R. Casey Olson is the president of Oxy Oil & Gas – Eastern Hemisphere.  Mr. Olson, 53, manages Occidental’s producing operations in the Middle East and Northern Africa. He also has management responsibility for Occidental’s worldwide exploration and international business development efforts.  During his career with Occidental, Mr. Olson has held a number of management positions, including: President, Occidental Development Company; President, Middle East; Executive Vice President, Business Development and Senior Vice President, Acquisitions & Divestitures for Occidental Oil & Gas Company.  Prior to joining Occidental, Mr. Olson was a managing director for CIBC Wood Gundy Securities Corp focusing on international oil & gas acquisitions and divestitures.  Prior to CIBC, he was vice president of Energy Ventures for Hunt Oil Company.  Mr. Olson began his career with Northern Natural Gas Company where his areas of responsibility included government and regulatory affairs and the management of the company’s gas supply.  He holds a BA from the University of Wisconsin and a Juris Doctorate from the John Marshall School of Law.

David Asmus is a senior partner at Baker Botts L.L.P.   He is in charge of the firm's global oil and gas practice. His practice focuses on oil and gas development projects, acquisitions and divestitures, and energy-based financings.  Mr. Asmus' experience with the structuring, documentation, and negotiation of oil and gas transactions ranges from host government arrangements, farm-ins, and acquisitions to shareholder agreements, operating agreements, and unitizations, to EPC, production handling, transportation, and sales contracts and financing arrangements. In addition to serving as president, secretary, and a member of the board of directors of the Association of International Petroleum Negotiators, Mr. Asmus co-chairs the committee that is presently preparing the AIPN Model Form International Unitization and Unit Operating Agreement. Mr. Asmus received Chambers USA's 2006  "Award for Excellence" for his work in the oil and gas sector and was named International Lawyer of the Year 2005 for Oil and Gas by The International Who's Who of Business Lawyers. Mr. Asmus received his J.D. from Harvard Law School, and a B.S. degree in geology and geophysics, from Yale University.  Before becoming a lawyer, Mr. Asmus worked as a geophysicist.

Sheikh Nawaf Saud Al-Sabah is the manager of the Corporate Legal Department and general counsel of Kuwait Petroleum Corporation (KPC), the state-owned oil company of Kuwait. He is the principal legal officer of the corporation. Prior to his appointment as general counsel in 2005, Mr. Al-Sabah was the manager of KPC USA, the Washington-based government relations arm of KPC, from 2002 to 2004. His experience there centered on development of downstream business opportunities for KPC and policy analysis of energy and security issues. Mr. Al-Sabah first joined KPC in 1999 in the Corporate Legal Department, where he was senior legal counsel and KPC’s principal in-house attorney on international strategic transactions. He has also worked as a corporate transactions attorney for Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP, an international law firm based in Los Angeles. Mr. Al-Sabah graduated magna cum laude with a BA in Public and International Affairs from Princeton University and cum laude with a JD degree from Harvard Law. He has delivered lectures to various energy and business groups, including the Harvard BusinessSchool, the Wharton School, the Army War College and the Texas State Bar.

Akira Hanzawa is a deputy director at Japan Petroleum Energy Center (JPEC). After graduation from Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, he joined Maruzen Oil (currently Cosmo Oil) and was sent to study Business Arabic and Middle East Affairs at American University in Cairo. He has a variety of work experiences in the oil business, both in upstream and downstream affairs, of which 13 years were outside of Japan. He also represented Cosmo Oil in the UAE as a representative and general manager and in the UK as president of Cosmo Oil (U.K.) Plc.. He then moved to Cosmo Research Institute as the general manager of International Energy to cover various fields of research on energy. Mr. Hanzawa has been engaged in the US-Japan Joint Research Project and other jobs since 2004 at JPEC.

