John Fellas is a full-time independent arbitrator based in New York with more than three decades of experience in international dispute resolution.
Until December 2020, he was a partner and co-chair of the International Arbitration group at Hughes Hubbard & Reed LLP. He has sat as sole, presiding, and co-arbitrator under all the major arbitration rules and across many sectors, including energy. Chambers USA ranks him in Band 1, and in 2025, he received the Global Arbitration Review award for Best Prepared/Most Responsive Arbitrator. He teaches international arbitration at NYU School of Law and Durham Law School (UK) and is admitted in New York, as well as England and Wales.
We asked him how his expertise informs his approach on the AAA Energy Dispute Resolution Panel.
Q. Tell us about your background in the energy industry and resolving energy disputes, including areas such as regulatory compliance, environmental matters, joint ventures, or other complex energy issues.
Energy disputes have been a steady part of my work as an arbitrator, and they have come from across the sector – oil and gas, LNG, pipelines, and power generation of every kind, including wind, solar, geothermal, hydro-electric, and biomass.
On the environmental side, I have presided over an ICC arbitration concerning responsibility for environmental liabilities under a joint venture agreement, sat on an ICDR arbitration concerning a certified emission reduction sales agreement for carbon credits, and sat on ad hoc (Bermuda Form) arbitrations concerning insurance and reinsurance coverage for the clean-up costs of an oil spill and for environmental liability arising from a chemical spill. I have spoken on the enforcement of awards in the minerals and hydrocarbons industries at the University of Dundee's Centre for Energy, Petroleum and Mineral Law and Policy.
Q. If applicable, tell us about your experience with cross-border energy disputes.
Nearly all of the energy disputes on which I have sat have been cross-border. The parties have come from the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Russia, the Netherlands, Moldova, Japan, Korea, China, Canada, Brazil, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Trinidad and Tobago, Barbados, Nigeria, the Cayman Islands, and the Channel Islands, and the projects have been located in Africa, Asia, the Middle East, Latin America, Europe, the United States, India, and the Caribbean.
Q. What types of energy disputes do you most often see in your work?
Five kinds of dispute recur:
- Supply and price disputes – price revision under long-term gas contracts and claims over missed or short deliveries under LNG sale and purchase agreements.
- Joint venture and joint operating agreement disputes – typically between partners in an upstream or midstream project who have fallen out over operatorship, cost sharing, or the allocation of liabilities.
- Construction and equipment disputes – delay, defects, and termination under EPC contracts for power plants, and claims that supplied equipment (turbines, solar modules) did not perform as warranted.
- Environmental liability and insurance coverage disputes – who bears the cost of a spill or a legacy environmental liability, and whether an insurer or reinsurer must respond.
- Disputes between an energy company and its investors (geothermal energy).
Q. What drew you to ADR to work in the energy space? What do you value most about serving as a neutral on AAA's Energy panel?
Energy disputes tend to be large, technical, and international. They often turn on long-term contracts written to allocate risk over decades, in an industry where prices, technology, and regulation change far faster than that. Because the parties are involved in long-term contracts, they often want to resolve their disputes in a cost-effective and speedy manner so they can get back to business. That is what drew me to them: the chance to provide an important service to parties who often want to maintain a relationship despite the dispute, and who therefore value speed and efficiency.
What I value most about serving on the AAA-ICDR Energy panel is the chance to bring to these disputes what I think an arbitrator most owes the parties: careful preparation, a fair and efficient process, and a reasoned award that engages with the case they actually put on. Energy parties are repeat users of arbitration. They know what a well-run arbitration looks like, and they deserve one.
Q. What emerging trends are you seeing in the Energy sector? What developments do you think will most shape the future of dispute resolution in this area?
First, the energy transition. A growing share of the disputes I see concern renewable generation – wind, solar, geothermal, biomass – and the supply chains behind it. These disputes bring their own issues: performance warranties for new technology, tariffs and offtake structures, and the interaction between project finance and construction risk. I expect them to grow and to be joined by disputes over hydrogen, battery storage, and carbon markets.
Second, volatility. The price shocks of recent years have revived price review, hardship, and force majeure clauses that lay dormant for a long time and have tested how far long-term supply contracts can bend before they break. I expect disputes over price revision, delivery obligations, and sanctions-related performance to continue. Price volatility tests relationships over long-term supply agreements where the contract price might not adjust fully to reflect the market price.
Third, the process itself. Energy arbitrations are document-heavy and expert-heavy, and technology – including artificial intelligence – will change how the record is assembled and analyzed. Used well, it should make these cases faster and cheaper. But it also raises questions about the arbitrator's own task, which I believe must remain a personal one: the parties are entitled to the tribunal's judgment, not a machine's. Getting that balance right will shape dispute resolution in this sector as much as any change in the substantive law.
Q. What advice do you have for parties preparing for arbitration or mediation in complex energy disputes?
It is hard to generalize about energy disputes, because they can be so different from one another. A price review under a long-term gas supply contract has little in common with a claim that the pitch bearings in a wind turbine were defective; a falling-out between partners under a joint operating agreement is a different animal from a dispute over the construction of a biomass plant, or a claim on an insurance policy for the cost of cleaning up a spill. Each turns on its own contract, its own technology, and its own commercial setting. Having said that, here are four things that hold true across most of them.
First, know your contract. Energy contracts are long, carefully negotiated, and full of provisions – price review, hardship, force majeure, limitation of liability, dispute escalation – that were put there for exactly the situation that has now arisen. Read them early, before positions harden, and be candid with yourselves about what they say under the applicable governing law. The case is usually won or lost on the words of the contract and the contemporaneous documents, not on the eloquence of the submissions.
Second, keep the story simple. These disputes are complex, but the tribunal has to understand them. The party that can explain in a few pages what happened, why it matters, and what it wants will have the tribunal's attention. The party that buries the point under a mountain of detail will not. Always be clear about precisely what relief you seek. Tribunals want to know what they are being asked to do.
Third, treat expert evidence with care. Technical and quantum experts are involved in many energy cases, and tribunals can tell the difference between an expert who is helping them understand the problem and one who is advocating. Choose experts who will do the former, give them the documents they need, and work with the tribunal to make sure that the experts on each side are answering the same questions and that they are the questions that matter.
Fourth, invest in the procedure. Work with the arbitrators early to fix a sensible timetable, a proportionate approach to document production, and a hearing plan that gives the tribunal what it needs. Time spent at the first case management conference saves months later. And do not forget mediation: many energy disputes are between parties who must go on doing business together, and a settlement that preserves the relationship is often worth more than a win.