Energy Finance Transactions

• Semester: Spring 2021
• Course ID: 279M
• Credit Hours: 2
• Unique: 29160

Description

This course will be taught in person but with the option of remote participation via Zoom.  Please note that this course might become online-only in the event that actual in-person attendance during the semester consistently falls below a threshold to be determined in the exercise of reasonable discretion by the instructor and the Student Affairs Office.

This course will immerse students in practical business and legal concepts in financing oil and gas and alternative energy development and demonstrate how those issues manifest themselves in the negotiation and loan documentation. In addition, the course will provide an historical context for the development of present day commercial bank lending to oil and gas companies illustrating how loan documentation between producers and energy lenders has evolved since the early 1900’s. The tools and concepts taught in class lectures will be implemented by students in practice through negotiation and drafting of an energy loan utilizing current real world example of a syndicated energy credit agreement and term sheet. The first half of the course will lay the groundwork for how and why today’s energy loans are structured drawing upon the historical analysis in Oil Capital, The History of American Oil, Wildcatters, Independents and Their Bankers written by one of the professors, Buddy Clark. Alongside this historical perspective, the course will cover the principal provisions of an energy loan based upon assigned readings from The LSTA's Complete Credit Agreement Guide, Second Edition. In the second half of the course, students will be divided into banker and producer teams serving to negotiate key provisions in a Term Sheet and Credit Agreement for an oil and gas loan through email and conference call interactions with their clients. The ‘clients’ will be Haynes and Boone, LLP energy finance lawyers who will be acting as bankers or producers, respectively. With input from their client, groups will negotiate and agree on the final Term Sheet and Credit Agreement. The final work product will be a Credit Agreement redlined against the form. At the end of the course, in class, each group will discuss the final “deal” that was struck and three principal points of contention and how they drafted compromises in the documents.In addition, the second half of the course will cover renewable energy project development and transactional issues based on assigned readings from Energy & Environmental Project Finance: Law & Taxation available on Lexis and selected articles addressing major renewables transactional documentation.

Students will be graded on class participation, drafting and negotiation exercises, a final work product, and a final exam (short answer).