Vicki Hollub's decade at Oxy: From brash merger to June farewell

When Vicki Hollub took over as Occidental Petroleum's CEO on April 29, 2016, the shares were at $60.76.

Ten years later, with Hollub preparing to step aside from the job, the shares are just above $60, which gives you an idea of the struggles the big exploration and production company has experienced in the last 10 years. (Exxon Mobil and Chevron, in contrast, are near doubling.)

Occidental revealed Friday, May 1, that Hollub will retire as CEO on June 1 after more than 40 years with the company.

Richard Jackson, the company's senior vice president and chief operating officer, will take the job. He joined Occidental in 2003, and his experience includes time spent in the Middle East and working on the company's low-carbon initiatives.

Oxy gets a push from the Iran war

Occidental's shares, at least, are up some 45.5% in 2026, but that has much to do with the impact of the Israeli-U.S. war on global oil prices.

And an irony is that Occidental is expected to report lower first-quarter earnings at the May 5 market close. That's because the oil-price runup didn't really start until after the war erupted on Feb. 28.

Related: Goldman Sachs revamps inflation outlook for 2026

Stockanalysis.com is estimating revenue at $5.62 billion, down 18% from a year ago. Earnings, at 59 cents a share, would be down 32%.

Oil is up more than 80% this year and nearly 60% since the day before the Middle East conflict began. So second-quarter earnings should be quite strong, with revenue topping $7 billion and earnings at $1.54 a share, The Wall Street Journal noted.

Hollub worked her way up to be first woman CEO of major oil company

Hollub, an Alabama native and University of Alabama grad, was the first woman to serve as CEO of a big oil company, according to Reuters.

On her watch, Occidental made some bold moves with Berkshire Hathaway's Warren Buffett helping, but the timing proved, well, suboptimal.

Her biggest deal - a $55 billion merger with Anadarko Petroleum - was inked in August 2019. This followed a nasty fight with corporate raider Carl Icahn, Reuters noted, and unhappiness from T. Rowe Price, who thought shareholders should have approved it directly.

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The purchase, financed in part by Berkshire Hathaway, should have been a killer.

It made Houston-based Occidental one of the biggest players in the Permian Basin of west Texas and New Mexico, the nation's most productive energy-producing region, Texas Monthly reported. Oil prices looked stable at $57 or so.

But the deal, with all that debt, nearly killed Occidental.

Six months after the Anadarko deal closed, the Covid pandemic swept the world. Oil prices collapsed as panic overtook the global economy. The futures price of light sweet crude actually went negative, according to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

Occidental shares fell to as little as $9 in March 2020, and Hollub had to scramble to keep the company from falling into bankruptcy.

The company recovered and, in 2022, Hollub impressed Buffett with its results again (because oil prices were hitting record highs), prompting Berkshire to buy in.

He kept buying shares, even as oil prices fell again. But the shares stumbled as Occidental struggled again with too much debt, falling 15% in the first half of 2025, The Motley Fool wrote. They remained static until Middle East war pressures mounted and then soared to a new high of $67.45 on March 31.

As of last week, Berkshire still owned or controlled 348.9 million shares, about 32.4% of the total.

Occidental does have considerable assets, such as the big position in the Permian Basin, the DJ field of eastern Colorado, and positions in the Gulf of Mexico, Algeria, and Oman.

And it was able to pay down considerable debt by selling its Oxychem business to Berkshire Hathaway for $9.7 billion, Occidental indicated. That's helped to deleverage the company.

It also has a long and colorful history.

Started in 1920, it was controlled for many years by the late Armand Hammer, who took control of the company in 1957. He was able to cut deals to operate in Libya, Colombia, the United Kingdom, the North Sea, and Russia.

Later managements trimmed its focus to exploration and production and moved Occidental's headquarters from Los Angeles to Houston in 2014.

Related: Iran war gap: Wall St. faster to sell than CEOs are to pump

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This story was originally published May 5, 2026 at 2:03 PM.