Mr. Victor L. Marcello
Co-founder
Talbot, Carmouche & Marcello
Victor (Vic) L. Marcello is a co-founder of Talbot, Carmouche & Marcello. He is a native of Donaldsonville, Louisiana. Vic received a Bachelor of Arts degree in political science in 1971 and his law degree in 1976 from Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Vic’s 46 years of diverse legal experience enable him to be a strong advocate for his clients.

He has extensive experience in oilfield and coastal regulatory matters, and for the last 19 years focused exclusively on “legacy lawsuits,” which involve claims for remediation and other relief arising from damage to private and public property from oil and gas exploration and production activities. He was involved in drafting the legislation that governs these “legacy lawsuits,” including Act 312 of 2006, La. R.S. 30:29, and the Groundwater Act, La. R.S. 30:2015.1. Since 2013, the firm has been lead plaintiffs’ counsel in the Louisiana parish coastal lawsuits, which are based on the State and Local Coastal Resources Management Act of 1978, La. R.S. 49:214.21, et seq.

He is listed in “Best Lawyers in America”; Martindale-Hubbell, AV Premium rating. He has been a guest lecturer at Louisiana State University Law School in Baton Rouge, Louisiana; Georgetown Law School, Washington D.C.; Lewis and Clark Law School in Portland, Oregon; and the University of Oregon Law School in Eugene, Oregon. He has also lectured at numerous continuing legal education seminars, including seminars sponsored by the Louisiana Association for Justice, and the Louisiana Bar Association Environmental Section. He is admitted to the Louisiana State Bar. He is also a member of the Louisiana State and Baton Rouge Bar Associations.

Mr. Anthony C. Marino
Liskow & Lewis, APLC
Tony Marino is experienced in a wide range of onshore and offshore energy related transactions and regulatory matters. Tony’s transactional practice is concentrated generally on matters involving the acquisition and divestiture of mineral properties, energy related financings, the negotiation and performance of agreements related to the exploration, development and production of oil and gas, and mineral title examination. His regulatory practice is focused on matters relating to mineral leases, including those located onshore Louisiana, in Louisiana state waters and in federal waters of all regions of the Outer Continental Shelf. He has represented numerous energy producing companies before the (i) Bureau of Ocean Energy Management; and (ii) Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (collectively the federal agencies were formerly known as the Minerals Management Service) in the Pacific, Gulf of Mexico, and Alaska OCS Regions, Department of the Interior, Interior Board of Land Appeals, and other regulatory agencies concerning a variety of matters such as plugging and abandonment liability, bonding, oil spill financial responsibility, royalty valuation, royalty relief, and incidents of non-compliance. Tony is also an Adjunct Professor teaching the Mineral Law Course at the New Orleans Loyola University School of Law.

A selection of Tony’s recent representative matters include:

Numerous representations of small and large independent oil and gas companies in acquisitions of oil and gas leases located in the Gulf of Mexico, Alaska and Pacific Outer Continental Shelf Regions
Successful negotiations between small and large independent companies and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Gulf of Mexico and Pacific OCS Regions, to ensure abandonment and decommissioning liabilities for leases and rights-of-way were addressed and that proper funding to secure such liabilities were established and maintained.
Representation of two international oil and gas companies in connection with its acquisition of over 200 Outer Continental Shelf and deepwater leases located in the Gulf of Mexico in two separate deals with a value of $2 billion and $5 billion, respectively.

Mr. Jasper Mason
Marathon Oil Company
Jasper Mason is a Senior Counsel at Marathon Oil Company in Houston, Texas, where he advises on acquisitions, divestitures, and operations involving upstream oil and gas assets in Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, North Dakota, and Louisiana.

Prior to joining Marathon, Mr. Mason represented clients in matters as diverse as tendering bids for contracts to supply oilfield service equipment in the CIS, to acquiring OCS leases in the Deepwater Gulf of Mexico, and attracting investors and industry partners to co-develop acreage on state-owned lands in Alaska. He has assisted clients ranging from individual investors to national oil companies.

