Oil Executives Strike Gushers as Highest Paid: Graef Crystal (Bloomberg)

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http://quote.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000039&refer=columnist_crystal&sid=ahWvkX7FsZxY

May 3 (Bloomberg) -- No one is striking bigger pay gushers these days than the top executives in the oil industry.

Think it's a coincidence that while the rest of us fork over $3 a gallon these roughnecks of remuneration are making a killing? I wouldn't bet on it.

In a study of the 2005 total pay of 492 CEOs running companies with stock market values of $3 billion or more, I found that five of the 16 most highly-paid CEOs were involved in the oil business, including the chief executive officers in first and second place.

They were Ray Irani, CEO of Occidental Petroleum Corp., whose pay of $64 million busted the springs on the executive pay scale. The runner-up was Lee Raymond, the former chief of Exxon Mobil Corp., the world's biggest oil company. His 2005 pay package was $49 million.

For the entire group, the median and average total pay was $6 million and $8.8 million, respectively.

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1. Courtesy of UpInArms, the GOP - Big Oil lovefest continues

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=102&topic_id=2260668&mesg_id=2260856

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/03/business/media/03oil....

WASHINGTON, May 2 — Just last November, Senate Republican leaders extended an unusual privilege to five of the nation's top oil executives. To prevent what might seem like a "perp walk," the officials entered a Senate hearing room outside the whirl of television and press photographers, who had been briefly shooed away from the site.

Moreover, the officials were not required to take an oath, avoiding the infamous imagery created when tobacco company executives lined up, right hands in the air, and then proceeded to uniformly declare before a Senate panel that cigarettes were not addictive.

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The industry can already claim an early success, with big-business interests quickly persuading the Senate leadership to drop a provision that would have increased taxes on inventories not just of oil companies but of other industries as well. But that was just the opening skirmish in what the energy companies now see as a long bruising battle ahead.

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For its part, the petroleum institute has brought on Blue Worldwide, the advertising arm of Edelman Public Relations and the Hawthorn Group. As oil industry profits soared, it started a campaign of full-page newspaper ads, arranged for dozens of op-ed articles, and produced television and radio commercials in an effort to explain why gas prices have risen so much.

The campaign has cost the institute more than $20 million over the last several months, though this is minuscule when set against the profits most oil companies have been making. Even BP, the only major to report a drop in earnings for the quarter, still had net income of more than $5 billion. Chevron said profit rose 49 percent in the quarter.

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Both industry officials and Congress recognize the potency of gas prices as a lever at the polls. The oil industry is a powerful campaign donor, with more than $1 million being donated to federal candidates in 2005 and the first three months of this year by the top 10 oil industry political action committees, largely to Republicans, according to the PoliticalMoneyLine, an online Web site that compiles finance data.

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