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Occidental Petroleum CEO Vicki Hollub said the war in the Middle East would be settled more quickly if NATO and European countries backed the US and Israel’s military strikes against Iran.
“The war would end a lot sooner had we had NATO and the Europeans helping with the situation,” Hollub said at Semafor World Economy in Washington, DC. Meanwhile she praised US President Donald Trump, saying he was “pulling every lever he can think of.”
Her comments come days after Trump again lashed out at NATO over members’ refusal to join its campaign against Iran. Hollub also said the UN had been “useless.”
Occidental has avoided any major impact from the closing of the Strait of Hormuz, she told Semafor World Economy. Hollub put that down to a 10-year effort by the company to boost its domestic oil and gas production to more than 80% of its output to lower its geopolitical risk in the Middle East and other regions.
The impact of the war “has not been really bad at all for our company,” Hollub said. “What we really focus on… [is] our employees and making sure that their lives are not being too dramatically impacted by this.”
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Hollub is reportedly planning to retire after 10 years as one of the most powerful women in the male-dominated oil and gas industry, with an announcement expected later this year. Occidental COO Richard Jackson is set to move into the role, according to reports.
Warren Buffett, whose Berkshire Hathaway is Occidental’s largest shareholder, has praised Hollub as someone who “does know how to separate oil from rock and that’s an uncommon talent, valuable to her shareholders and to her country.”
Last year, Berkshire Hathaway paid $9.7 billion for Occidental’s OxyChem business in a deal that helped the oil and gas exploration and production company to pay down debt and focus on its US oil and gas portfolio.
Hollub’s milestones include the company’s Anadarko Petroleum purchase for about $55 billion in 2019 — after outbidding oil major Chevron Corp. The company also acquired CrownRock in 2024 for $12 billion.
“We have, now, decades of development opportunity in oil and gas,” Hollub told CNBC last year. “Our portfolio is the best it’s ever been.”