Occidental Petroleum Corporation

Occidental Petroleum Corporation is an American oil and gas company that explores for, develops, and produces crude oil, natural gas, and natural gas liquids, primarily in the United States, with additional operations in the Middle East and North Africa, generating $21.6 billion in revenue from continuing operations in fiscal 2025. The company also operates a midstream marketing business and is developing direct-air-capture carbon removal through its Low Carbon Ventures subsidiary. Headquartered in Houston, Texas, Occidental produced 1.43 million barrels of oil equivalent per day in 2025 from a diversified portfolio spanning the Permian Basin, the DJ and Powder River Basins, the Gulf of America, and international concessions in Oman, the UAE, and Algeria.

This is a story about a company that spent a decade building the largest and most technically differentiated E&P portfolio in the American peer set, then spent the next two years repairing the balance sheet that financed it. The Anadarko acquisition in 2019 loaded Occidental with roughly $40 billion of debt at precisely the wrong moment — months before a global pandemic cratered oil demand. The subsequent recovery, the CrownRock bolt-on in 2024, and the 2025 sale of OxyChem to pay down debt form an arc that is now substantially complete: Occidental no longer needs transformative M&A, and the task ahead is pure execution. The file turns on a single question: whether the free cash flow machine the company has assembled can generate enough durable surplus to retire the remaining debt and preferred equity overhang before the commodity cycle turns against it.

The new CEO transition sharpens the question. Vicki Hollub, the architect of the Anadarko deal and the subsequent decade-long transformation, retired on June 1, 2026. Richard Jackson, a twenty-year company veteran who most recently served as COO, now leads the company into its execution phase. The strategy is set; the resource base is in place. What remains is delivery.