UPDATED August 2025: What a difference eight years make. This article was originally published in 2014 and was updated in 2017. We have again updated the links to the relevant agency resources.
The question frequently arises for participants in a nationwide construction contracting industry. Simply stated, is a licensed contractor in good standing in State A permitted to offer to contract for or to perform work requiring a contractor’s license in State B?
On June 20, 2025, Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed Texas Senate Bill 17 (SB 17) into law, reshaping the landscape for global investment in Texas real estate. When the new statute takes effect on September 1, 2025, it will impose expansive state-level restrictions on property ownership through sweeping prohibitions aimed at limiting land acquisition by certain foreign governments, companies and individuals.
In our latest roundup, more office space is being demolished/converted than built, Landingplace Hotels launches two conversation brands, developers cite expenses with low-income housing, and more!
Our latest roundup features adaptive reuse in the hospitality industry, falling home prices in major markets, loan maturity in real estate, and more!
On June 27, 2025, the Texas Supreme Court issued its long-awaited decision in Cactus Water Services, LLC v. COG Operating, LLC, No. 23-0676, resolving a high-stakes dispute over the ownership of produced water—a vexing byproduct of oil and gas production that is increasingly being viewed as a resource rather than waste—and its constituents. The Court held that, unless expressly reserved, a deed or lease conveying oil and gas rights also conveys produced water as part of the mineral estate. The decision not only reinforces the ownership of produced water under Texas oil and gas law, but also offers insight into how emerging practices such as direct lithium extraction (DLE) from produced water might be treated under existing legal frameworks.
Pillsbury’s experience with data centers dates to the dot-com era. Since then, we’ve counseled the industry as proprietary centers were supplemented, and in some cases supplanted, by physical and cloud-based systems of larger dedicated enterprises. The data center landscape is now international in scope and diverse in speciation, with edge, modular, enterprise and hyperscale facilities each playing important yet distinctive roles, and just as there is no single locus of data center expertise in legal practice, there is no single locus of capabilities and users in the business environment. Pillsbury’s Data Centers team accordingly deploys a one-stop, hub-and-spoke model that reflects the complex ecosystem in which these localized points of computation sit. In an effort to gather these nodes of knowledge and experience into a distinctive publication, the Pillsbury Guide to Data Centers brings together a curated selection of articles which reflects the experience of our firm’s interdisciplinary team in advising clients on the development, acquisition, financing, construction and operation of data centers across the U.S. and internationally. These articles are intended to be enduring reference pieces that lawyers and clients of all levels of sophistication may wish to keep handy as they encounter questions and challenges in this field.
On June 9, 2025, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) proposed granting the State of Texas primary enforcement authority—commonly referred to as “primacy”—over the permitting and regulation of Class VI underground injection control (UIC) wells under the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA). This would authorize the Texas Railroad Commission (RRC) to regulate the geologic sequestration of carbon dioxide (CO₂) through Class VI wells—an essential component of carbon capture and storage (CCS) infrastructure.
In the newest episode of Resilience, Pillsbury’s Shellka Arora-Cox and Brookfield Asset Management’s Brian Callahan discuss one of the most dynamic corners of the energy and infrastructure market: private debt.
It seems like such a simple question. Who owns data centers?
Ownership structures in the digital economy are more varied than might appear on the surface. While the largest computing and cloud service providers, such as Apple, Amazon (AWS), Microsoft (Azure) and Google (Cloud)—also known as “hyperscalers”—do own and operate a significant portion of their global infrastructure, they are increasingly partnering with third-party developers and investors, including real estate investment trusts (REITs), to expand capacity and deploy capital quickly and efficiently. This article provides a guide to how the most prominent strategic and financial players are engaging in this sector.
The U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI) announced on May 30 that it will invoke emergency permitting procedures to accelerate environmental review of select geothermal energy projects, with three proposed geothermal projects in Nevada to be among the first projects to undergo expedited review.
