New York law firm appoints another energy practice partner in Houston

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Dale Smith, an energy finance and transactions attorney, has joined Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP. Photo via Willkie.com

A law firm again expanded its Houston-based, energy-focused team.

Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP announced that energy finance and transactions attorney Dale Smith has joined the firm as a partner in the Corporate & Financial Services Department, which will be based in the Houston office. Willkie provides legal solutions to businesses that address critical issues that affect multiple industries and markets with 13 offices worldwide.

Smith was most recently a partner at Mayer Brown, and prior to law, he worked in the electric and gas utility industry as an analyst for Entergy. He currently serves on the Institute for Energy Law Advisory Board. He will manage energy clients in a broad range of transactions from upstream, midstream, and downstream oil and gas, renewable energy, power and energy finance deals.

“Dale’s addition further expands the energy transactional platform we’ve been building in Texas and across the country with our several partner additions this past year,” Archie Fallon, managing partner of the Houston office, says in a news release.

Smith will advise both lenders and borrowers in secured and unsecured credit transactions, which includes asset-based financings, acquisition and project financings, syndicated and structured financings (including tax equity), DIP and bankruptcy exit financings, and borrowing base facilities, letter of credit facilities, working capital facilities, workouts, and restructurings. Smith will also guide clients on the development and commercialization of hydrogen and ammonia facilities, carbon capture projects, renewable power generation facilities, and hydrocarbon facilities across the value chain. This will include gathering, processing, fractionation, transportation and storage facilities.

“Willkie’s dynamic Texas platform and growing national and international energy capabilities are a great fit for my practice and I’m delighted to be a part of that growth,” Smith said in a news release. “I look forward to working with the talented attorneys here to expand our transactional offerings to best serve the needs of our clients.”

Smith is the seventh lateral partner addition to Willkie’s multi-office energy team in the past year.

Willkie recently also announced Sarah McLean as a partner in the Corporate & Financial Services Department and Private Equity practice at the Houston office. McLean’s practice will focus on private equity transactions. Mostly the transactions will be acting for sponsors in making portfolio investments,exiting their investments, and growing their platform companies. McLean was a joint head of the US Energy industry group at Shearman & Sterling prior to Willkie Farr & Gallagher, and her experience in the energy sector includes 20 years.

Sarah McLean brings over 20 years of energy industry experience to her new role at Willkie Farr & Gallagher. Photo via Wilkie.com

New York law firm expands energy practice with new partner appointment

new hire

Willkie Farr & Gallagher has announced that Sarah McLean has joined the firm’s Houston office as a partner. It's the sixth energy industry group hire in the past year.

McLean’s practice will focus on private equity transactions. Mostly the transactions will be acting for sponsors in making portfolio investments, exiting their investments, and growing their platform companies.

“Willkie has leading private equity and transactional capabilities, a fast-growing energy platform and a collaborative culture across the Firm," McLean says in a news release. "I’m excited to join the exceptional team here and further strengthen Willkie’s dynamic work across the energy sector to support the growing needs of our clients.”

McLean was a joint head of the US Energy industry group at Shearman & Sterling prior to Willkie Farr & Gallagher, and her experience in the energy sector includes 20 years.

“Sarah is a standout private equity and energy lawyer and we are pleased to welcome her to Willkie,” Chairman Thomas Cerabino says in the release. ”She brings significant dealmaking experience to our global energy team in Texas and across the U.S. and Europe and will be an invaluable resource to our clients navigating the changing energy market.”

Willkie provides legal solutions to businesses that address critical issues that affect multiple industries and markets with 13 offices worldwide.

“Sarah has a stellar reputation as a market-leading lawyer and dealmaker, with deep private equity and M&A experience in the oil and gas and energy transition sectors that will further the growth of our expanding Texas platform,” Archie Fallon, managing partner of the Houston office, says in a news release. “As clients look for new opportunities in the evolving energy sector, Sarah’s substantial track record and experience will complement our capabilities in Texas and across the firm, and we are thrilled to welcome her to Willkie.”

