McGuireWoods strengthened its Texas oil and gas industry capabilities with the arrival of partner Patrick Knapp, who brings nearly a decade of experience representing domestic and international energy companies in major deals to the firm’s Dallas and Houston offices.
Knapp, who joins the firm’s mergers and acquisitions practice, structures commercial, corporate and financing transactions for upstream, midstream and downstream companies. He represents producers, marketers, logistics providers and refiners in the United States, Canada and Mexico in complicated international deals.
Knapp served as managing counsel for Bridger Logistics, the midstream division of Ferrellgas Partners LP, from 2014 to 2018. In that role, he led a series of high-profile M&A transactions, including more than 30 asset and equity carve-out divestitures.
After leading the divestiture and wind-down of the entire midstream division in 2018, Knapp joined Dallas’ Robert Anderson Law, where he represented Bridger purchasers and spinoff businesses in M&A, corporate governance, regulatory and commercial matters.
Knapp’s arrival follows the recent addition of Houston partner Eric Schlichter, who has nearly two decades of experience litigating matters for clients in the oil and gas and technology industries. Knapp’s industry experience also enhances the firm’s ability to serve its expanding private equity client base, said Akash Sethi, managing partner of the Dallas office.
The firm’s energy industry team includes more than 200 lawyers who work across all sectors of the industry. McGuireWoods consistently ranks among the top law firms in league tables for M&A, including private equity. The firm remained a dominant player advising clients in M&A transactions through the first half of 2019, earning top five rankings for U.S. deal count and top 10 rankings for global transactions in league tables published by Refinitiv and Bloomberg.