Xiaojie Xu is the director of the Institute of Overseas Investment at CNPC Research Academy of Economics and Technology in Beijing, the chief professor of the Institute of Geopolitics and Energy Economics at the East China Normal University in Shanghai, and a participating fellow of the Energy Forum at the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy at Rice University in Houston.  Dr. Xu focuses on geopolitics of oil and gas, evaluation of international oil and gas investment climate, risk management and NOC corporate strategy. He is the author of numerous English and Chinese professional articles, speeches, papers/chapters and books, including Petro-Dragon's Rise: What It Means for China and the World (European Press, 2002).  Dr. Xu has been with the petroleum industry since 1983. He was educated and trained in Canada, the United States and France as a visiting scholar during 1995-1997 and early 2001.

Richard Gordon is an industry expert in the fields of competitor analysis and business strategy.  Currently, he is the president and CEO of Gordon Energy Solutions, a strategic consulting firm that provides research, analytical and advisory services to the leading energy companies.  Dr. Gordon holds a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree in Economics from the University of Missouri at Kansas City and a PhD in Economics from the University of Iowa.

Daniel Brumberg is an associate professor in the Department of Government and Georgetown University and also serves as a special adviser for the USIP’s Muslim World Initiative in the Center for Conflict Analysis and Prevention. A scholar of politics and social change in the Middle East and wider Islamic world, he is author of Reinventing Khomeini: The Struggle for Reform in Iran (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), and c-editor with Larry Diamond and Marc Plattner of Islam and Political Change in the Middle East (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004).  Dr. Brumberg has taught at the Graduate School of Business of the University of Chicago and Sciences Po in Paris and has also served as a senior fellow in the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He has conducted research in Algeria, Morocco, Kuwait, Egypt and Indonesia, and speaks Arabic, French and Hebrew.   Dr. Brumberg received his BA from the University of Indiana and his PhD from the University of Chicago. 

Donald I. Hertzmark is an international energy specialist with more than 25 years of experience in oil and gas economics and analysis.  He has served as an adjunct professor of Economics at the University of Colorado and Georgetown University, teaching courses on the economics of oil, energy and natural resources, and is currently a professorial lecturer at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University.  Dr. Hertzmark has served as an advisor to governments, private companies, state enterprises and international organizations in over 90 countries worldwide to assess markets and projects, provide counsel for energy sector restructuring, design and evaluate energy programs and projects, identify sources of financing, and price energy products.  He has taught short courses on energy project development, energy economics and project investment evaluation to the staffs of the World Bank, Asian Development Bank and African Development Bank.  Dr. Hertzmark holds a PhD in Natural Resource Economics.

Thomas R. Langford is a managing director and co-head of the Global Energy Group. Mr. Langford has responsibility for the major integrated and selected independent E&P and R&M companies. In addition, he is the head of the Houston Office and Southwest Region for Investment Banking. Prior to joining Morgan Stanley, he worked at Exxon and McKinsey & Co. After beginning his career in New York, Mr. Langford spent four years based in Asia where he led several strategic and financing assignments in countries across the region, including the privatization of PTT in Thailand, Sinopec in China, and the Gas Authority of India. In addition, he has spent considerable time in the Middle East. Since returning to N.Y. in 2000, Mr. Langford has been involved in a number of notable strategic and financing transactions including, the Phillips acquisition of Tosco, the merger of Conoco with Phillips, the acquisition of CanHunter by Burlington Resources, Marathon’s acquisition of KMOC in Russia and the acquisition of Unocal by Chevron.

Alexandre Oliveira is the global upstream lead partner with Accenture. His work focuses on strategy, process and performance improvement in the oil and gas industry for clients globally - including national oil company transformation projects, frontier area petroleum market places, national content development, high performance asset management, and capability and capacity development. Prior to joining Accenture, Mr. Oliveira was vice president of Sales for Baker Hughes Corporate, responsible for global, regional and key account strategies and implementation. He has also worked for Schlumberger and Statoil internationally in various assignments including Operations, Asset Appraisal and Management, Technical Consulting, and Marketing and Business Development. Mr. Oliveira is an engineering graduate from Imperial College, London.