Now we know who's running the show at Occidental - and it's not the CEO

He's baaaack - actually, Ray Irani never really left the L.A.-based oil company. He just moved himself to the chairman's position after a shareholder revolt over his scandalously high compensation left the board with little choice. When Stephen Chazen was promoted to the CEO post in 2011, a carefully worded press release noted that it was Irani's choice. Now it appears as if Irani is forcing out Chazen, in large measure because Oxy's stock price has taken a big hit - and it just so happens that Irani (Dr. Irani around the Oxy headquarters in Westwood because he has a doctorate in physical chemistry) owns about 8.1 million shares worth $639 million. You should know that boardroom drama is not Oxy's thing (the company has had only three CEOs in the past 55 years), which makes the current skirmish between Chazen and Irani all the more intriguing. From the WSJ:

Mr. Irani and directors who support him pushed a plan to dismiss Chief Executive Stephen Chazen and replace him with a former Occidental executive who left the company in 2004, according to people familiar with the proposal. Other board members rejected the proposal. Instead, the board announced after the meeting that it would search for a successor for the 66-year-old Mr. Chazen, without making any mention of the chief executive's plans. The company's two-paragraph news release late on Feb. 14 didn't say whether Mr. Chazen was ready to step down. At an oil-industry conference in New Orleans this month, however, Mr. Chazen told a group of investors that he didn't volunteer to leave, according to one attendee. People familiar with Mr. Chazen's thinking say he intends to stay until the board names a replacement.

Oxy's stock is down because production growth in the U.S. is not going as well as had been expected and because energy prices have been on the low side. That means a drop in earnings - and thus a drop in shares. How Chazen's performance as CEO fits into this picture is hard to say. Here's what I wrote about him in Los Angeles magazine in late 2010:

Chazen was hired in 1994 after a lengthy stint in the financial industry, and he seems to have a less imperious air (you can call him Steve). But he, too, wants to keep as low a profile as possible. "Ray's outgoing and showy compared to me," deadpans Chazen, who has vowed not to have his picture in the company's annual report, de rigueur for any chief executive. "My goal in life is to continue to walk over to the coffee shop and have no one recognize me." On airplanes he likes to tell his seatmates that he's in the insurance business. That usually puts an end to any small talk. During our short session, he's surprisingly talkative, except on the matter of executive compensation (Chazen took home $13.5 million last year). When I ask how such a successful corporation could have such a lousy reputation, he insists that it's a style thing. "It comes from the fact that the company doesn't spend a lot of time with self-promotion," he says. "We don't have a PR firm going around taking pictures of Ray Irani with 24-year-old movie stars cutting ribbons." Oil companies, Chazen adds, "are never going to be popular. You just have to understand that that's the deal."