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
Gordon, Arata, Montgomery, Barnett, McCollam, Duplantis and Eagan, LLC
Tony Marino’s practice focuses on energy transactions and regulatory matters. His work includes drafting and negotiating oil and gas agreements, acquisitions and divestures of mineral properties, and energy financings. Additionally, he advises clients on regulatory issues on mineral leases both onshore in Louisiana and offshore in state and federal waters on the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS). Tony represents clients before regulatory agencies, including the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE), and Interior Board of Land Appeals. Such matters range from plugging and abandonment liability issues and oil spill financial responsibility to royalty valuation and relief and non-compliance.
Tony began his career as a paralegal at Gordon Arata, then joined as an associate after law school. After years growing his energy practice at firms across New Orleans, he returned to Gordon Arata in 2024.
Tony has been listed as a The Best Lawyer in America® since 2021 and was named a New Orleans “Lawyer of the Year” for Energy Law in 2023. He was ranked by Chambers USA for Energy & Natural Resources: Oil & Gas – Louisiana from 2019 – 2021. Tony serves as an Adjunct Professor at Loyola University School of Law in New Orleans teaching mineral law.
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
Counsel
Adams & Reese, LLP
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 University Law School
Ronald J. Scalise Jr. is the Eason-Weinmann Chair of International and Comparative Law and the Director of the Eason-Weinmann Center at Tulane University Law School. He previously held the John Minor Wisdom and the A.D Freeman professorships at Tulane and the McGlinchey Stafford professorship at the LSU law school, where he taught from 2004 to 2009. In his more than two decades of teaching, he has continuously taught both common-law Trusts and Estates and civil-law Successions, Donations, and Trusts.
His scholarship focuses both on domestic trusts and estates issues as well as comparative and civil law perspectives on successions. He has authored an extensive number of law review articles, book chapters, and treatise updates. He is the editor for the Thomson Reuters edition of the Louisiana Civil Code and the primary author for the annual updates for six volumes of the Louisiana Civil Law Treatise series. Professor Scalise has spoken, taught, or lectured in a variety of foreign countries, including the UK (Cambridge), France, Germany, Greece, Spain, Italy, the Netherlands, Malta, Scotland, Hong Kong, Canada, and South Africa. He has also served as a visiting scholar as the Max-Planck Institute for Comparative and International Private Law in Hamburg, Germany, and currently serves as a Professeur Invité at the Université Paris-Panthéon-Assas.
Professor Scalise has served on numerous law reform projects on both the state and national level, including as Reporter for both the Successions and Donations Committee and the Trust Code Committee of the Louisiana State Law Institute as well as the Reporter for the Uniform Law Commission's committees on the Community Property Disposition at Death Act and the Conflict of Laws in Trusts and Estates Act.
Professor Scalise's national and international work has also garnered him a number of accolades and recognitions. He is a member of the American Law Institute, an associate member of the International Academy of Comparative Law, the Treasurer of the American Society of Comparative Law, an academician in the International Academy of Estate and Trust Law, and an academic fellow in the American College of Trusts and Estates Counsel (ACTEC). He currently serves as the Southern Regional Chair and the Louisiana State Chair for ACTEC and is a member of the Board of Regents. He also currently serves on the Board of Governors for the Louisiana State Bar Association.
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.
