Nevadan honored to serve regulators in ‘unique time’ for energy

By Stephanie Tavares (contact)

Wednesday, Oct. 14, 2009 | 2 a.m.

COURTESY PHOTO

Thomas Sheets

Thomas Sheets never expected to be the legal brains behind one of the nation’s most powerful regulatory agencies.

He spent decades representing the interests of energy companies as they waded through Nevada’s regulatory processes — 22 years as head lawyer for Southwest Gas, battling it out with consumer advocates and the staff of the Public Utilities Commission; another 13 or 14 at the law firm McDonald Carano Wilson in one of the state’s first renewable energy practice groups.

But an old rival had other plans.

Last month Sheets was appointed general counsel for the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. He suddenly found himself on unfamiliar ground: working on the government’s side.

The commission is a federal agency that regulates the national energy industries, overseeing wholesale electricity markets, licensing new hydropower projects and regulating the oil and natural gas industries. Sheets runs an office of about 145 lawyers. Their most important task is advising board members and staff on the legal ins and outs of energy statutes and advising and helping draft legislation that the commission wants to send to Congress.

The commission is supposed to push forward the nation’s energy policy while balancing the interest of consumers, businesses and the nation.

Sheets’ job certainly is not flashy but if not done right, millions of Americans would feel the repercussions.

“It’s like being thrown into the deep end of the pool,” Sheets said. “I would say I’m not the typical general council for an agency like FERC. But having said that, a lawyer represents the interest of his client. I’ve got experience with the issues, now it’s just a matter of mastering the details and the volume of issues that go through the commission.”

But why was an industry insider chosen to lead an office of government lawyers? Sheets says his perspective on energy law is more varied than his resume implies. He said he is remembered for his time at Southwest Gas, but spent more than a decade at McDonald Carano Wilson working on a wide variety of energy regulatory issues. He also served on the Nevada Tax Commission.

Sheets was appointed by commission chairman and fellow Nevadan Jon Wellinghoff — the man behind Nevada’s first renewable energy portfolio standard. It wasn’t a buddy hire. Over the years Wellinghoff and Sheets have been on opposite sides of countless cases before the Nevada Public Utilities Commission. Sheets describes their relationship in typical lawyer speak: civil and respectful. They battled fiercely at the table, but never let it get personal.

And then Wellinghoff offered him a job he couldn’t refuse.

“When Jon Wellinghoff called me I was stunned that he asked me to do this,” Sheets said. “This is a big responsibility.”

But he was tempted away from his comfy corporate law job by the chance to be part of something bigger: a real American energy revolution. With the Obama administration taking the nation’s energy infrastructure in new directions with calls for more renewable energy and better electric transmission networks, and with Wellinghoff heading the commission, the agency’s lawyers must pick apart legal issues that haven’t been examined at a federal level since Jimmy Carter was president.

Sheets said he’s stunned by the volume and variety of legal issues that have come across his desk.

“It’s a unique time and a time when the emphasis on energy is almost as great as I’ve ever seen it,” he said. “People are paying attention and I thought how lucky am I to get this opportunity to go to an agency like FERC, where maybe I could make a little bit of a difference.”