Kyle Parker counsels clients in the energy and natural resource industries with issues related to project permitting and complex litigation. He has specific experience in securing workable state and federal environmental authorizations for major resource development and energy projects – and in defending those permits when they are challenged in administrative or judicial forums.

Mr. Parker regularly provides legal advice and counsel to industry clients on a wide range of business matters, including drafting and commenting on joint venture, joint operating, alignment of interest and area of mutual interest agreements; facility access and sharing agreements; and transportation and interconnection agreements. Mr. Parker has substantial experience in state and federal land, lease and right-of-way acquisitions, oil and gas unit formation, and achieving project permitting and regulatory approvals. In the oil and gas sector, Mr. Parker has worked on the development of new upstream projects (both onshore and offshore), and on the development and construction of new pipeline and storage projects. 

With substantial litigation experience in environmental cases arising under NEPA, RCRA, the Safe Drinking Water Act, the Oil Pollution Act, the Coastal Zone Management Act, the Alaska Land Act, and the common law, Mr. Parker has served as counsel in defending against multi-million dollar claims for response and cleanup actions. He negotiates and defends civil and criminal enforcement actions on behalf of clients and provides compliance counseling under a broad range of federal and state environmental laws. 

Prior to joining Crowell & Moring, Mr. Parker was a partner with Patton Boggs LLP. Before entering private practice, he served as an assistant attorney general in the oil, gas and mining section of the Alaska Department of Law; he was an aide to then U.S. Senator Frank H. Murkowski; and he worked in the Executive Office of the President, Council on Environmental Quality, during President George H.W. Bush’s Administration. He also served as a law clerk at the United States Court of Federal Claims. 

Representative Matters:

• Alaska Outer Continental Shelf: Served as lead counsel in permitting several offshore Arctic Alaska oil exploration projects, and successfully defended multiple permit challenges initiated in the 9th Circuit, Federal District Court, Interior Board of Land Appeals and Alaska superior court. 
• National Petroleum Reserve Alaska: Successfully obtained Bureau of Land Management agreement to tailor environmental restrictions that would otherwise prevent exploration of NPRA leases; served as lead counsel in permitting several exploration drilling programs in the NPRA. 
• Cook Inlet Basin: Served as lead counsel in permitting several onshore and offshore oil and gas exploration and development projects on state lands in the Cook Inlet Basin. Served as lead counsel in the formation and administration of various oil and gas units. 
• Trading Bay Energy Corp. v. Marathon Oil Company: Successfully defended against multiple claims asserting interest in a producing gas unit that were litigated in Federal District Court and ultimately resolved at the 9th Circuit. 
• Cook Inlet Keeper v. State of Alaska: Successfully represented industry intervenor in repeated environmental group challenges to offshore oil exploration and development project. 
• In the Matter of the Tariff Revision, Designated as TA226-8, filed by Chugach Electric Association, Inc.: On behalf of wholesale power purchaser, initiated successful challenge to application for substantial rate increase filed by power generator.