Longtime ConocoPhillips CEO Ryan Lance will step down in September, remaining in the executive chairman role, and opening the door for chief financial officer Andy O’Brien to take over as CEO.
The announcement comes as ConocoPhillips reported a massive second-quarter profit of $3.9 billion—up from $2 billion year-over-year. ConocoPhillips has a market cap of about $140 billion—only down slightly from an all-time high achieved in late March. Profits were buoyed by high oil prices triggered by the Iran war.
Houston-based ConocoPhillips is the nation’s leading independent oil and gas producer—it only produces oil and gas—while the larger ExxonMobil and Chevron are integrated giants that also own refining and chemical assets and more. ConocoPhillips and Phillips 66 spun off from each other in 2012 with Phillips 66 holding the refining, petrochemical, pipeline, and terminal assets. Lance took over as CEO that same year during the split.
Lance, a petroleum engineer by training, will leave the CEO role short of his 65th birthday next year.
“[Lance] set the course for the newly formed independent ConocoPhillips in 2012, and during his tenure, the company became a recognized leader within the sector as a global upstream company. The strength of the company today and its compelling outlook for the future is a direct result of Ryan’s vision and leadership,” said Robert Niblock, Conoco lead independent director, in a statement.
“[O’Brien] is the right person to lead our company into its next phase. He brings a deep knowledge of our business, a strong track record of execution and has played a key role in making ConocoPhillips successful,” Niblock added.
A Conoco lifer, O’Brien is U.K. native who first joined the company in 1997 as a financial analyst in England. He also worked in Scotland and Canada before first transitioning to the Houston office in 2004. He became a vice president in 2020 and assumed his current role of executive vice president of strategy and commercial and CFO last year.
Conoco said it completed the sale of $1.7 billion in noncore U.S. assets, including in Oklahoma, South Texas’ Eagle Ford Shale, the Gulf of Mexico, and some less-profitable areas of the Permian Basin. Those deals allowed the company to achieve its $5 billion divestiture goal.
Those sales come as Conoco is growing internationally again, recently inking deals to move into Iraq and Syria. Still, the company’s most profitable position is in West Texas’ Permian.
Konnie Haynes-Welsh, currently the vice president of finance and controller, will assume the senior vice president and CFO role.