Pore Space Is Property: The Landowner’s Case Against Carbon Storage Forced Amalgamation

Ralph C. Thomas III, Senior Counsel | Whiteford, Taylor & Preston LLP

Ralph C. Thomas III is Senior Counsel and leads the Government Contracts practice at Whiteford, Taylor & Preston LLP in Washington, D.C. He represents clients before federal courts, federal agencies, and arbitration tribunals in contract claims, terminations, protests, and dispute resolution, and advises on government contracts issues in mergers and acquisitions and corporate structuring. He is especially well suited to this program: practice before federal courts and agencies, extensive drafting of joint venture, subcontract, and teaming agreements, and 13 years in senior federal service, bringing the perspective of a practitioner who knows how federal agencies operate and how agreements are negotiated and disputed.

• Education & Credentials

Mr. Thomas received his J.D. from Harvard Law School in 1978 and his B.A. from the University of California at Berkeley in 1975. He is admitted in the District of Columbia and is a UK Solicitor admitted to the Senior Courts of England and Wales. He is also admitted before the U.S. Supreme Court, the D.C. and Federal Circuits, the U.S. Court of Federal Claims, and the U.S. Court of International Trade, among other federal courts.

• Recognition & Leadership

The District of Columbia Bar named Mr. Thomas its 2025 Lawyer of the Year in Government Contracts. He is the immediate past Chair of the Federal Bar Association’s Government Contracts Section, which gave him its 2025 Outstanding Section and Division Leader Award. His federal service earned him both the Presidential Rank of Distinguished Executive and the Presidential Rank of Meritorious Executive.

• Professional Involvement

Mr. Thomas is Vice-Chair of the Small Business and Other Socioeconomic Programs Committee of the ABA’s Public Contract Law Section and a member of the U.K. Procurement Lawyers Association and the London Court of International Arbitration. He has taught Government Contracts Law at the University of Virginia and in the LL.M. program at Concord School of Law, has published more than 80 articles, and was a panelist at a 2023 White House contracting summit.

• Experience

For 13 years, Mr. Thomas served as Associate Administrator of NASA’s Small and Disadvantaged Business Utilization Office, and he has testified before Congress more than 30 times. In private practice he has drafted and reviewed numerous joint venture, subcontract, and teaming agreements, including crossborder agreements with UK companies.

Sam Spiegelman, Founder | Spiegelman Law Group

Sam Spiegelman is a constitutional and land-use lawyer whose practice centers on property rights, with a particular focus on appellate and U.S. Supreme Court amicus work. Through Spiegelman Law Group, he represents property owners ranging from homeowners facing a government seizure of their property to developers and rental owners working through zoning, permitting, and codecompliance requirements. He is especially well suited to this program: constitutional litigation at the Pacific Legal Foundation and the Cato Institute’s Center for Constitutional Studies, representation of clients and amici before the U.S. Supreme Court, state supreme courts, and federal appellate courts, and published scholarship on Takings Clause protections, bringing the perspective of an appellate advocate for property owners.

• Education & Credentials

Mr. Spiegelman earned his J.D. from the University of Virginia School of Law, where he served on the senior editorial board of the Virginia Tax Review and was a member of the Federalist Society. He holds a B.A. in history and political science from the University of Michigan.

• Recognition & Leadership

Mr. Spiegelman has represented clients or amici before the U.S. Supreme Court, state supreme courts, and federal appellate courts. He leads Amicus Curators, a Spiegelman Law project that identifies and coordinates opportunities to participate as amicus curiae in local, state, and federal litigation with significant policy implications.

• Professional Involvement

Mr. Spiegelman writes regularly on property rights and urban land use. His scholarship includes Penance for Penn Central: How to Treat Property Rights Properly, 20 GMU J.L. Econ. & Pol’y 1 (2025), and Rent Controls and the Erosions of Takings-Clause Protections, 51 Fordham Urb. L.J. 357 (2023). He also publishes The Amicus Curator, offering commentary on litigation developments in housing, zoning, and permitting.

• Experience

Mr. Spiegelman began his career practicing securities law at Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson LLP in New York before moving into constitutional law as a legal associate at the Cato Institute’s Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies. He went on to serve as an attorney at the Pacific Legal Foundation and now works with the Washington-based Citizen Action Defense Fund. His firm practice covers property rights litigation, land use, and regulatory compliance.

SESSION 1 – Who Owns the Deep: Pore Space Property Rights, Forced Amalgamation Statutes, and the Takings Case Against Compelled Storage | Sam Spiegelman | 2:30pm – 3:30pm

This session examines the property fight underneath the carbon capture boom: as federal tax incentives drive storage developers to assemble vast subsurface reservoirs, state amalgamation and unitization statutes increasingly allow projects to proceed over the objection of unwilling landowners — and the question of what those landowners are owed has become the next great takings battleground. Attorneys will learn the property foundation first: who owns pore space, the majority rule vesting it in the surface estate, the state statutes that have codified that ownership, and the severance and conveyancing questions that complicate every title examination; the forced amalgamation architecture — the statutes that let a storage operator bind nonconsenting owners once a consent threshold is reached, the administrative findings they require, and how they differ from the oil-and-gas unitization tradition they borrowed from; the constitutional case against compelled inclusion, including physical-occupation takings doctrine after Cedar Point and Loretto, the public-use question when the taker is a private storage developer, and the just compensation measure for a resource with no established market; and the landowner’s litigation toolkit — trespass theories for migrating CO2 plumes, inverse condemnation, and the procedural paths into state and federal court. Attendees will leave with a map of the ownership rules, a takings-claim framework adapted to compelled storage, and the landowner-side perspective this debate has so far mostly lacked — taught by counsel who advocates for property owners at the appellate level nationwide.

BREAK | 3:30pm – 3:40pm

SESSION 2 – Structuring Teaming Agreements and Joint Ventures Against Ostensible Subcontractor and Pass-Through Risk | Ralph C. Thomas III | 3:40pm – 4:40pm

This session moves to the federal contracting front: structuring teaming agreements and joint ventures that can withstand ostensible subcontractor and pass-through challenges. Attorneys will learn how affiliation is determined under 13 C.F.R. § 121.103 and how the SBA’s proposed 2026 size standards change that analysis, often in the middle of active procurements; the ostensible subcontractor rule and the fact patterns that convert a teaming relationship into affiliation; the structuring and drafting decisions — workshare, management, control, and mentor-protégé terms — that determine whether an agreement survives a size or eligibility protest; and how disputes actually unfold, from SBA size determinations through Office of Hearings and Appeals review. Attendees will leave with a repeatable framework for mapping affiliation risk under both current and proposed size standards and a drafting checklist for teaming and joint venture documents — taught by counsel who spent 13 years inside the federal contracting establishment and now structures these agreements in private practice.