How ConocoPhillips Pays
ConocoPhillips assigns every job to a Mercer-calibrated salary grade, and this report prices a normalized Grade 8 to Grade 26+ ladder across 18 markets in 10 countries alongside RSU and PSP performance-share equity, a $23.45M CEO package at 111:1, and the 13-record 2025 H-1B wage sample.
Band Hierarchy
ConocoPhillips confirms that management, supported by Mercer, assigns each position to a salary grade and that salary midpoints rise with grade while target incentive percentages rise faster. It has never published the grade-to-title catalogue. The ladder below is a normalized research framework that preserves the public anchors around Grade 15-16 and the senior-officer thresholds without claiming to reproduce the internal HR system.
Technical and professional ladder — Grade 8 through Grade 18
Leadership ladder — Grade 19 through Grade 22
Officer tier — Grade 23 and above
Disclosed executive layer
Track divergence
Hierarchy qualifications and legacy structures
- The grade architecture is real and company-confirmed, but the complete grade-to-title map is proprietary. Every grade grouping shown here is an analytical normalization built to hold the public anchors, not an extract from the HR system.
- Public evidence clusters at two points: Grade 15-16 titles that appear in job records and filings, and the senior-officer thresholds around Grade 23 and above. The grades in between are interpolated.
- Marathon Oil was acquired in November 2024. Assumed awards and 2025 restructuring are disclosed, but no merged grade-conversion table exists publicly, so title harmonization between the two legacy populations is not publicly disclosed.
- The bundle's own hierarchy runs from Grade 8 to CEO. The CEO row is deliberately excluded from the band table here: it is a single board-set global figure that is identical in every city table, and letting it sit at the top of a location-scaled ladder would push every market toward parity at the senior end.
- Equity eligibility is described only as available to employees at certain salary grades. There is no published minimum eligible grade and no non-executive grant matrix, so the point at which RSUs become routine is the weakest link in the ladder.
Peer-level mapping
| Band | Archetype | Peer mapping | Caveat |
|---|---|---|---|
| G8–10 | Associate / Technician / Early-Career Professional | Graduate, Engineer I or II, Analyst or Technician at an independent E&P or oil major; roughly L2 to L3 at a technology company. | Developing professional where cash and benefits dominate. No recurring equity is evidenced at this level, so a technology-company comparison that assumes an entry-level RSU grant overstates the package.Houston median normalized from Levels.fyi, Glassdoor Houston, Comparably and Indeed distributions; VCIP target modelled at the 8 percent midpoint of a 5 to 10 percent range. |
| G11–12 | Engineer / Analyst / Geoscientist / Specialist | Engineer I or II and Analyst grades at a peer E&P; roughly L3 at a technology company. | Cash-led band. No universal minimum equity threshold is disclosed, so the small modelled grant is a possibility rather than an entitlement and should not be negotiated against as if it were standard.Houston median from public salary distributions; equity capped at the top of the disclosed $0 to $5,000 modelled grant range for this grade group. |
| G13–14 | Senior Engineer / Senior Analyst / Senior Geoscientist | Senior Engineer, Senior Geoscientist or Senior Analyst at a peer E&P; roughly L4 at a technology company. | Independent work and project leadership. Selective RSU eligibility may begin in some functions and salary grades, but the company publishes no minimum eligible grade, so equity here is the least reliable number on the row.Houston median from Glassdoor and Indeed engineering samples; equity is the residual between the modelled $170,000 total and cash, and sits inside the disclosed $0 to $20,000 grant range. |
| G15–16 | Lead / Staff Engineer, Staff Geologist, Senior Specialist | Lead or Staff Engineer and Staff Geologist at a peer E&P; roughly L5 or staff at a technology company. | Cross-team technical authority and the first level where RSUs become increasingly standard. Grade 15 and 16 titles are the ones that surface in public filings and job records, which is why this is the best-evidenced non-executive row.Anchored on 2025 H-1B records for Analytics Cloud Services Staff Engineer at $180,560, Staff Completions Engineer at $213,200 and Staff Geologist at $182,400, tempered by Houston salary samples. |
