Date: January 26, 2026
Time: 10:30-12:00
Venue: Juridicum, Faculty of Law, Lund University
As part of the research project “Sustainable Carbon Capture, Transportation and Storage: Liability and Governance in Light of International and EU Law”, we were pleased to host Ignacio Herrera Anchustegui from the University of Bergen for a seminar on energy law and the energy transition.
The global energy landscape is shifting rapidly, shaped by geopolitical tensions, regulatory uncertainty, and the push toward decarbonization. Venezuela—home to the world’s largest proven oil reserves yet plagued by decades of political instability, sanctions, and underinvestment—offers a compelling case study of these dynamics. The seminar examined the legal frameworks governing petroleum resources, the geopolitical dimensions of oil, and their broader implications for global energy markets and the energy transition.
The seminar began with a brief introduction to the COAST Law Center at the University of Bergen. COAST is a research center for climate, energy, and sustainability law, thematically focused on climate, the ocean, the marine environment, and maritime activities. The center brings together a leading research environment on legal frameworks for issues arising in the context of the green transition, with research organized around three pillars: complex infrastructure in climate and energy transition; land-sea interactions in environmental resource management; and legal innovation and comparative legal perspectives. After this introduction, Professor Herrera Anchustegui delivered the main presentation.
Speakers
Ignacio Herrera Anchustegui
Ignacio Herrera Anchustegui is Professor of Law and Director of COAST – Research Center for Climate, Energy and Sustainability Law at the University of Bergen. He is a member of the Bergen Center for Competition Law & Economics (BECCLE) and the Bergen Offshore Wind Centre (BOW). Having studied law in Venezuela, Austria and Norway, his research focuses on energy market regulation, with particular expertise in offshore energy, offshore wind, and emerging technologies such as hydrogen, alongside longstanding work on competition law and public procurement. He is the author of over 60 publications and has edited several key reference works in the field, including the Routledge Handbook of Energy Law (2020), the Elgar Offshore Wind Licensing book (2024), the Elgar Research Handbook on EU Competition Law and the Energy Transition (2025), and Bloomsbury/Hart’s Offshore Energy Law Challenges and Opportunities for Renewables and Hydrocarbons (2025). His doctoral thesis on buyer power in EU competition law received the 2017 Concurrences Award for best thesis in Competition Law & Economics, and in the same year he was awarded the Meltzer Prize for Young Researchers for his outstanding contributions to EU/EEA market law scholarship. He has held visiting research positions at Georgetown Law Center and University of Wisconsin Law School through the American Bar Association’s International Scholar-in-Residence program. A frequent contributor to international public debate on energy law and the energy transition, his expert commentary has recently appeared in the BBC and The Guardian.
For more information about our seminar series, please contact: olena.bokareva@jur.lu.se
