George Baker

George Baker joined Williams & Jensen in 1980 and has been a principal of the firm since 1983. His legislative and administrative practice largely focuses on energy, environment, agriculture, land use, wildlife conservation, and natural resource matters. He also has deep experience with financial regulation pertaining to commodity futures, swaps and over-the-counter derivatives trading.

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Commencing in 1977, Mr. Baker served as counsel to the newly-established Department of Energy’s Office of Hearings and Appeals which handled appeals and exceptions involving the DOE’s oil and petroleum product price and supply control regime. Since joining Williams & Jensen in 1980, over the last 44 years Mr. Baker’s broad and extensive experience has extended to the range of energy and environmental issues involving coal slurry pipelines; natural gas and CO2 pipelines; enhanced oil recovery; natural gas deregulation and energy industry restructuring; Superfund, brownfield re-development, and the Resource Conservation Recovery Act; the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, and the Endangered Species Act; the broad energy and environmental policy challenges facing the electricity utility industry including climate change, cyber and physical security, tax, resource adequacy, transmission infrastructure, the Public Utility Regulatory Policies Act (PURPA), and the Public Utility Holding Company Act (PUHCA); and a wide variety of federal agency environmental and conservation issues arising from the Magnuson Fishery Conservation Act, wetlands regulation, national wildlife refuge and park land acquisition, endangered species protection and related private property rights issues, and insurance issues arising from environmental liability. Mr. Baker has extensive expertise and experience in the oil and gas industry, over the decades representing numerous domestic oil and gas producers in federal policy matters and in 2014-2015 he served as the Executive Director of Producers for American Crude Oil Exports
(PACE), the oil industry coalition that led the successful and historic lobbying campaign to lift the 1970s-era prohibition on the export of domestic crude oil.  He currently is involved in efforts to enhance the effectiveness of the Section 45Q federal tax credit incentives for carbon capture, utilization and sequestration (CCUS) for utilities, and for oil and gas and CO2 pipeline operators. Complimenting his energy and environmental practice, Mr. Baker possesses significant expertise with agricultural and commodity issues encompassing regulation by the US Department of Agriculture, the US Trade Representative, and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s portfolio of responsibilities under the Commodity Exchange Act and the Commodity Futures Modernization Act.

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Prior to his work at Williams & Jensen, he served two and one-half years as an attorney with the Office of Hearings and Appeals of the U.S. Department of Energy.

In addition to serving Williams & Jensen clients, Mr. Baker has served as a Trustee of his alma mater, Hamilton College, and where he holds the position of Distinguished Lecturer of American Public Policy.