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The Texas Legislature has been debating several bills aimed at boosting dispatchable power in ERCOT while erecting new economic and permitting barriers for renewables.

The recent tariffs imposed by the Trump administration mark a significant shift in U.S. trade policy that is expected to have a wide-ranging impact across multiple sectors, including in the energy sector.

On April 8, 2025, President Trump issued an Executive Order titled “Protecting American Energy From State Overreach” (the “Executive Order”), which directs the United States Attorney General to identify and halt the enforcement of state laws and civil actions that burden energy production and may be preempted by Federal law or are otherwise unconstitutional.

On April 8 and 9, 2025, President Donald Trump issued five Presidential Actions (four Executive Orders and one Proclamation, collectively “Presidential Actions”) for the purposes of ensuring adequate and reliable energy generation, meeting growing energy demand, and addressing the national energy emergency declared on January 20, 2025 (EO 14156).

Vinson & Elkins is a sponsor of the Edison Electric Institute's (EEI) 2025 Spring Legal Conference taking place in Chicago from April 9-11, 2025.

Lithium continues to be a rising star of the natural resources world, and Texas is working to stay on top of the legal issues related to the extraction of lithium from produced water and brine.

A series of recent actions undertaken by President Biden, near the end of his term, and President Trump, in the early days of his presidency, have called into question a key issue under the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act (“OCSLA”) — whether the President can revoke a previous President’s withdrawal of areas of the United States Outer Continental Shelf (“OCS”) from oil and gas leasing.

On February 19, 2025, the Council on Environmental Quality (“CEQ”) released a pre-publication version of an interim final rule (the “Interim Rule”) to rescind all of CEQ’s previous and current regulations implementing the National Environmental Policy Act (“NEPA”) alongside a memorandum (the “Memo”) to federal agencies providing guidance on how agencies should revise their individual NEPA regulations and how they should manage NEPA reviews in the meantime.

For more than twenty years, the North American Free Trade Agreement (“NAFTA”), and later, the United States‑Mexico-Canada Agreement (“USMCA”), have facilitated cross-border trade and investment among the United States, Mexico, and Canada through the elimination of virtually all financial barriers to trade.

Darren Tucker and Jason Powers discussed recent antitrust developments in the energy sector and what lies ahead for companies in 2025.

After little more than a week in office, there is still plenty of speculation, but priorities of the Trump 2.0 Administration are becoming more concrete.

In 2016, a new play called Hamilton was dominating Broadway, Pokémon Go was all the rage, and the Summer Olympics were held in Rio.