Ryan Lance has been the face of ConocoPhillips for 14 years. Now that run is ending.
The announcement came Thursday, August 6, 2026.
Lance, 64, is the longest-serving CEO among major oil companies. He will become executive board chair, while Konnie Haynes-Welsh moves from controller and finance VP to chief financial officer.
Lance will not vanish.
Lance took over in 2012, right as ConocoPhillips separated from Phillips 66.
At the time, the company had an estimated $110 billion in assets.
Today its market cap, meaning the total value of its stock, is $139 billion. That puts ConocoPhillips above BP Plc, one of the world's largest oil companies.
BP is an integrated supermajor, which means it handles everything from drilling to refining to selling fuel. Overtaking a giant like that does not happen by accident.
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Lance trained as a petroleum engineer at Montana Tech. He put that technical background to work when oil prices crashed during the pandemic.
When prices were low, he went shopping. ConocoPhillips bought Concho Resources for $13 billion.
The deal came in 2021.
Later that year, the company bought Shell's Permian assets. The price tag was $9.5 billion.
Those purchases made ConocoPhillips a major player in the Permian Basin, the oil-rich stretch of West Texas and New Mexico. They are a big reason the company's finances look stronger now.
O'Brien's path to the top looks different. He joined in 1997, when the company was still Conoco, and has held leadership jobs in Alaska, international operations, and LNG, the chilled gas business that ships overseas.
That mix covers both the US shale side and the global energy side. It gives O'Brien a broad view of a company that does both.
ConocoPhillips is the latest big US shale producer to change CEOs. Occidental Petroleum, Devon Energy, and Diamondback Energy have all had leaders retire in the past year, and ConocoPhillips is the largest global oil producer to hand the job to someone new since BP Plc did in April.
Wall Street expected this transition, though not this quickly. JPMorgan analyst Arun Jayaram said O'Brien was widely seen as the likely successor, but the timing surprised investors who thought Lance would stay through 2029.
Jayaram also said the stock price included a "Ryan Lance premium." Lance earned that reputation by buying when prices were low and managing the portfolio carefully over the past 10+ years.
Counter-cyclical investing sounds complicated, but it means buying when everyone else is selling. Lance did exactly that in 2021, and those deals are why the company is bigger today.
The stock has been strong, too. Shares are up 25% over the past 12 months, beating the S&P 500 and Brent crude, the global oil benchmark.
A new CEO always brings some uncertainty. The next few quarters will show whether O'Brien can match Lance's record and keep that momentum going.
Lance says he is leaving at a high point. "I don't think the company has ever been in a stronger position, and I wouldn't leave if I didn't think that was the case," he said on the analyst call. "Now's the right time."
The task now falls to O'Brien. For your money, the real question is whether ConocoPhillips can keep that momentum without Lance in the corner office.
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