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Fervo Energy officially files for initial public offering

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Fervo Energy has officially filed for IPO.

The Houston-based geothermal unicorn filed a registration statement on Form S-1 with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on April 17 to list its Class A common stock on the Nasdaq exchange. Fervo intends to be listed under the ticker symbol "FRVO."

The number and price of the shares have not yet been determined, according to a news release from Fervo. J.P. Morgan, BofA Securities, RBC Capital Markets and Barclays are leading the offering.

The highly anticipated filing comes as Fervo readies its flagship Cape Station geothermal project to deliver its first power later this year

"Today, miles-long lines for gasoline have been replaced by lines for electricity. Tech companies compete for megawatts to claim AI market share. Manufacturers jockey for power to strengthen American industry. Utilities demand clean, firm electricity to stabilize the grid," Fervo CEO Tim Latimer shared in the filing. "Fervo is prepared to serve all of these customers. Not with complex, idiosyncratic projects but with a simplified, standardized product capable of delivering around-the-clock, carbon-free power using proven oil and gas technology."

Fervo has been preparing to file for IPO for months. Axios Pro first reported that the company "quietly" filed for an IPO in January and estimated it would be valued between $2 billion and $3 billion.

Fervo also closed $421 million in non-recourse debt financing for the first phase of Cape Station last month and raised a $462 million Series E in December. The company also announced the addition of four heavyweights to its board of directors last week, including Meg Whitman, former CEO of eBay, Hewlett-Packard, and Spring-based HPE.

Fervo reported a net loss of $70.5 million for the 2025 fiscal year in the S-1 filing and a loss of $41.1 million in 2024.

Tracxn.com estimates that Fervo has raised $1.12 billion over 12 funding rounds. The company was founded in 2017 by Latimer and CTO Jack Norbeck.

Houston lawmaker may kill data center tax breaks due to $8B revenue loss

looking at the data

An influential Houston-area state senator is raising concerns about potentially billions of dollars in lost state revenue from tax breaks for Texas data centers—and is pondering legislation that would abolish the tax incentives.

Citing data from the state comptroller’s office, The Texas Tribune reports the state stands to lose nearly $8 billion in revenue from 2026 to 2030 due to sales tax and use tax exemptions for data centers. During the state’s 2025 fiscal year, which ended on Aug. 31, these tax exemptions caused Texas to lose a little over $1 billion, up from an earlier estimate of $130 million.

“These new numbers are extremely concerning, and I will say they’re unsustainable,” Republican state Sen. Joan Huffman, chairwoman of the state Senate Finance Committee, tells The Texas Tribune. “I plan to look at filing legislation to either repeal the exemption or take a very close look at it and see.”

Texas on track to be No. 1 data center market in U.S.

Scrutiny of the tax breaks comes amid an explosion of data center development in Texas, where data provider Aterio identifies nearly 1,000 centers that are operating, under construction or planned.

A report issued in January by Bloom Energy says the state is poised to become the No. 1 U.S. market for data centers within three years. By 2028, according to the report, Texas is projected to exceed 40 gigawatts of data center capacity—representing nearly 30 percent of total U.S. demand.

Among companies benefiting from the data center boom are:

Tech titans like Apple, Google, Meta Platforms, and Microsoft, which are spending billions of dollars to build data centers in Texas.
Spring-based ExxonMobil and Houston-based Chevron, two oil and energy giants that are developing natural gas plants to supply power for data centers.
Houston-based energy technology company Baker Hughes, which is collaborating with Google Cloud to develop AI-enabled power optimization and sustainability software for data centers.
DataBank, Data Foundry, Equinix, Digital Realty, Lumen Technologies, and IBM, all of which operate data centers in the Houston area.

The Texas Legislature will begin debating tax breaks for data centers in July, when Huffman’s Senate Finance Committee meets for an interim hearing before the 2027 legislative session, according to the Tribune.

Data center industry defends tax breaks

Leaders in the data center industry warn that watering down or halting the tax breaks could slow down or even end Texas’ ascent in the data center sector.

