Bill Cline, is the Senior Advisor within Gaffney, Cline & Associates (GCA). GCA is an integrated firm with offices in more than a dozen key locations that provides a broad range of technical, commercial and strategic advisory support to the private and public sectors of the oil and gas industry.
Bill has over 30 years’ experience in the international oil and gas industry and has managed a large number of GCA’s engagements with national oil companies, governments and ministries in the Americas, Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. He focuses his efforts on combining the technical and commercial capabilities of the GCA Group into integrated decision-making support and advice for the Group’s clientele particularly with respect to property valuations (for transactional or dispute resolution purposes) and development of commercial and fiscal arrangements for linking private sector capital and technology with sovereign or public sector petroleum resources.
Bill graduated from the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University in Washington D.C. with a BSc. degree in International Economics and completed his MBA at Southern Methodist University's Edwin L. Cox School of Business in Dallas.
Elisabeth Eljuri, is Chief Negotiator and Chief Legal Counsel for Westlawn Americas Offshore, a company based in Houston. She also sits as arbitrator from time to time in major energy and infrastructure disputes. Until 2019, Elisabeth was with private equity backed Sierra Oil & Gas where she was the VP, Chief Negotiator and Chief Legal Counsel. Before venturing into private equity and her executive roles, she spent 27 years in legal practice at two of the world’s largest law firms. Until December 2015, she was Head of Latin America of Norton Rose Fulbright where she was a senior partner of the Firm focusing in the areas of international arbitration, energy and natural resources and projects/infrastructure.
Elisabeth has published extensively in the areas of international arbitration, investment protection, political risk management and oil and gas. She has presented at over one hundred industry conferences around the world. Likewise, she has held numerous senior positions in organizations such as President of the Association of International Energy Negotiators (AIEN). Elisabeth graduated from Universidad Católica Andrés Bello in Venezuela in 1991 (cum laude, valedictorian) and then attended Harvard Law School. She is admitted in New York and Venezuela.
Jose L. Valera, is a partner in the Houston office of Mayer Brown and member of the Global Energy group. He focuses his practice on domestic and international energy transactions and project development, with more than 25 years of legal experience representing oil, gas and electric energy companies throughout the United States, Latin America, Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean.
Jose represents clients in a wide range of commercial agreements, including oil and gas exploration and production contracts, investment agreements, production sales, upstream development projects, transportation agreements, mergers and acquisitions, and joint ventures. He also has experience with onshore and marine terminal services agreements for crude oil and petroleum fuels. In the power sector, Jose drafts and negotiates project development agreements for thermal and renewable generation projects, operation and maintenance of power plants, fuel supply, financing, mergers, and acquisitions. Jose’s LNG practice focuses on LNG liquefaction services, regasification services, development of regasification terminals, and purchase and sale of LNG.
Jose has counseled the governments of Argentina, Bolivia, Honduras, Peru and Iraq on energy legislative reform matters, development of shared hydrocarbon resources, and privatization transactions related to the electric and oil and gas industries.
Fluent in English, Spanish and French, he is a former member of the board of directors of the Association of International Petroleum Negotiators and is a frequent speaker on energy matters at professional conferences.