Marcella Burke

Marcella Burke is an energy lawyer and strategic advisor in the Houston and Washington, DC offices of King & Spalding LLP, where she leads her firm’s energy transition initiative. She counsels clients on high-stakes regulatory environmental matters across the energy sector, including conventional oil and gas, hydraulic fracturing, nuclear, biofuels, solar and offshore wind. She also advises clients on environmental issues involving the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), including air permitting issues, anti-microbial applications, and other matters.

Marcella served at the U.S. Department of the Interior as the Deputy Solicitor for Energy and Natural Resources, and Senior Counselor to the Assistant Secretary for Land and Minerals Management. In these roles, Marcella was lead counsel for Bureau of Land Management (BLM), the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE), the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), and the Office of Surface Mining and Reclamation (OSMRE), all of which oversee management of federal lands, rulemakings and comments to proposed rules, enforcement matters, decommissioning and other end of life asset liability matters, regulatory environmental appeals, and high-stakes, complex incident responses and disputes.

She served as Counsel to the Royalty Policy Committee and received appointments with the Regulatory Reform Task Force and as National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) team lead for all energy project approvals. In these roles, she worked closely with the Department of Justice, EPA, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the Office of Management & Budget's Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA), Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and other federal agencies.