Instanbul—Dentons' European Energy practice co-heads, Arek Krasnodębski (Warsaw office Managing Partner) and James Hogan (Baku office Managing Partner), led plenary sessions at the Atlantic Council Energy & Economic Summit, which took place on November 18–20, 2015 in Istanbul. A number of other Dentons partners also contributed at the annual event, which welcomes hundreds of attendees from across the world to discuss energy issues, global macroeconomic policies and security challenges.

Hogan spoke at the plenary session on the Southern Gas Corridor, a series of pipelines that will enable the export of gas from Azerbaijan through Georgia, Turkey, Greece and Albania for delivery to Italy by 2020. Participants on the panel included Robert Cekuta, US Ambassador to the Republic of Azerbaijan, and Vitaliy Baylarbayov, Deputy Vice-President of SOCAR, the state-owned national oil company of Azerbaijan.

Krasnodębski spoke at the plenary session on the construction of a North-South Corridor of energy, transportation and telecommunications to connect the Baltic Sea to the Adriatic and Black seas. Participants on the panel included Croatian President Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović, former US National Security Advisor Gen. James L. Jones and Paweł Olechnowicz, CEO of the Lotos Group, one of the largest oil companies in Poland.

Both Hogan and Krasnodębski were joined at the summit in varying capacities by:

• Karl Hopkins (Partner, Houston and Washington, DC)
• Christopher McGee-Osborne (Partner, London)
• Ramin Hariri (Partner, Paris)

Held on the heels of the G20 Summit, the event drew more than 400 delegates from 40 countries, including more than 20 ministers of energy, economy and foreign affairs, and more than 40 global CEOs and representatives of nongovernmental organizations attended the annual event this year.

Among those in attendance were Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Croatian President Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović, Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama, United States Deputy Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Executive Director of the International Energy Agency Fatih Birol, European Commissioner for Climate Action and Energy Miguel Arias Cañete, former Director of the US Central Intelligence Agency and National Security Agency Michael Hayden and US Special Envoy and Coordinator on International Energy Affairs Amos Hochstein.

The Atlantic Council is a think tank in the field of international affairs. Founded in 1961 and headquartered in Washington, DC, the Atlantic Council manages 10 regional centers and functional programs related to international security and global economic prosperity. The Firm provides pro bono assistance to the think tank, and Karl Hopkins is its acting general counsel.

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