{"id":295180,"date":"2026-05-01T16:56:19","date_gmt":"2026-05-01T16:56:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/295180\/"},"modified":"2026-05-01T16:56:19","modified_gmt":"2026-05-01T16:56:19","slug":"california-oil-driller-that-sold-no-crude-paid-ceo-76-million-the-mercury-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/295180\/","title":{"rendered":"California oil driller that sold no crude paid CEO $76 million \u2013 The Mercury News"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Nathan Risser, Bloomberg<\/p>\n

The CEO of California oil driller Sable Offshore Corp<\/a>. was awarded a $76 million pay package in 2025, making him one of the highest paid oil and gas industry leaders in the US even as his company sold no crude.<\/p>\n

The bulk of Jim Flores\u2019s compensation was from more than $69 million in stock awards, in addition to a $1.3 million salary and $3.9 million bonus, according to a Thursday filing to federal regulators. Flores earned $1.7 million in 2024 and received no stock awards.<\/p>\n

That meant Houston-based Sable\u2019s CEO was paid more than the leaders of the two biggest US oil firms during a rocky year for the company. Sable\u2019s shares fell 61% in 2025 as its years long effort to restart oil production at a cluster of rigs off the coast of California was stymied by local and state-level opposition. The company was also probed by federal investigators following a report from Hunterbrook Media that Sable selectively disclosed information to investors, including pro golfer Phil Mickelson.<\/p>\n

Darren Woods, CEO of Exxon Mobil, earned $32 million in 2025. Chevron Corp.\u2019s Mike Wirth earned $26.8 million the same year. The two companies pumped almost 9 million barrels of oil a day over the course of the year.<\/p>\n

Sable is now producing and selling some 50,000 barrels of oil daily after President Donald Trump invoked a war-time law in March and instructed the company to start pumping, overriding opposition from the state of California.<\/p>\n

The company paid $540,000 to Holland & Knight, a law firm with close ties to the White House, in the first three months of 2026, during which time Trump issued the Cold War-era powers to clear the way for production.<\/p>\n

More stories like this are available on bloomberg.com<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a92026 Bloomberg L.P.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Nathan Risser, Bloomberg The CEO of California oil driller Sable Offshore Corp. was awarded a $76 million…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":70868,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[387,7,8,536,383,756,147,19378,181,131,133,132,1338,100,8390],"class_list":["post-295180","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-long-beach","tag-business","tag-california","tag-california-news","tag-donald-trump","tag-economy","tag-gas","tag-gas-prices","tag-iran","tag-latest-headlines","tag-long-beach","tag-long-beach-headlines","tag-long-beach-news","tag-morning-wire","tag-news","tag-oil"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295180","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=295180"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295180\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/70868"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=295180"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=295180"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=295180"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}