Paul Laurence Bloom (May 14, 1939 – October 10, 2009) was an American lawyer working as a special counsel for the United States Department of Energy during the Carter Administration, who recovered $6 billion in refunds from dozens of oil producers in the United States who had overcharged as much as $11 billion for their products under price controls placed on "old oil" (oil obtained from wells that were drilled before a cutoff date), that had been imposed by Richard Nixon in the wake of the 1973 oil crisis, as a means to control prices and to encourage oil companies to search for new sources of petroleum that would not fall under the regulations.