He has held roles with ExxonMobil and Imperial Oil
Burnet, Duckworth & Palmer LLP has brought in Nathan Baines as a senior counsel to bolster its expertise in complex energy, regulatory, and cross-border matters.
Baines has tackled mergers and acquisitions, joint ventures, regulatory compliance, and competition and anti‑corruption issues. He has worked on major energy and infrastructure projects in Canada and across the globe, including offshore developments in Atlantic Canada and LNG projects in the Middle East.
He worked in Halifax for four years on the Hebron, Hibernia, and Sable offshore energy projects. He also spent four years in Doha.
Baines has worked with clients across the energy, oil and gas, renewables and energy transition, infrastructure, financial services, and technology sectors. In particular, he concentrates on regulatory investigations and compliance, low carbon energy development, and complex commercial agreements.
He has also handled issues involving corporate reorganizations; competition and foreign investment; environmental and Indigenous-related law; occupational health and safety; emergency response; mid-stream and refinery agreement/operations; and pension, benefits, and compensation programs.
Baines has served as senior counsel for Imperial Oil and ExxonMobil Qatar, according to LinkedIn. He was most recently Imperial Oil’s supervising counsel. He was also counsel for ExxonMobil Canada Energy Ltd. As a private practitioner, he spent a year with Gowling WLG.
He is part of the Canadian Bar Association and the Law Society of Alberta. He chairs the Calgary chapter of the J. Reuben Clark Law Society.
Baines is a member of the Association of International Energy Negotiators. He obtained his JD in law at the University of Alberta and his LLM at Brigham Young University.
Baines will be based in BD&P’s Calgary office. He is fluent in French.
BD&P was strongly represented in this year’s Lexpert Special Edition – Finance, with Syd S. Abougoush, Heather DiGregorio, Simina Ionescu-Mocanu, William S. Maslechko, Katherine L. Pybus, and Grant A. Zawalsky making the ranks. Abougoush and Maslechko were also ranked in the Lexpert Special Edition – Mergers & Acquisitions for 2026, joining Alicia K. Quesnel.
A team from BD&P advised Calgary-based oil and natural gas producer NuVista Energy Ltd. last November 2025 on a definitive agreement regarding its acquisition by Ovintiv Inc. in a cash and stock deal valued at approximately $3.8 billion.
