Economic Regulation Authority chairman Lyndon Rowe famously told an Australian Institute of Energy lunch last year that one of his key performance measures should be to reduce the amount of time spent with lawyers.
Economic Regulation Authority chairman Lyndon Rowe famously told an Australian Institute of Energy lunch last year that one of his key performance measures should be to reduce the amount of time spent with lawyers.
Mr Rowe said he had read more legal opinions in the previous three months than in the rest of his life and warned of the dangers of an overly legalistic approach.
His warning is the flipside of a commercial gold mine for energy and infrastructure lawyers in Western Australia.
New projects, major asset sales and regulatory changes have combined to keep many lawyers gainfully employed.
The sale of Epic Energy’s assets, most notably the Dampier-to-Bunbury natural gas pipeline, illustrated just how many law firms can be engaged on one transaction.
Mallesons Stephen Jaques corporate partner Ian Cochrane led a team of 13 partners across Australia advising Epic.
Allens Arthur Robinson partner Angus Jones and Blake Dawson Waldron partner Jon Carson advised the winning consortium.
Clayton Utz, Freehills and Minter Ellison were among the other law firms advising on the transaction.
Keeping company with this ‘who’s who’ of elite national law firms was Perth company Jackson McDonald, which has a long history of working in the energy field.
Many Jackson McDonald partners have gone on to bigger things with national firms but Matthew Bowen has stayed and built a growing practice in energy and competition policy.
His firm has played a key role in creating the regulatory framework for energy reform in WA.
It wrote the access code for the electricity network, which is one of the key underpinnings for the proposed competitive market, and was involved in preparing the wholesale market rules for the gas market
Jackson McDonald’s regulatory work has helped to create further opportunities.
For instance, it provides regulatory advice to Alinta in relation to the gas distribution system and advised Western Power last year on the negotiation of gas transport contracts on the Dampier pipeline.
Mr Bowen believes lawyers play a key role in contract negotiations in this area.
“The precise wording of the documents is critical for operation reasons and (that) can ripple through to big commercial consequences,” he said.
In the case of gas pipelines, this relates to matters like curtailment of services and the definition of interruptible supply.
“You will have extended arguments about the minutiae of some of these operational things because the technical ripples through into big dollars.”
Mr Bowen is looking forward to doing more commercial work in future.
“That’s what I want to be doing over the next few years. I want to be helping people do the deals, and signing the power purchase agreements and building the power stations,” he said.
In pursuing this work, Mr Bowen said Jackson McDonald was increasingly confident in its market position as a full-service Perth firm with a fee structure more competitive than the national firms.
“There is this great big wedge in the market that opens up between the sort of people the boutiques can service and the sort of people who can afford the national firms,” he said.
“We’ve realised we are exactly where we want to be in the market.”
