Mr. Norman J. Nadorff has 30 years of legal experience in the oil and gas industry. He recently retired from BP, where he most recently served as Senior Counsel in Angola where he resided from 2006 to 2015. Mr. Nadorff has served as an oil and gas attorney in various regions, primarily Latin America, Southeast Asia and West Africa for Conoco, ARCO and BP. He works effectively in Spanish and Portuguese, is proficient in French, and conversant in Indonesian. Mr. Nadorff’s Exploration and & Production experience includes two expatriate assignments in Indonesia. He was also a legal advisor to ARCO's Treasury Department (Los Angeles) in the mid-90's and at one stage provided legal services to BP's solar energy division. At ARCO, Norman wrote the Company’s policies on Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, U.S. Anti-boycott laws and U.S. Export Regulations.

Since 2012, Mr. Nadorff has been an Adjunct Professor of Law at University of Houston where he teaches a course each year titled, “Drafting and Negotiating International Petroleum Agreements”.

 

Soon after arriving in Angola, Mr. Nadorff conceptualized and helped obtain BP funding for the creation of a post-graduate Oil and Gas Law and Business Management program at the national law school in 2007. The program, the only of its kind in Africa, has graduated approximately 150 professionals in six sessions. Mr. Nadorff assisted with the recruitment of international instructors for the Program and with the design of its curriculum. He has taught (in Portuguese) contract drafting and anti-corruption law in the Program and spearheaded several well-attended symposia and an mock international (ICC) arbitration. In 2010, Mr. Nadorff was instrumental in the creation of a similar recurring course at Thailand’s Chulalongkorn University College of Law for which he twice taught drafting and negotiating international oil and gas agreements. Norman lectures frequently on a wide range of topics around the world, most recently in Equatorial Guinea, Namibia and South Africa, as well as the U.S.

 

Mr. Nadorff received his J.D. from The Ohio State University College of Law (1980). He also holds an M.A. in Spanish and Portuguese and a B.A. in Political Science (summa cum laude), both from Saint Louis University (1975, 1976). He is a member of Phi Beta Kappa (1974) and was a Fulbright Fellow in Law in Brazil (1980-1981) during which time he published an article entitled “Habeas Corpus and the Protection of Political and Civil Rights in Brazil, 1964-1978.” In 2014 Mr. Nadorff co-edited a special Sub-Saharan edition of the Journal of World Energy, Law and Business (Oxford Press) on the region’s anti-corruption laws. The edition contained an article which he co-authored, titled, “Where there’s a will there’s a way: making Angola’s probity laws work”.

 

Mr. Nadorff is admitted to practice law in Ohio (1980) and Texas (2002). He is a former Director-at-large of the Association of International Petroleum Negotiators (AIPN) and former Co-Chair, Scholarships. He is also a member of the Board of Advisors of the AIPN’s Journal of World Energy, Law and Business and of The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law LLM Advisory Council.