The Denver Business Journal (DBJ) has named Haynes and Boone, LLP Partner John D. Fognani among the “Who’s Who in Energy” in 2018 for his contributions to the Colorado energy industry.
Fognani will be among other honorees in a Dec. 6 event at The Brown Palace Hotel and Spa in Denver, where the “Who’s Who” winners will talk with DBJ energy reporter Greg Avery about issues important to the industry.
Fognani is a Colorado native who has practiced in Denver for 40 years. He has broad experience in natural resources, environmental and real property law, both in state, throughout the United States, and internationally as well. His practice emphasizes resource project development, public lands issues, surface rights, access and use, project finance, alternative energy and clean fuels, and compliance with federal, state and local mining and oil and gas laws. He was the founding partner of Fognani & Faught, PLLC.
Fognani has handled significant energy and natural resources matters in North and South America, Asia, and Africa. He successfully represented a number of companies having a national energy presence: Marathon Ashland Pipeline Company in the development of a 149-mile liquid petroleum pipeline that crossed 369 streams and rivers to reach Columbus, Ohio; El Paso Energy Company in a significant toxic tort case in Southern California; Evergreen Resources Company in a citizen suit and the sale of the company; and other oil and gas companies in various environmental matters, including Flying J, BP Amoco and TransCanada Pipelines. He successfully represented the American Mining Congress in coordination with the American Petroleum Institute in a series of seminal court challenges to EPA’s solid/hazardous waste regulations in the D.C. Circuit and defended Rockwell International along with Haddon. Morgan and Foreman in the high-profile Rocky Flats criminal and environmental investigation.
Unlike many skilled resource and energy litigators, Fognani also possesses high-level transactional experience, which has been the focus of his recent efforts. For more than a decade, he served as general counsel for Ivanhoe Capital Corporation and Ivanhoe Mines Ltd., where he supervised international transactions and acquisitions and was instrumental in negotiating the investment agreement entered into by Ivanhoe Mines and other entities to define and regulate the relationship for the construction and development of the world-class Oyu Tolgoi copper and gold mining complex in the South Gobi desert near the China/Mongolia border.
Fognani brought his lawyers and staff from Fognani & Faught to Haynes and Boone when he joined in 2015, and he has witnessed the firm’s Denver office grow rapidly into a full-service law office, serving leading companies in the region.