About Tonye
Tonye Oki combines an international legal education with years of in-house and academic experience. He earned his LL.B. from Ambrose Alli University in 1997 and completed the Barrister at Law program at the Nigerian Law School in 2003. He followed that with an LL.M. in Energy, Environment and Natural Resources Law from the University of Denver Sturm College of Law in 2005, and later added an MBA from Colorado State University–Pueblo in 2021.
Oki began his legal career in Nigeria as a junior associate at D. D. Dodo & Co. in 2004. He moved into the energy sector soon after, serving as Associate Contracts Counsel at DIVINE OIL AND GAS in 2005. That same year he worked as a research associate for Natural Resources Weblinks at the University of Denver, an early indication of his interest in the intersection of law, policy and natural resources.
By 2007 he was handling corporate matters at Tyche Corporation and took a legal externship with the United Nations Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals. He returned to academia in 2009 as a professor of International and Comparative Petroleum Law at the University of Denver Sturm College of Law, teaching courses that drew on both his transactional work and his research in energy regulation.
The following years saw Oki move into more senior corporate roles. He became Executive Vice President and Principal Contracts Counsel at Grynberg Petroleum and MOST Ethanol Co., LLC in 2011. He later served as Assistant General Counsel at Aspect Energy, LLC in 2019. Along the way he earned certification as a Merger and Acquisition Advisor from the Alliance of M&A Advisors and maintained an active presence in industry education as a delegate on the Association of International Petroleum Negotiators’ Education Advisory Board starting in 2019.
In 2021 Oki joined Caterpillar Inc. as Senior Corporate Counsel. He holds memberships in the Colorado State Bar and the State Bar of Texas, and is admitted to practice in New York, Texas and Colorado. He is also a Barrister and Solicitor of the Supreme Court of Nigeria. His background spans transactional drafting, contract negotiation and regulatory matters in the oil, gas and energy sectors, combined with experience teaching and researching comparative petroleum law.
He currently practices as Senior Corporate Counsel at Caterpillar Inc., and his work centers on corporate transactions and energy-related legal matters.
