Edwin Grauke

Ed Grauke has over thirty years experience in oil & gas, real estate finance, sales and development, land use, environmental regulatory compliance and the trial of complex commercial & multi-district litigation.  Shortly after graduating from the University of Houston, Bates College of Law in 1976 he began his legal career with a boutique law-firm in downtown Houston preparing stand-up title opinions in counties throughout Texas for small independent oil and gas companies.  Ed served as a landman and exploration and production counsel for Conoco where he had regional day-to-day responsibilities for East and West Texas, Eastern New Mexico, Oklahoma and Kansas, including drafting the full suite of exploration and production contracts, regulatory and land matters, acquisitions and divestitures, well and right-of-way permitting and construction of new and expanded facilities.  He was also responsible for environmental, health and safety compliance and enforcement matters for the company’s upstream operations in Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Colorado and New Mexico.  While working in the legal department at Conoco, Ed acquired trial experience defending oil & gas companies in both federal and state court proceedings and was responsible for settling a variety of landowner disputes, including cleanup and enforcement orders in several states.  He also gained experience dealing with a wide variety of federal, state and local administrative agencies and state oil and gas and public utility commissions.  During the early ‘80’s he was Conoco’s primary in-house due diligence legal counsel responsible for the property description used to convey to Petro-Lewis Corporation over 780 million dollars of producing properties.  He also served as Chief of the City of Houston’s Land Use Division, managing ten attorneys, six paralegals, and support staff.  He had first chair trial responsibility for over 30 cases and was the chief legal advisor to Houston’s Planning Department during the development and public hearing phase of the City’s third proposed zoning ordinance and comprehensive plan. Ed was responsible for developing, conducting and moderating numerous community based public speaking engagements advocating and defending Houston’s residential land use enforcement procedures; administering Houston’s dangerous building abatement and residential land use enforcement programs.  While in private law practice Ed has been involved in several large multi-district litigation cases involving oil & gas and products liability cases and has successfully appealed cases to the Colorado and Texas Courts of Appeals and the Supreme Court of Texas.