Oxy Shuffles Leadership, Appoints New CFO

According to an 8K filing dated April 3, Occidental Petroleum Corp. has named Robert Peterson as Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. While the company did not name reasons for the management change, it did note that Cedric Burgher will transition to another role within the company, according to the filing.

Peterson has served as Senior Vice President, Permian EOR, Occidental Oil and Gas, since September 2019.  Prior to that, he was Vice President, Permian Strategy, Occidental Oil and Gas, from November 2018 to September 2019, and was President of OxyChem, the company’s chemical subsidiary, from August 2014 to September 2017.

He holds a bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering and an MBA in Corporate Finance from the University of Florida.

Oxy has stayed in news headlines for the past year since its controversial purchase of Anadarko Petroleum last spring. Activist investor Carl C. Icahn has been very vocal about his opposition to the deal ever since.

In late March, just two weeks after announcing that it will cut its 2020 capital expenditures by approximately one-third and reduce its quarterly dividend by 86 percent, the company unveiled an additional round of belt-tightening. Around the same time, Oxy made a deal with Icahn to add three Icahn-designated directors to the company’s board.

Earlier that month, former Oxy CEO Stephen I. Chazen, Chairman and CEO of Magnolia Oil and Gas Corp., was elected to Oxy’s board of directors as Chairman. He bluntly stated that he would not be serving as “an employee or executive of Occidental on any basis, whether interim or permanent.”

To contact the author, email bertie.taylor@rigzone.com.