Steve Chazen
Editor's note: This profile is part of Hart Energy's 50th anniversary Hall of Fame series honoring industry pioneers of the past 50 years and the Agents of Change (ACEs) who are leading the energy sector into the future.
Steve Chazen’s CV was rich before he started his Hall of Fame career in the oil and gas industry. By the time he entered the space, he had already served in the U.S. Army’s canine corps disabling mines in Vietnam, studied lunar samples while serving as a lab manager at NASA’s Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center, and was employed as a managing director in corporate finance for Merrill Lynch’s mergers and acquisitions arm until 1994.
That’s a full career right there, but Chazen (1946-2022) was just getting started. He joined Occidental Petroleum at age 48 as executive vice president, corporate development before being promoted to CFO in 1999, president in 2007, and finally to CEO in 2011.
During his time at Occidental, the company grew to become the fourth-largest oil and gas company in the United States, based on market cap. Occidental completed almost $40 billion worth of acquisitions during his tenure, with much of the growth derived from holdings in the Permian Basin.
After retiring from Occidental in 2015, he launched Magnolia Oil and Gas with a $650 million IPO. This was followed by the $2.7 billion acquisition of EnerVest’s 360,000 acres in the Eagle Ford Shale and a $191 million acquisition of 114,000 acres in the Austin Chalk Formation from Harvest Oil & Gas Corp.
Unlike some producers that focused on continued production growth through M&A activity, Magnolia sought sustainable growth under Chazen’s leadership by focusing on increased production through its two initial acquisitions.
In 2018, Chazen told Hart Energy he chose the Eagle Ford and Austin Chalk because they were less risky regions. “I won’t go somewhere where I have doubt about whether the oil is there,” he said. “I’ll put up with lots of other risks but if I can’t say with 100% certainty that the oil is in place, I’m really not interested.”
In 2019, Chazen was named as chairman of the board at Occidental while he continued to oversee Magnolia. He also served as chairman of the board of the American Petroleum Institute and the Catalina Island Conservancy.
He was involved in various charities and in his community, including serving on the University of Houston System Board of Regents. Chazen also supported the university as chair of the endowment management committee among other roles.
He told Forbes in 2018 that retirement didn’t suit him because he never learned to golf and had already traveled a great deal. But he had interests other than business. One of his passions was stamp collecting. In fact, he co-authored a book “Tibet Stamps and Postal History” focused on the postal history of Tibet from ancient to modern times.
“Steve was a true visionary in the oil and gas industry. He had a deep understanding of the business and was always looking for new ways to improve it,” said Vicki Hollub, president and CEO of Occidental, when Chazen died. “But more importantly, he was a good person who cared about his employees, his community, and the environment.”
—Frank Nieto, Contributing Editor