Chris Thiele is a Partner in the firm’s Environmental, Safety and Incident Response group. He has more than two decades of environmental law experience both in private practice and as an in-house attorney. His experience includes serving for more than ten years as in-house counsel at Koch Industries and, most recently, as Senior Vice President and legal counsel for an independent midstream energy infrastructure development company where he led regulatory, environmental, and governmental affairs and FERC and other permitting efforts for the company’s natural gas pipeline and related midstream infrastructure projects.

Chris is highly adept at navigating federal and state air quality laws and regulations related to both stationary and mobile sources. His Clean Air Act practice covers the gamut, including applying for and defending permits, providing compliance counseling and conducting compliance audits, defending enforcement actions, transacting emissions credits, supporting corporate transaction work, and working to change regulations through rulemaking comments and litigation.

Chris brings a broad and deep range of skills and experience to project permitting, including his engineering background, which allows him to grasp technical issues that often underlie complex permitting matters. Chris leverages these skills and experience to develop and implement effective permitting strategies for complex projects, helping clients understand permitting options, timelines, and risks and successfully navigate the permitting process, including engagement with regulatory agencies, neighboring communities, and eNGOs. By leveraging strategic permitting and drawing on his experience defending high-profile permits in contested administrative proceedings, Chris helps to ensure not only that permits are obtained in an efficient manner, but also that the resulting permits are able to withstand challenge. Over the course of his career, Chris has worked to successfully obtain and defend numerous permits for electric generation; oil and gas; petrochemical; wood products; and fertilizer, glass, and other manufacturing projects throughout the U.S. and abroad, including projects in Brazil, India, Mexico, and Saudi Arabia.