5 Tips for CEO Succession Planning in Oil & Gas

Boards in oil and gas handle CEO succession well when they treat it as a standing part of strategy, start years before a transition, and plan for the leader the company will need next. In practice, that comes down to five habits. Keep succession on the board agenda every year. Define the future CEO profile against where the business is heading. Keep an emergency plan ready alongside the long-term one. Develop more than one internal candidate and benchmark them against the outside market. Finally, assess finalists for Cultural Leadership and plan their Integration before the announcement goes out.

The sector has offered plenty of recent examples of how this plays out. Occidental named COO Richard Jackson to succeed Vicki Hollub in June 2026, after a career at the company that began in 2003. ConocoPhillips announced in August 2026 that CFO Andy O’Brien would succeed Ryan Lance after 14 years as CEO. Devon Energy handed the role to its COO, Clay Gaspar, in March 2025. Each of those transitions looked calm from the outside because the work behind them started long before the press release.

Why does CEO succession planning matter so much in oil and gas right now?

Leadership transitions are happening faster across the market. Challenger, Gray & Christmas counted 446 public company CEO exits in 2025, the highest annual total on record. Directors feel it too: in a 2025 survey of more than 200 public company directors, 34% named CEO and C-suite succession their top priority for the year, ahead of AI strategy and geopolitical risk.

Oil and gas adds pressures of its own. Consolidation has reshaped the industry and reduced the number of top jobs available for rising executives to prove themselves. Leaner operating models have also narrowed the number of leaders gaining broad experience across the value chain. Across the wider energy workforce, the International Energy Agency reports that advanced economies now have 2.4 energy workers nearing retirement for every new entrant under 25.

The job itself is also changing. The next CEO of an upstream, midstream, or integrated company will balance capital discipline and shareholder returns with rising gas demand from power generation and data centers, a shifting policy environment, and investor expectations around lower-carbon investment. A board that plans succession around the company of five years ago is planning for a role that no longer exists.

1. Make succession a standing board conversation

The strongest boards discuss CEO succession every year, whether or not a transition is on the horizon. They review the bench, track how each internal candidate is developing, and update the plan as strategy shifts. Succession stays on the agenda the same way capital allocation and safety performance do.

This rhythm matters because the most useful development work takes years. A COO who will one day become CEO needs time in front of the board, exposure to investors, and ownership of decisions outside operations. When the board starts that work early, the eventual choice reflects years of observation. When the board starts late, the choice reflects whoever happens to be closest to ready.

Full-board ownership helps too. A compensation or governance committee can run the process, though every director should understand the candidates and the criteria. When the vote comes, the board should be choosing among leaders it already knows well.

2. Define the CEO the company will need next

Before naming candidates, the board should agree on what the next CEO must accomplish. Start with strategy. Where will the company be in five to ten years? Will it grow through acquisition or focus on its core basins? How much of its future depends on gas, LNG, carbon capture, or new energy ventures? What will investors expect from capital returns?

Those answers shape the profile. A company preparing for a large integration needs a leader who has run one. A company leaning into gas for power markets needs commercial range alongside operating depth. A company under activist pressure needs someone comfortable in front of investors and fluent in capital markets.

It helps to write the profile down and revisit it as strategy changes. When directors agree on the profile first, they evaluate candidates against the same standard, and the conversation stays anchored in the future of the business. We explore how the sector’s priorities are shifting in our look at the energy transition and the leaders it demands.

3. Keep an emergency plan ready alongside the long-term plan

Long-term planning covers the expected transition. Emergency planning covers the unexpected one: a sudden health event, a resignation, an activist campaign, or a merger that changes the leadership picture overnight. Many boards that have a thoughtful long-term plan have never written down what happens if the CEO is gone next week, and private and PE-backed companies are often the least prepared.

An emergency plan answers a few practical questions in advance. Who steps in as interim CEO, and for how long? What authority does that person carry? Who speaks to employees, regulators, lenders, and investors in the first 48 hours? How quickly will the board launch a permanent search, and will it consider the interim leader as a candidate?

Large companies face these moments too. When BP announced a CEO change in December 2025, the board named an executive vice president as interim CEO for the months before Woodside’s Meg O’Neill could take over. Having a trusted interim leader ready gives a board time to make the permanent decision well.

