regulatory, and capital-formation discipline applies in each:
Rand Marsh leads the firm's critical minerals and mining practice — hard-rock and brine projects, mining claims and leases, project joint ventures between acreage holders and technology partners, and the offtake and royalty arrangements that make a minerals project financeable — and heads structured financing: convertible notes, bridge and mezzanine facilities, royalty and stream financings, and the layered capital stacks that mining and energy ventures actually close on. Scott Beckmen heads the lithium-brine, geothermal, and Railroad Commission practices; the two jointly head oil and gas.
Texas has no statute or appellate decision settling who owns the lithium dissolved in Smackover brine, no unitization mechanism for brine, a brine-production rule (Statewide Rule 82, 16 TAC §3.82) that took effect only in February 2025 and whose Class V primacy is still pending at EPA, and a geothermal program under Statewide Rule 46 that the same formation's heat runs through. The first permits and dockets are shaping how the geothermal–brine interface will be regulated, and the 90th Legislature convenes in January 2027 with the ownership question open. Meanwhile, the Franklin Project's preliminary economic assessment published on September 8, 2026 describes more than a thousand brine leases across Hopkins, Franklin, and Titus counties, and Chevron and Equinor have both taken East Texas positions. Every one of those leases, permits, and financings turns on title and regulatory questions we work on. Our Insights series, launching this fall, will track the developments.
Primarily the development and capital side: operators and project developers, non-operated working-interest buyers and funds, mineral and royalty acquirers, and the sponsors raising money for them. We do represent mineral owners and lessors in appropriate matters, but the firm is built around the people putting capital and wells into the ground. We run a conflicts check before every engagement.
Our office is in Flower Mound, in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex, and our attorneys are licensed in Texas and Oklahoma. Our energy work runs across the East Texas Smackover trend (Franklin County and the surrounding Hopkins, Titus, Cass, and Bowie county area), the Permian Basin, the Anadarko Basin and other Oklahoma plays, and Utah's Uinta and Paradox basins and geothermal fields — with Texas title and transactional work statewide, Oklahoma title through Rand Marsh's Oklahoma license, and Utah matters handled alongside local counsel.
Defined-scope work — a drillsite title opinion on a described tract, a purchase and sale agreement for a non-op package, a brine production permit application, an offering document set — is quoted as a fixed fee before we begin, and you approve the number first. Ongoing deal flow, JIB disputes, and the day-to-day questions of running an operating company are handled on a monthly retainer sized to your volume. Pricing details are here.
Title, leasing, and acquisition work is document-heavy and precedent-heavy — exactly where our tooling does the most. Runsheets, instrument abstracts, defined-term conformance, and first drafts of standard agreements are assembled by our pipeline from our own curated Texas precedent; the partner's time goes to the judgment calls: the curative strategy, the ownership call on brine, the deal points in the JOA. The result is a senior lawyer's work product at roughly half the conventional price, delivered in days rather than weeks.