Robert G. Lewis: lawyer mixes oil and art.

AuthorBronikowski, Lynn
PositionExecutive Edge

From his downtown skyscraper office, Denver oil and gas lawyer Robert Lewis rattles off a litany of recent mergers and acquisitions that have reshaped America's energy industry and spawned today's boom in the West.

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He talks enthusiastically about the Houston-based and Canadian-based companies flush with cash that are re-investing in the Rocky Mountains, others that are launching startups, and still others that are doing IPOs to raise more capital as oil prices skyrocket and demand for natural gas increases.

"During the boom in the early '80s, there were 4,500 rigs operating in the West, but after the bust in '86 there were 488 rigs," said Lewis, putting a historic perspective on Colorado's 100-year boom-and-bust cycle.

"Now we're back up to 1,300 rigs and clearly going through a boom," Lewis said. The 1981 University of Denver law school graduate earlier this year joined Faegre & Benson as a partner to head up the energy group's growing oil and gas practice. "The industry is very entrepreneurial. Public markets are open again to oil and gas exploration, and companies are rolling out the financing."

For Lewis, the boom means putting in even longer hours at Denver's fourth-largest law firm where his passion for domestic oil and gas production converges with his other passion--collecting vintage 19th century photographs of the American West.

While legal work takes over his desktop, photographs from his personal collection--rare lithographs and portraits of Native Americans by such Old West luminaries as Mathew Brady and William Henry Jackson--line the hallway walls

His collection is so extensive that Lewis has been named one of the top 100 Western art collectors in the United States, alongside such industry giants as Ross Perot...

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