| G17–18 | Principal / Chief Professional / Manager | Principal, Chief Professional or Manager at a peer E&P; roughly L6, principal or manager at a technology company. | The point where the technical and management tracks genuinely diverge in scope but not yet in pay. Modelled as recurring or selective RSU territory; the exact threshold is not public.Anchored on the 2025 Principal Process Safety Engineer record at $213,200 and the Supervisor, Dewitt Development record at $206,000, both Houston. |
| G19–22 | Director / General Manager / Senior Key Employee | Director, general manager or major asset and function leader at a peer E&P; director to senior director at a technology company. | Enterprise or business-unit leadership where long-term incentive first becomes the largest single component. Grade 19 and above is publicly anchored only through key-employee and deferred-compensation filings, so the split between salary and equity is directional.Grade 19-plus key-employee and deferred-compensation filing anchors; equity is the residual inside the disclosed $150,000 to $700,000 modelled grant range. |
| G23–25 | Vice President / Senior Officer | Vice president or senior officer at a peer E&P; VP at a technology company. | Senior-officer filings publicly anchor Grade 23 and above. Roles at this tier are benchmarked globally rather than by home city, so the non-Houston cells should be read as an indicative local-market equivalent, not as the package an appointed officer would actually receive.Senior-officer disclosure thresholds plus the 2025 named-executive salaries, which run $763,000 to $996,000 one tier above; equity is the residual inside the $800,000 to $3.5 million modelled grant range. |
| G26+ | Senior Vice President / Executive Vice President | SVP, EVP or CFO-equivalent at a peer E&P; SVP or C-suite at a technology company. | Most target compensation is at risk and stock-based: PSP performance shares are 65 percent of executive target long-term incentive and the Executive RSU Program the other 35 percent. The 2025 named executives other than the CEO reported $6.27 million to $8.02 million of total compensation.Anchored on the 2025 Summary Compensation Table for the five non-CEO named executives and the disclosed $3.5 million to $6.0 million modelled annual grant range. |
Critical evidence warning
None of the non-executive figures in this report are ConocoPhillips salary ranges, midpoints or offers. They are analytical normalizations of public evidence: employee-reported salary platforms, Houston and Australian job samples, and thirteen 2025 Department of Labor labour condition applications. The executive rows are different in kind, drawn from the Summary Compensation Table and from 8-K appointment filings, and should be read as audited disclosure. Treat the two classes separately: an offer conversation can quote the executive disclosures directly, but the Grade 8 to Grade 22 rows are planning envelopes whose usefulness lies in the relative shape of the ladder, not in any single cell.
Compensation by Band — Houston
Low / median / high annual values at 1.00× base and 1.00× total-compensation factors versus Houston. Total equals base plus bonus plus annualized equity.
| Band | Title | Base | Variable | Total TC | Equity |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| G8–10 | Associate / Technician / Early-Career Professional 0-3 years · modeled | $58K – $78K | 8% | $73K $62K – $84K | — |
| G11–12 | Engineer / Analyst / Geoscientist / Specialist 2-6 years · modeled | $83K – $113K | 10% | $113K $96K – $130K | $5K |
| G13–14 | Senior Engineer / Senior Analyst / Senior Geoscientist 5-10 years · modeled | $112K – $152K | 15% | $170K $145K – $196K | $18K |
| G15–16 | Lead / Staff Engineer, Staff Geologist, Senior Specialist 8-15 years · reported | $145K – $196K | 18% | $245K $208K – $282K | $44K |
| G17–18 | Principal / Chief Professional / Manager 12-20 years · reported | $174K – $236K | 25% | $330K $281K – $380K | $74K |
| G19–22 | Director / General Manager / Senior Key Employee 15-25 years · modeled | $255K – $345K | 45% | $750K $638K – $863K | $315K |
| G23–25 | Vice President / Senior Officer 20-30 years · modeled | $553K – $748K | 90% | $3.00M $2.55M – $3.45M | $1.76M |
| G26+ | Senior Vice President / Executive Vice President 22-35+ years · verified | $808K – $1.09M | 110% | $7.00M $5.95M – $8.05M | $5.00M |
Total Compensation Range by Band
Total compensation in Houston across the employee bands. Proxy-disclosed executive cohorts are excluded so the employee bands stay readable.
Global Footprint & Pay Arbitrage
ConocoPhillips is an asset-owning exploration and production company, not a delivery-centre employer, so the usual onshore and offshore distinction does not apply. The differentials that matter are corporate office against field and remote operations, home-payroll country, expatriate or rotational assignment, and scarce petroleum, LNG and digital skills.
