Save for later Print Download Share LinkedIn Twitter Energy Intelligence, publisher of International Oil Daily and Oil Daily, announced that Vicki Hollub, president and CEO of Occidental, has been chosen as the “Energy Executive of the Year” for 2023.Hollub will receive her award, which is based on the nominations and votes of top industry executives, at a gala dinner and award ceremony in her honor during the Energy Intelligence Forum 2023, which will be held in London from Oct. 17-19.“Vicki has been undeterred by the challenges of carbon capture and has instead set about building a thriving business of scale to drive its costs down,” said Raja Sidawi, chairman and CEO of Energy Intelligence. “This approach sets Oxy apart from its independent E&P peers and even outflanks larger integrated rivals in this space.”Hollub was chosen to succeed Steve Chazen as Oxy CEO in 2015, and she assumed leadership of the company in April 2016.She quickly went to work to carve out a unique low-carbon strategy for the company, initially using Oxy’s historical expertise in enhanced oil recovery and then branching out into other carbon removal and storage technologies, particularly direct air capture.In 2020, Oxy became the only large US oil company to commit to net zero Scope 3 emissions — those associated with the burning of its oil and gas production.But it was Hollub’s hotly contested acquisition of large rival Anadarko Petroleum that made her a household name in energy circles.To complete the $55 billion merger, she successfully fought off a competing bid from US supermajor Chevron as well as a campaign to block the deal by legendary activist investor Carl Icahn.While seen as risky at the time, the company has been able to accelerate debt repayment and increase shareholder returns in the years since the deal.Oxy shares were the best-performing stock in the S&P 500 last year.Hollub graduated from the University of Alabama with a degree in petroleum engineering in 1981 and began her oil and gas career with Cities Service.She joined Oxy in 1982 when the company took over Cities, and over the course of her career, she took on roles of greater responsibility, managing some of the company’s most important assets in the Middle East, Latin America and the US before becoming CEO.Hollub is the first woman to run a large US oil and gas company and the first to receive the Energy Executive of the Year award.Energy Intelligence gathers nominations for the Energy Executive of the Year from the heads of the world's 100 largest oil and gas companies, as determined by the annual Energy Intelligence Top 100 rankings .Nominations are then voted on by a special selection committee made up of previous award winners and other senior executives.Previous winners of the award include Saad al-Kaabi of QatarEnergy (2022), Sultan al-Jaber of Abu Dhabi National Oil Co. (2021), Amin Nasser of Saudi Aramco (2020) and Ben van Beurden of Royal Dutch Shell (2019).