Mr. Mason is Board Certified in Oil, Gas and Mineral Law by the Texas Board of Legal Specialization, and serves on the Council of the Oil, Gas & Energy Resources Law section of the State Bar of Texas. He teaches Oil & Gas Law as an adjunct professor at the University of Houston Law Center, and has served as Chair of the Houston Bar Association Oil, Gas & Mineral Law Section and as a Director and Secretary of the Association of International Petroleum Negotiators (AIPN). Mr. Mason’s experience by regions includes: Canada; Barbados and Colombia; France, Norway, Portugal, Albania, and Turkey; Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, Oman, and Turkmenistan; Angola, Equatorial Guinea, Namibia and South Africa; Australia, China, and South Korea.

During law school Mr. Mason worked as a landman for Magnum Hunter Resources Corporation, and maintains a Certified Professional Landman (CPL) certification from the American Association of Professional Landmen (AAPL). Before entering private practice, Mr. Mason worked as a Senior International Negotiator for Hess Corporation in Houston.

Mr. Mason received his law degree from the University of Houston Law Center, and a master’s degree in international affairs from the Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M University. He earned his Bachelor of Arts in political science from the University of Houston. He is licensed to practice law in Texas, Colorado, and Louisiana.

Michael H. Rubin
McGlinchey Stafford
Mike Rubin is a veteran appellate lawyer who has handled hundreds of appeals in state and federal courts, including before the U.S. Fifth, Seventh, and D.C. Circuit Courts of Appeal, on a wide variety of issues affecting the entire Gulf region. As a trial litigator, Mike has handled ground-breaking cases in the areas of finance and secured lending and major multimillion-dollar commercial transactions, as well as trials of national importance concerning federal voting rights, bankruptcy, environmental law, and constitutional issues. Mike served as an adjunct professor at the LSU, Southern, and Tulane law schools for 40 years teaching courses in security devices and ethics. He is a prolific writer; his numerous legal publications on real estate, finance, and ethics have been cited as authoritative in state and federal courts around the country and have been used in law schools across the nation. A nationally known speaker and humorist who has given over 500 major presentations throughout the USA as well as in Canada and England, Mike also is an author of legal thrillers that have won national awards and have been translated and sold internationally.

Professor Ronald J. Scalise Jr.
Tulane Law School
Ronald J. Scalise Jr. is the John Minor Wisdom Professor of Civil Law at Tulane Law School. He joined the Tulane Law faculty in 2009 and held the A.D. Freeman Professorship from 2009 to 2018. He served as Vice Dean of the law school from 2012 to 2016. Prior to arriving at Tulane, Professor Scalise served on the faculty of the Louisiana State University Law Center from 2004 to 2009. In 2007, he was awarded the McGlinchey Stafford Associate Professorship there, and, in 2009, he served as Acting Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs.

While in law school, Professor Scalise served as an Articles Editor for the Tulane Law Review. After graduation, he clerked on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit for Judge James L. Dennis and then worked as an associate in the New Orleans law firm of Stone Pigman Walther Wittmann, LLC. He pursued his LL.M. at Trinity College, Cambridge University, on a Gates Fellowship.

During his time in practice and in academia, Professor Scalise has served on a number of law reform projects and on projects related to the betterment of the legal profession. He currently serves as Reporter for the Successions and Donations Committee, the Trust Code Committee, the Prescription Committee, and the Committee on Aleatory Contracts/Signification of Terms of the Louisiana State Law Institute and as a member of the Council and a committee member of over a dozen other subject-matter specific revision committees. He currently serves as a member of the Louisiana State Bar Association’s Board of Governors, a position he previously held from 2013 to 2015 and again from 2017 to the 2019. In addition, from 2011-2017, Professor Scalise served on the Louisiana Board of Legal Specialization, including in positions as both Chair and Vice Chair of the Board.