4. Develop more than one internal candidate, then benchmark against the market

Recent successions in the sector show a clear pattern: boards are promoting chief operating officers and chief financial officers who have spent years inside the business. Internal candidates bring continuity, credibility with employees, and deep knowledge of the assets. Those strengths are real and worth building on.

The strongest plans name at least two internal candidates for the CEO role, with honest assessments of who is ready now and who will be ready in two or three years. Each candidate gets a development plan built around their gaps. An operations leader might take on investor relations or lead a major transaction. A finance leader might run a business unit or a large capital project.

Benchmarking completes the picture. Even when the board expects to promote from within, an outside view shows how internal candidates compare to the leaders available in the market. It is also the step boards most often skip. A benchmark helps the board confirm its internal choice with confidence, or spot a gap early enough to address it. There are real benefits to promoting leaders from within, and they grow stronger when the board knows how its bench measures up.

5. Assess for Cultural Leadership and plan the Integration

Technical credentials and operating results are the easiest things to verify. The harder question is how a candidate will lead the culture of this specific company through the next chapter. We call this Cultural Leadership: the ability to think and plan quickly, act decisively, and understand the role culture plays in driving results.

In oil and gas, culture carries real weight. Safety performance, field relationships, and trust between headquarters and operations all depend on how the CEO leads. A leader who succeeded inside one culture may need different strengths after a merger, or when the company’s strategy changes direction.

The plan should also cover the first year after the appointment. We focus on Integration, a 12-month commitment that ties the new CEO’s early priorities to clear goals and measures of success. Integration covers the outgoing CEO’s role, the new leader’s relationship with the board, and the changes the leadership team should expect. A thoughtful handoff protects the momentum the board worked to build.

How TRANSEARCH supports oil and gas boards through CEO succession

When a board asks us to support a CEO succession, the work starts with strategy and culture. Our Orxestra® method measures the company’s current and aspirational culture, profiles the leader the role requires, and assesses how each candidate, internal or external, is likely to perform inside that culture. Boards get an objective view of their own bench alongside the leaders available in the market.

Selection is only the beginning. Our Integration support continues for 12 months after the appointment, so the new CEO and the board stay aligned from the first day. It is one reason our placements last: 90% of the leaders we place are still in the role two years later.

For a broader look at building leadership depth below the CEO, see our guide to building a strong leadership pipeline in oil and gas. You can also explore our thinking on why it is time to rethink succession.

Building a bench that is ready when the board needs it

CEO succession in oil and gas will keep getting more complex. Consolidation is changing the shape of the industry, experienced leaders are retiring, and the next generation of CEOs will need a wider range than any before them. The boards that handle these transitions well share one trait: they started early, planned for the future business, and knew their candidates long before the vote.

If your board is thinking about its next CEO, schedule a conversation with Stephanie Hinkes and the TRANSEARCH team.

Stephanie Hinkes is a Director at TRANSEARCH USA and leads the firm’s Power & Energy practice.

Frequently Asked Questions

How should boards in the oil and gas sector approach CEO succession planning?

Boards should treat CEO succession as a standing part of strategy. That means reviewing the bench every year, defining the future CEO profile against where the business is heading, keeping an emergency plan ready, developing more than one internal candidate, benchmarking those candidates against the external market, and planning the new CEO's Integration before the announcement.

When should an oil and gas board start CEO succession planning?

Ideally three to five years before an expected transition, and continuously after that. Developing an internal candidate into a ready CEO takes years of exposure to the board, investors, and decisions outside their functional area. Boards that start early choose from leaders they know well.

What is an emergency CEO succession plan?

An emergency succession plan names who steps in as interim CEO if the current CEO leaves suddenly, defines that person's authority, sets out how the company will communicate with employees, regulators, lenders, and investors, and describes how the board will run a permanent search. It gives the board time to make the permanent decision well.

Should oil and gas companies promote an internal CEO or hire externally?

Most recent oil and gas successions have promoted internal leaders, often the COO or CFO, as Occidental, ConocoPhillips, and Devon all did. Internal candidates bring continuity and deep asset knowledge. Benchmarking them against external talent confirms the choice and reveals gaps early.

What qualities should the next oil and gas CEO have?

The right profile depends on the company's strategy. Most boards now look for operating depth combined with capital markets fluency, experience leading through mergers or integrations, commercial range across gas and power markets, and the Cultural Leadership to sustain safety performance and trust across headquarters and the field.