Chevron Texaco chief executive David O'Reilly likes to keep a low profile, writes Arthur Beesley
David O'Reilly's name does not appear on rich lists. Yet the chief executive of energy giant Chevron Texaco ranks among the most powerful Irish businessmen of his generation. He is a superleague player, but one with a low profile.
A company man who has spent his entire career with Chevron before the $45 billion (€47.6 billion) merger with Texaco last October, he always wanted to work in the oil business. Whether he had great expectations at the outset is moot. But 34 years after leaving the Republic, he runs the seventh-largest firm in the US and its second-biggest oil company.
It is a level that many aspire to but few actually reach. Irish members of the club include big hitters such as Mr Peter Sutherland, the other O'Reilly - Sir Anthony - and not many others.
A chemical engineer by training, Mr O'Reilly left the Republic after graduating from UCD in 1968 because suitable jobs were not available. Keen on the challenge of high-end business, he considered returning home only once - during the early 1970s - but didn't.
From Sandymount, south Dublin, and son of a menswear buyer at Arnotts department store, he lives in San Francisco. His interest in energy was prompted at Willow Park and Blackrock College schools.
He moved early into the management stream at Chevron after "three or four" operational jobs. Always based in the US, Mr O'Reilly worked with the company in the 1970s when the oil business was a lot less stable than now. The US today is coming out of mild recession, he says, but excess inventories and capacity mean the recovery has not begun in earnest.
Mr O'Reilly's primary concerns relate to the performance of the newly merged Chevron Texaco.
The company has a market capitalisation of about $100 billion and 53,000 staff. But its initial post-merger performance was marked by a fourth-quarter loss last year of $2.5 billion and big writedowns in California and Venezuela.
Mr O'Reilly is committed to the production of $1.8 billion in annual savings, some $600 million more than when the initial deal was made.
This, he says, will be delivered by the end of March next year. Savings will be derived from all operations - from the bulk purchase of pencils to shipping.
The company has no plan to exit the Dynegy energy trading business, in which it holds a 26 per cent stake. Dynegy is being investigated by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) over a gas transaction and is under scrutiny by federal regulators investigating power-market manipulation in California. He does not comment in detail, but says: "It's an important element of the business. The sector is having a difficult time but it's something we think we have a role to play in."
At Mr O'Reilly's level, the rewards are big. According to SEC filings, he earned about $7.1 million last year. That included a $3.2 million one-off bonus for completing the merger.
"I'm well off," he says. "But I doubt if I'd be on anyone's top-100 list.
"That's not my big motivation. It's the excitement of being involved in this business."
The job demands close scrutiny of the markets, technology, and the global political and economic scene.
"It's intellectually stimulating," he says. "We operate in 180 countries and 10 or 15 of those are particularly important. I have a lot of confidence in our organisation and I do sleep very well. But I've never known a time when there wasn't something going on."
Mr O'Reilly has wide-angle vision. Certain "digerati" might claim all before the internet is economic pre-history, but he disputes the notion that oil and gas are old-tech industries. By necessity, energy demands fast-lane innovation.
He says: "We're drilling now at 10,000 feet of water. We drilled at 40 to 50 feet 30 years ago. A decade ago we were at 4,000 feet. What's changed? The technology."
Mr O'Reilly returned to UCD yesterday to receive an honorary degree.
He is a frequent visitor to his family in Dublin and finds the Republic has become more European since he left. This he attributes to prosperity and an openness to outside forces.
"Ireland used to be on the periphery of Europe, now it is moving towards the centre. That's the value for the country of being in the EU."
He notes that it was not immediately projected that the Republic's entry to the-then EEC in 1973 would prove as beneficial as it did.
If this places Mr O'Reilly on the the German side of the "Boston or Berlin?" debate, he says it is not a negative factor in terms of the State's positive relationship with the US.
In his own time in the US, he saw the disruption caused by the Vietnam war and the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy.
"In the 1970s, we had stagflation. They were very different economic times. I have to credit the Reagan administration for some of the economic policies in the 1980s."
He adds: "The issue for the next 20 years is how the US is going to use its position in the world to be part of that world. It's not entirely clear at the moment."
Mr O'Reilly appears comfortable in his role. "I never really knew I was going to go all the way. But about three or four years before I got the job I started to see that it was possible."
He adds: "I have no great interest in a high profile. I'm in a company with 53,000 people. I just happen to be leader of those 53,000 people. What can one person do? Too much attention is paid to individuals rather than to the team."
Trophy job. Victor mentality absent.
