2025 ENERGY EXECUTIVE OF THE YEAR
Energy Intelligence is pleased to announce that Ryan Lance, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of ConocoPhillips, has been elected as Energy Executive of the Year for 2025.
Lance distinguished himself by transforming ConocoPhillips into a unique energy player — the “superindependent” — through a mix of organic growth and his dealmaking acumen.
Under his stewardship, ConocoPhillips has prioritized shareholder returns while simultaneously boosting production to nearly 2.4 million barrels of oil equivalent per day as of the second quarter of 2025. That made ConocoPhillips the fifth-largest producer among international oil and gas companies — just trailing TotalEnergies and surpassing BP.
“Ryan built ConocoPhillips into the leading independent with smart investments and timely acquisitions, especially Marathon Oil last year,” said Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Energy Intelligence Raja Sidawi. “He also was at the vanguard of the shift to greater capital discipline in the US, which gave shale a second lease on life after many investors had lost faith in the sector.”
Since becoming CEO in 2012, Lance has guided the company through a large divestment program and a string of transformative acquisitions. He picked up Concho Resources in 2020, Shell's US unconventional assets in 2021 and 50% that it didn’t already own in the Surmont oil sands in Alberta in 2023.
But Lance made the biggest splash with the $22.5 billion deal to buy rival Marathon Oil in November of 2024.
ConocoPhillips reinforced what was already an enviable US tight oil asset base by adding Marathon’s wealth of unconventional inventory. Since the deal closed, ConocoPhillips has boosted the original resource estimate of the company by 25%, driven primarily by the quality of shale assets in the Permian Basin.
Lance took the helm just after ConocoPhillips completed the spin-off of its downstream assets to become a nonintegrated or “independent” energy company. Since then, the company has built a strong exploration and production business, while its former peers — Anadarko Petroleum, Noble Energy and Pioneer Natural Resources — have been swallowed up by a wave of consolidation. Today, ConocoPhillips’ market capitalization is almost double EOG Resources, the nearest comparable US independent.
ConocoPhillips still retains a broad international footprint. It nurtures upstream and LNG businesses in Europe, Middle East, North Africa, Canada and Asia Pacific.
The company also is the largest producer in Alaska, and it can grow that advantage when the Willow Project comes on line, with first oil expected in 2029.
Lance is the 29th Energy Executive of the Year and will accept the award at the annual Energy Intelligence Forum in London.
