Sunil Mathew
Summary
Sunil Mathew is Occidental Petroleum’s Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, a position he has held since August 9, 2023, after building a nearly two-decade career at Oxy in planning and business-development roles.
Biography
Mathew joined Occidental in 2004 after previously working for Schlumberger in the Middle East and Asia. At Oxy, he held progressively senior positions in the planning organization in Qatar and in corporate planning and analysis functions in Los Angeles and Houston. Before becoming CFO, he served as Vice President of Strategic Planning, Analysis and Business Development, where he supported long-range planning, capital allocation and business-unit performance tracking. As CFO, Mathew oversees accounting, tax, treasury, internal audit, investor relations, corporate planning and business development. He succeeded Robert Peterson in the role and has been involved in the company’s financing, deleveraging and investor-communications efforts. Mathew holds a bachelor’s degree in electronics engineering from Manipal Institute of Technology in India and an MBA from T. A. Pai Management Institute in India.
Notable achievements
- Appointed Senior Vice President and CFO in August 2023 after nearly 20 years with Occidental.
- Was instrumental in Occidental’s divestiture program of approximately $10 billion following the Anadarko acquisition.
- Helped communicate the financing and capital-allocation plan for the CrownRock acquisition.
- Supported Occidental’s debt-reduction and balance-sheet management efforts after the acquisition.
- Built experience across strategic planning, petroleum economics, business development and corporate finance.
Problem areas / controversies
- The CrownRock transaction increased Occidental’s debt and placed significant pressure on management to deliver planned cash flow and deleveraging.
- Commodity-price volatility and high capital requirements make the company’s financial targets difficult to sustain across market cycles.
- Occidental received an SEC comment letter in 2024 regarding its 2023 Form 10-K; the public record reviewed did not indicate that the matter resulted in a finding of wrongdoing.
- No major personal controversy was identified in the public sources reviewed.