A 2025 report commissioned by the Data Center Coalition found that in 2024, data centers provided more than $1.6 billion in state tax revenue and almost $1.6 billion in local tax revenue in Texas. Over the next several years, according to the report, planned development of data centers in the Lone Star State could generate almost $3.8 billion in state tax revenue and more than $4.9 billion in local tax revenue.

In 2024, the Houston area had 8.1 million gross square feet of data centers, with the properties’ real estate investments sitting at $10 billion, according to the report. That year, data centers in the region produced a little over $700 million in state and local tax revenue. About 60 data centers operate in the Houston area.

Watchdog group warns of tax breaks’ danger to state budgets

On the other side of the debate over tax breaks for data centers, a report released last year by Good Jobs First, a nonprofit, nonpartisan watchdog group that tracks economic development incentives, decries the tax breaks as dangerous to state budgets.

“We know of no other form of state spending that is so out of control. Therefore, we recommend that states cancel their data center tax exemptions,” says Good Jobs research analyst Kasia Tarczynska, co-author of the report. “Shy of that, states should amend … legislation to cap how much any facility and company can avoid paying in taxes each year.”

Helix Earth closes $12M round and more Houston energy headlines

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Editor's note: The top energy transition headlines for the month include Helix Earth's Seed 2 funding and Chevron's plans for a West Texas power plant. Below are the five most-read EnergyCapital stories published April 1-15, 2026:

1. Houston cleantech company closes $12M seed round

Helix Earth is developing a retrofit technology that has the potential to cut HVAC energy use by up to 50 percent. Photo via Getty Images

Houston-based Helix Earth Technologies has closed a $12 million Seed 2 funding round to scale manufacturing of its energy-efficient commercial HVAC add-on technology. Veriten, a Houston-based energy investment firm, led the round. Rua Ventures, Carnrite Ventures, Skywriter LLC and Textbook Ventures also participated. Continue reading.

2. Chevron eyes $7B Texas power plant for Microsoft data center campus

Chevron is in talks with Microsoft and Engine No. 1 about a massive natural gas power plant in Texas. Photo via Getty Images

Software giant Microsoft is negotiating exclusively with Houston-based oil and gas titan Chevron and investment firm Engine No. 1 about the development of a $7 billion power plant in West Texas that would supply electricity for a Microsoft data center campus. Continue reading.

3. 3 strategies to strengthen the Gulf Coast as a global energy hub

The Gulf Coast is one of the most critical energy hubs in the world. Photo via Getty Images.

The Texas-Louisiana Gulf Coast is the backbone of America’s energy and chemical economy. Texas produces roughly 43% of U.S. crude oil and 28% of natural gas, while Texas and Louisiana together account for about half of the nation’s refining capacity, processing 9.3 million barrels of crude per day across 50 refineries. The region also produces approximately 80% of the nation’s primary petrochemicals and ships more than $117 billion in chemical products annually from Texas alone. Continue reading.

4. 8 CERAWeek 2026 takeaways from a new Houston energy leader

Kelsey Kearns (right), the new director of Greentown Houston, shared her takeaways from her first-ever CERAWeek with Energy Capital HTX. Photo courtesy Greentown

My first CERAWeek was a blur. Having top energy executives, policymakers, and technologists all gathered in Houston—over 11,000 of them this year—was both overwhelming and energizing. The theme was “Convergence and Competition: Energy, Technology, and Geopolitics,” and walking through the George R. Brown Convention Center, it was immediately clear that this was no ordinary industry conference. As a first-timer with a Greentown Labs lens, here’s what really stuck with me. Continue reading.

5. Greentown Labs names new COO, appoints new Head of Houston

Lawson Gow and Kelsey Kearns have stepped into new leadership roles at Greentown Labs. Photos courtesy Greentown/LinkedIn

Greentown Labs has reshuffled its leadership, elevating Houston leaders into new roles. Lawson Gow was named COO of the Houston- and Boston-based climatech incubator in February 2026. In his new role, he will focus on optimizing Greentown's structure, building new internal and external systems and developing a plan for growth. Continue reading.

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