In 2011, he was appointed to serve as an appeals judge in cases contesting decisions made by the BP oil spill compensation system, and in 2012 he was elected as an associate member of the International Academy of Comparative Law. He is both a board member and the Treasurer of the American Society of Comparative Law. Professor Scalise has written extensively on civil and comparative law topics, particularly in the area of successions, wills, and trusts. He is also the primary author for the annual updates for five volumes in the Louisiana Civil Law Treatise series on property and obligations. In 2014, he was elected as an academic fellow to the American College of Trusts and Estates Counsel (ACTEC), and in 2015 was given the Leadership in Law Award by New Orleans City Business. In 2018, he was awarded both the Felix Frankfurter Award for law teaching and the John Minor Wisdom Award for the best civil law article published in the Tulane Law Review. In that year, Professor Scalise also assumed editorial responsibility for the annual pamphlet edition of the Louisiana Civil Code. In 2019, Professor Scalise was elected to the American Law Institute and was appointed by the Uniform Law Commission as Reporter for the revision of the Uniform Disposition of Community Property at Death Act. Since 2021, he has also served as the Reporter for Uniform Law Commission’s project on Uniform Conflict of Laws in Trusts and Estates.

Professor Joseph A. Schremmer
Judge Leon Karelitz Oil & Gas Law Professor
University of New Mexico School of Law
Joe Schremmer is the Judge Leon Karelitz Oil & Gas Law Professor at the University of New Mexico School of Law, where he teaches courses across the fields of oil and gas, property, business, and commercial law. He writes primarily about oil, gas, and mineral law and property rights in the subsurface of land. Schremmer’s articles have appeared in the Harvard Environmental Law Review, the Washington Law Review, the University of Colorado Law Review, the Utah Law Review, the University of Kansas Law Review, and the Journal of Legal Education (forthcoming), among others.

Schremmer joined the law faculty in 2019 following six years in private practice with small firms. Among many other areas of civil practice, Schremmer maintained a comprehensive oil and gas practice, representing numerous producers and royalty owners in litigation and transactional matters. He also served as general counsel for a privately held oil and gas exploration, production, and service company. He is a past president of the Oil, Gas, and Minerals Section of the Kansas Bar Association and has been recognized as a Rising Star by Super Lawyers. Before becoming a lawyer, Schremmer worked in a variety of jobs in the oil and gas industry in Kansas, where he was born and raised.

Schremmer received his J.D. from the University of Kansas in 2013, where he served as the Editor-in-Chief of the University of Kansas Law Review, was inducted into the Order of the Coif, and was recognized by the faculty with the Samuel Mellinger Award as the top overall graduate in the areas of scholarship, leadership, and service.

Mr. Thomas G Smart
Onebane Law Firm
Tommy Smart is a shareholder with the Onebane Law Firm in Lafayette, Louisiana, where he has practiced for over 40 years, and heads up its Energy Law Section. He received his Bachelor of Science degree and Juris Doctorate degree from Louisiana State University. His practice focuses on a broad range of energy related transactional, title and regulatory matters, including a number of carbon sequestration (CCUS) projects and the representation of producers engaged in onshore and offshore oil and gas operations in Louisiana and Texas. He is licensed to practice law in Louisiana and Texas. He is a member of various bar associations, including the Louisiana State Bar Association and the State Bar of Texas. He is also a member of LOGA, AAPL, LAPL, PLANO and various other industry and land associations. He is on the Executive Committee of LOGA, where he is its General Counsel. He is on LOGA’s recently created CCUS Committee and its CCUS Executive Committee. He is a frequent speaker at various legal, industry and land seminars, including the Louisiana Mineral Law Institute, and has been a guest lecturer for the University of Louisiana at Lafayette PLRM Program. He was involved in giving industry input on the revision of the Louisiana State Mineral Lease Form, which was completed in 2019. He served on the 2022 Risk Charge Commission, which resulted in the recommendation of what was passed as Act 5 of 2022 of the Louisiana Legislature, revising the Risk Charge Statute.