OU Law Alumna Presented Inaugural Owen L. Anderson Distinguished ONE Award

OU Law Prof. Monika Ehrman (left) and Prof. Emeritus Owen Anderson present Sharon J. Daniels with the Owen L. Anderson Distinguished ONE Award.

In June, the OU College of Law honored Sharon J. Daniels (’77) as the inaugural recipient of the Owen L. Anderson Distinguished ONE Award in honor of the magnitude of her impact on the oil and gas and resources community.

Daniels recently retired after 33 years of service as Executive Director of the Energy & Mineral Law Foundation (EMLF), a national nonprofit educational organization that fosters the study of the laws and regulations related to natural resource development and energy use.

Daniels, an alumna of the OU Law Class of 1977, grew up in Ness City, Kansas. She graduated from Fort Hays State University before attending the OU College of Law. After practicing as an oil and gas title attorney in Oklahoma City, Daniels moved to Pittsburgh, where she worked on coal property title. In 1985, she accepted the executive director position at the EMLF, where she led the foundation through three decades of energy transitions, expanding the oil and gas law section, and adding a petrochemicals focus to the already institutional coal mining specialty.

Daniels was honored to receive the award, which was presented by OU Law Professor Emeritus Owen L. Anderson and OU Law Associate Professor Monika U. Ehrman at the Energy & Mineral Law Foundation’s 2018 Annual Institute in Nashville. 

The Owen L. Anderson Distinguished ONE Award is named for Professor Emeritus Owen L. Anderson, who is the Eugene Kuntz Chair Emeritus and the George Lynn Cross Research Professor Emeritus at the University of Oklahoma. Professor Anderson taught at OU Law for over 23 years, retiring in 2015. A giant in the field of oil and gas law, he has authored over 100 articles and is a co-author of International Petroleum Transactions, Hemingway Oil and Gas Law and Taxation, Cases and Materials on Oil & Gas Law, A Student’s Guide to Estates in Land and Future Interests, and the supplements to Kuntz on Oil and Gas Law. He is editor-in-chief of the Texas Title Standards. He serves as a member and current Vice President of Education of the Association of International Petroleum Negotiators and as a member of the Academic Advisory Board of the Institute for Energy Law. He is a life member of the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws; a member of the American Law Institute; an honorary trustee of the Rocky Mountain Mineral Law Foundation; and a trustee of the Energy and Mineral Law Foundation. He served as an editor of the Oil and Gas Reporter from 1989 to 2017.