Office and market catalogue — calibration factors versus Houston
| Location | Likely office profile | Presence | Base | TC |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Houston United States · USD | Global headquarters and the anchor for every factor in this report. Deepest public evidence base: Levels.fyi and Glassdoor role samples, Indeed engineer records and nine of the thirteen 2025 H-1B wage records. | Official corporate headquarters | 1.00× | 1.00× |
Bartlesville United States · USD | Established office and technology location in Oklahoma carrying the lowest US factor in the set. One 2025 H-1B record, an Analytics Cloud Services Staff Engineer at $180,560, anchors the staff tier. | Official office directory | 0.88× | 0.88× |
Anchorage United States · USD | Alaska business location and the highest-paying market in the report. The premium is a modelled field and remote loading; no company-wide allowance schedule is published, so rotational and North Slope terms sit outside these figures. | Official business unit location | 1.12× | 1.12× |
Midland United States · USD | Permian operating hub for the Lower 48 segment. Three 2025 H-1B records give a $182,400 median, two of them Staff Geologist roles and one a Supply Chain Specialist at $133,000. | Official operating hub | 1.04× | 1.04× |
Denver United States · USD | Rocky Mountain office market. Company-specific salary samples are thin, so the factor is a market normalization rather than an observed ConocoPhillips distribution. | Regional coverage | 0.98× | 0.98× |
Watford City United States · USD | Bakken field market in North Dakota. The premium reflects remote-basin labour scarcity and is normalized from the regional market rather than from ConocoPhillips records. | Regional coverage | 1.08× | 1.08× |
Brisbane Australia · AUD | Australian headquarters and the current hiring location following the 2020 sale of the Australia-West interests. SEEK and Glassdoor Australia adviser, engineer, manager and superintendent samples support the factor. | Official country headquarters | 0.77× | 0.77× |
Gladstone Australia · AUD | Australia Pacific LNG operations location. The 13 percent premium over Brisbane is the regional operations and technician loading visible in Queensland job advertisements. | Official operations location | 0.87× | 0.87× |
London United Kingdom · GBP | UK corporate and commercial market covering trading, commercial and functional roles rather than upstream operations. | Official office directory | 0.78× | 0.78× |
Aberdeen United Kingdom · GBP | Core UK upstream location and the lower-paying of the two British markets on a cash basis, reflecting a technical rather than commercial role mix. | Official office directory | 0.70× | 0.70× |
Stavanger Norway · NOK | Largest non-US market by headcount: Norway holds 16 percent of the global workforce. The 0.78 cash factor understates the package because the Norwegian defined-contribution pension pays 22 percent of income above 7.1G. | Official country operations | 0.78× | 0.78× |
Calgary Canada · CAD | Primary Canadian office covering Surmont oil sands and Montney unconventional activity. Canada is 8 percent of the global workforce. | Official country headquarters | 0.75× | 0.75× |
Doha Qatar · QAR | Small LNG joint-venture population on the current careers geography. Salary samples are sparse and the local-national versus expatriate split is not disclosed, so this factor is a location-premium model rather than a local pay scale. | Regional coverage | 0.62× | 0.62× |
Kuala Lumpur Malaysia · MYR | Malaysia is 3 percent of the global workforce and the largest Asian payroll in the set, covering offshore Sarawak and Sabah activity from a Kuala Lumpur base. | Official country operations | 0.35× | 0.35× |
Beijing China · CNY | Corporate and commercial office supporting the Bohai Bay interest. The public sample is small enough that a handful of expatriate packages would distort any average. | Regional coverage | 0.38× | 0.38× |
Tianjin China · CNY | Operating and technical base for the China business, priced about 11 percent below Beijing on the same evidence limitations. | Regional coverage | 0.34× | 0.34× |
Singapore Singapore · SGD | Small commercial and trading population. Central Provident Fund treatment depends on employee status and is not disclosed, so the benefit value behind this factor is unverified. | Regional coverage | 0.55× | 0.55× |
Malabo Equatorial Guinea · XAF | Equatorial Guinea holds 4 percent of the global workforce, a large share for a market with almost no public pay evidence. These are local-national figures; the LNG plant also runs expatriate and rotational packages whose roster, hardship and tax-equalisation elements are not comparable and are not modelled here. | Official country operations | 0.28× | 0.28× |
City-level headcount is not disclosed. Country shares at year-end 2025 were United States 62 percent, Norway 16 percent, Canada 8 percent, Equatorial Guinea 4 percent, Malaysia 3 percent and other markets 7 percent, and those shares are the only geographic distribution the company publishes.
Houston anchor medians — the basis of every modeled cell
| Band | Base | Stock | Bonus | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| G15–16 | $170K | $44K | $31K | $245K |
| G17–18 | $205K | $74K | $51K | $330K |
| G26+ | $950K | $5.00M | $1.04M | $7.00M |
- Houston is the reference market for every band. It carries the deepest public evidence: cross-role salary distributions, Houston-specific role samples and nine of the thirteen 2025 H-1B wage records.
- Anchorage at 1.12 and Watford City at 1.08 are the only markets above the anchor. Both premiums are modelled field and remote loadings; no company-wide allowance, housing or rotation schedule is published, so the actual North Slope and Bakken packages sit outside these numbers.
