Fracking’s Biggest Gushers Are Struck in the Corner Office
Anadarko is a reminder that E&P management too often has little real skin in the game and gets rewarded for the wrong things.
For some, it’s raining money.
Photographer: Joe Raedle/Hulton Archive/Getty Images
The dream in the oil business is to own a piece of real estate from which you extract fantastic profits just because you’re lucky enough to own it. Unfortunately, all too often that piece of real estate is a corner office.
Just before Occidental Petroleum Corp. leaped into the fray this week against Chevron to win Anadarko Petroleum Corp., it emerged that, whoever ended up owning the company, the big winners would be the guys currently running it. As first reported by the Wall Street Journal, Anadarko’s compensation committee tweaked severance terms for its senior bosses, including CEO Al Walker, the day before the agreed deal with Chevron Corp. was announced. The committee even approved removing a provision that would have reduced Walker’s payout because he isn’t 65 yet. The timing was impeccable.