BB&J has extensive experience serving power producers, refiners, exploration and development companies, and coal mining companies in the USA and Europe. The firm’s core services help clients manage a broad range of compliance obligations, pollution risk, and business transactions. The essential objectives of these engagements are to create value and minimize risk, particularly for complicated problems. People within the firm have provided strategic and tactical consultation and environmental engineering solutions to fossil fuel, nuclear, hydro power producers and global “Big Oil” companies. In these assignments, BB&J professionals have provided executive decision makers with valuable environmental regulatory and engineering services in the broad areas of: (1) pollution investigations, cleanup, and closure; (2) permitting and compliance; (3) operations; (4) land use and transactions; (5) value creation; (6) risk management; and (7) dispute resolution. In addition, BB&J’s professionals have served as M&A advisers to a Global energy company implementing a multi-billion dollar diversification of its core energy business.
BB&J’s Pollution Management and Regulatory Compliance Practices provide significant services to Energy Sector clients. The Pollution Management practice offers traditional pollution investigation, remediation, and closure support services that address the requirements of Superfund law and RCRA. The services include waste water engineering and complex projects such as PCB cleanup in interstate natural gas pipelines. Much of this work supports property transactions, M&A, and brownfields redevelopment. Such real estate strategies are supported by BB&J’s Real Property Practice, which offers complementary services in environmental due diligence, compliance audits, land use analysis, liability valuation, and transaction support.
The Regulatory Compliance Practice helps clients achieve overall air, water, and waste compliance; obtain federal, state, and local licenses and permits for construction and operation; and provide overall support to operation. These engagements include compliance audits and reviews, air and water and waste permitting, public hearing support, regulatory compliance, oversight of emissions testing, recordkeeping, waste management, and reporting to agencies. As examples, the BB&J Regulatory Compliance Practice has helped clients comply with the requirements of New Source Review, Title V, Acid Rain, and other emission regulations. The firm has also helped regional power producers with plant siting studies, engineering feasibility studies and conceptual design, and real time emissions modeling.
BB&J’s Financial Advisory practice helps clients solve complicated value and risk problems. Specific services have included (1) evaluating the capital requirements for diversified generation, (2) valuing impairments for a 38-facility bulk transaction, (3) preparing attest-quality opinions of cost, (4) sourcing financing for capital improvements, (5) calculating liability retirement obligations and cash flow, (6) resolving disputes, including violations, (7) developing risk management strategies, and (8) assessing strategies for meeting peaking demand.
In some of its more challenging assignments, BB&J professionals have (1) quantified the economic loss to San Francisco that would result from the seismic failure of the power grid in northern California; (2) projected the 144-year net present cost of managing Class C radioactive waste from nuclear power generation; (3) advised an emerging company in the engineering and financial performance of converting flue gas to energy; and (4) completed compliance audits, due diligence, investigations and remediation for refineries owned by Big Oil companies operating in the Gulf and Southeastern States.