Who’s Who Legal interviews Carine Smith Ihenacho, chief compliance officer at Statoil, the largest operator on the Norwegian continental shelf and a growing player in the international energy market. She discusses the requirements of her role and trends in the in-house legal market.

Alejandro López-Velarde of López Velarde, Wilson, Hernández & Barhem, SC summarises the recent legislative changes to the Mexican upstream oil and gas industry.

Philip Weems and Matthew Salo of King & Spalding LLP provide a brief guide on how to alleviate the soveriegn risks associated to natural gas projects around the world.

The International Who’s Who of Oil & Gas Lawyers has brought together three of the world’s leading practitioners to discuss key issues facing oil & gas lawyers today

Who's Who Legal interviews Maria Aybar, legal manager of the first ever natural gas liquidification plant in South America, PERU LNG. She discusses the requirements of her role and trends in the in-house legal market.

Benefiting from over 15 years of independent research, comprising hundreds of hours of interviews with the leading private practitioners and in-house teams around the world, Who’s Who Legal assesses the past 12 months in the international oil and gas legal market.

In this section we analyse the findings of our research in greater depth to identify the firms and practitioners who stand out worldwide.

Our research selects 419 individuals who are considered by clients, in-house counsel and fellow private practitioners to be some of the very best in the world in their field and jurisdiction. The research for this edition is made up of 77 countries, making it one of the broadest reaching books geographically that we have published in previous years. Several firms perform excellently in this year’s research, with a strong representation from all the major continents of the world, particularly North America.

With the benefit of over 14 years of research and tens of thousands of votes from clients and private practitioners, Who’s Who Legal takes a closer look at developing trends in the oil and gas legal marketplace worldwide.

We have selected the 420 leading oil and gas lawyers according to the results of our research in 69 jurisdictions to be included in this publication.

No other area of commercial law can match the geopolitical importance of the oil and gas sector. Recent examples include Russia’s decision to reduce the gas supply to Belarus, which caused ripples of concern across Europe, but there is also a softer side.

For resource-rich countries such as Russia and Kazakhstan, with established activity in the hydrocarbons sector, the oil and gas industries make a huge contribution to economic prosperity. Unsurprisingly these jurisdictions are home to most of the lawyers in this section; however, our research shows Azerbaijan, Kyrgyzstan, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan are all seeing expansion in this part of the legal market and are also represented.

The lawyers in this chapter predict that energy will be a major growth area in Brazil over the coming years, in spite of downward pressure in the world economy.

In times of economic uncertainty all eyes become fixed upon the price of oil. Consequently the past year has been an eventful one for the oil and gas industry, with crude oil prices reaching a record of $147 a barrel in July 2008 and dropping to below $50 just four months later.

International Players With Texan Roots

Of 54 US-based practitioners, our research identifies 25 individuals in the state of Texas, all but two of whom are based in the Houston offices of the state's most prestigious home-grown firms.