Big Oil CEOs are drinking our milkshake

Paychecks growing fatter for Big Oil execs

Posted by Josh Dorner (Guest Contributor) at 3:18 PM on 11 Jul 2008

Read more about: business | Big Oil | gas prices | economy

Everyone is acutely aware that the price of oil is surging and gas prices break a new record almost daily. Less well-reported -- yet completely unsurprising -- is that the paychecks of Big Oil CEOs are also reaching new heights, according to a report by Equilar, as reported by MSN Money.

Median S&P 500 CEO compensation: $9.9 million. Big Oil CEO pay range: $15-$21.7 million (!)

Rex Tillerson, CEO of ExxonMobil, raked in an astonishing $21.7 million and is sitting on nearly $78 million of unvested stock options. (Though this is chump change compared to the obscene $500 million golden parachute his predecessor, Lee Raymond, received upon retirement. That is of course also the same amount ExxonMobil will have to pay in punitive damages for the ExxonValdez disaster, thanks to a recent wrongheaded Supreme Court decision.)

David O'Reilly, CEO of Chevron, made $15.7 million and is sitting on $26.3 million in unvested options.

James Mulva of ConocoPhillips made $15 million and has a whopping $234 million in options.

For story: Big Oil CEOs are drinking our milkshake
6 Comments | Post a Comment

as the political science professor said...

For us, life was a piece of cake. Unfortunately for your generation, we ate it.

by GreenEngineer at 3:48 PM on 11 Jul 2008

If they made risky investments.

If they had foreseen the price spike, and made risky investments to take advantage of it, and reduce it's intensity for the rest of us, this would be justified. If instead, as I think will be seen to be the case, they were especially conservative by investing little in new production, then they are simply taking advantage of us. Of course a lot of this can be laid on the doorstop of the various semiofficial agencies who predict oil supply/demand/prices, such as CERA, IEA, and EIA. Their consistent forecasts was for future drops in the price of oil. By being so wrong, they precluded investments in oil production, alternatives, and in conservation, and allowed the industrial world to be blindsided by the current (price) crisis.

by bigTom at 3:48 PM on 11 Jul 2008

Irrelevant

As much as I might like to blame Big Oil, they have little to do with the higher oil prices.

The reality is that we are at the end of cheap oil. The question for us is: how do we adapt?

It's dysfunctional to keep searching for scapegoats. Here is a list of the various scapegoats people have put forward: OPEC, speculators, Big Oil, environmentalists, China...

It's much more fun to wail about nasty villains than to face reality and take responsibility for our own actions. But problems don't get fixed that way.

Bart
Energy Bulletin

by Bart Anderson at 4:20 PM on 11 Jul 2008

Who cares?

I'm with Bart. Bashing oil company CEOs doesn't get us anywhere productive. They make a lot of money. So what? A lot of people make a lot of money. A lot of people don't make enough money. Very few think they make enough money.

OK, fine. But what are you going to do about it? Ask your boss to lower your salary once your base needs are met? Devise a better welfare plan? Raise upper-income tax brackets?

Do those if you want, but none of those issues really have anything to do with oil. Nothing useful comes out of conflating the two. Is inflated CEO compensation only acceptable in certain industries? If so, who chooses?

Bottom line, this is just scape-goating. We have legitimate issues with oil supply, price and availability of alternatives to focus on. Whether or not Rex Tillerson cashed out his options this year is beside the point.

by Sean Casten at 4:41 PM on 11 Jul 2008

remember the Valdez

The Supreme Court thinks that punative damages should not exceed the cost of the damages caused. The true cost of the damages will never be known, but can they really think that a tiny percentage of the offender's annual profits is going to 'punish' them, much less stop them from allowing it to happen again?

The CEO's should be on the beaches, sucking up the oil with straws, bathing the wildlife, and helping the natives rebuild their lives for the next twenty years.

a liberal in redsville

by birdboy at 6:22 PM on 11 Jul 2008

Chump Change

Yes, but compared to the SuperLibs who finance left wing candidates like Obama, such as the Google Boys and all the Hollywood people, that's just Chump Change.

by jabailo at 10:28 AM on 12 Jul 2008

ADVERTISING POLICY

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