The Woman Transforming One Of America’s Biggest Oil Companies

The Woman Transforming One Of America’s Biggest Oil Companies

Vicki Hollub is the first woman to lead a major oil and gas firm. In March 2016 Vicki Hollub, who had just become the CEO of major oil firm Occidental Petroleum, was having dinner with a group of investors as part of an energy conference in New Orleans. She appeared nervous, or apprehensive, recalled Tyler Hardt, then a mutual fund analyst for the investment firm Artisan Partners, in an email exchange. Many of the other investors were from hedge funds, and the tables were arrayed in a U-shape, as though this were a board meeting and not a dinner. Hardt, who was sitting next to Hollub, leaned over and told her: "Don't be afraid of these guys. They are just kids with spreadsheets and they aren't going to eat you." Hollub grinned. No reminder was necessary. She proceeded to describe Occidental's oilfield operations in the sprawling Permian oil and gas basin in masterful detail. "She made it extremely clear that she was an experienced operator," said Hardt. The anecdote illustrates one of Hollub's biggest strengths as a chief executive, a perhaps unusual one for a woman in the historically male-dominated industry: her decades of experience inside the exploration and production