About

Number of years practice: 25 Principal practice areas: Energy and infrastructure projects, corporate governance and M&A Bar admissions: Texas Languages spoken: English, Portuguese and Spanish

Venezuelan-born and trained, Vera de Gyarfas specialises in transactions involving all types of energy projects in Latin America and Africa, representing parties ranging from commercial entities to sovereign national governments. She is particularly experienced in upstream exploration and production matters, along with LNG and other natural gas projects, in which sub-sector she negotiates and drafts investment agreements for host governments and other parties, undertakes government negotiations and regulatory analysis, and completes agreements for LNG sales and purchases, gas supply, and terminal usage – doing so within the full range of contractual frameworks including production sharing agreements, concessions and licenses and operating services agreements. Recent headline matters saw her advise Sierra Oil and Gas on the negotiation of the two joint operations agreements that will govern its relationship to the license awardees, operators Petronas (Block 4) and Murphy Oil (Block 5) in the Salinas Cuenca. Awarded as part of the first tender for deep water blocks in Mexico, the agreements facilitate the first offshore hydrocarbons exploration by foreign investors licensed by Mexico. Her other current mandates include co-leading on both export projects involving commercial contracts (along with Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) and additional regulatory issues), and import projects including terminal development and associated pipeline matters.