- Norway carries 16 percent of the workforce but the cash factor of 0.78 understates the package, because the 7 percent and 22 percent defined-contribution pension tiers land disproportionately on senior Norwegian salaries.
- India, Jakarta, Perth and Darwin are deliberately absent. Perth and Darwin follow the 2020 sale of the Australia-West interests, and no significant current India or Indonesia payroll was evidenced. Assigning them synthetic ranges would imply payroll markets that do not exist.
- Doha, Beijing, Tianjin, Singapore and Malabo are small-sample markets. A handful of expatriate packages would move any average in those cities, and the local-national against expatriate split is not disclosed anywhere.
Model rules
- One factor per city applies to both base and total. The source bundle publishes a single Houston factor per location and its own city tables use it identically for base and total pay, so there is no separate total-compensation calibration to draw on.
- No level-dependent interpolation is applied. The source's city tables damp officer pay toward global parity, which is a property of globally benchmarked officer roles rather than of the local market, so applying it here would have pushed every offshore market's mid-ladder cells upward by a third or more.
- Total compensation is rebuilt from base plus target bonus plus annualized equity. The source's published totals run 3 to 13 percent higher at the junior grades because they add a notional employer benefit value; that is employer cost, not pay, and it has been stripped.
- Where the residual between the source's total and its cash components fell inside the disclosed modelled grant range for a grade, that residual is used as the equity figure. Where it exceeded the range, equity is capped at the top of the range and the total rebuilt downward.
- Executive rows use the average closing price convention the company itself applies: 2025 executive awards were sized on the $100.028 average close over the ten trading days before grant, while grant-date accounting fair value was $100.9029.
- Currency conversion uses a single snapshot dated 26 August 2026 for every market, so cross-city comparisons are not distorted by different rate dates. The Norwegian krone rate is the 21 August Federal Reserve observation, the last available before the snapshot.
Variable Pay & Annual Cash Incentive
The Variable Cash Incentive Program is the one pay element that reaches almost the whole company: substantially all regular employees participate, against equity that begins only at selected salary grades. For Executive Leadership Team members the formula is eligible earnings times the salary-grade target percentage times the corporate payout, capped at 200 percent, and named executives may receive negative but not positive individual adjustments.
| Band | Target | Mechanism | Recent payout |
|---|---|---|---|
G8–10 Associate / Technician / Early-Career Professional | 8% of base (5% to 10% range) | Annual lump sum after the committee certifies results. Most employees are paid on the corporate result modified by business-unit and individual factors. | Corporate factor 150% for 2025, before business-unit and individual modifiers |
G11–12 Engineer / Analyst / Geoscientist / Specialist | 10% of base (8% to 12% range) | Annual lump sum after certification. Corporate result modified by business-unit and individual factors. | Corporate factor 150% for 2025, before business-unit and individual modifiers |
G13–14 Senior Engineer / Senior Analyst / Senior Geoscientist | 15% of base (12% to 18% range) | Annual lump sum after certification. Corporate result modified by business-unit and individual factors. | Corporate factor 150% for 2025, before business-unit and individual modifiers |
G15–16 Lead / Staff Engineer, Staff Geologist, Senior Specialist | 18% of base (15% to 22% range) | Annual lump sum after certification. Corporate result modified by business-unit and individual factors. | Corporate factor 150% for 2025, before business-unit and individual modifiers |
G17–18 Principal / Chief Professional / Manager | 25% of base (18% to 30% range) | Annual lump sum after certification. Corporate result modified by business-unit and individual factors. | Corporate factor 150% for 2025, before business-unit and individual modifiers |
G19–22 Director / General Manager / Senior Key Employee | 45% of base (30% to 60% range) | Annual lump sum after certification. At this tier the corporate result carries most of the weight and the incentive begins to rival base salary in size. | Corporate factor 150% for 2025 |
G23–25 Vice President / Senior Officer | 90% of base (60% to 110% range) | Eligible earnings times salary-grade target times the corporate payout, capped at 200 percent of target. | Corporate factor 150% for 2025 |
G26+ Senior Vice President / Executive Vice President | 110% of base (90% to 130% range) | Corporate-only formula for Executive Leadership Team members, with negative but not positive individual adjustment permitted. | 150% for 2025, producing payouts of $1.19M to $1.49M across the five non-CEO named executives |
CEO President & Chief Executive Officer | 170% of base for 2025; 160% for the incoming chief executive | Eligible earnings times the board-set target times the corporate payout, capped at 200 percent, with no positive individual adjustment. | $4,590,000 paid for 2025 on $1,800,000 of eligible earnings at a 170% target |
Executive incentive targets — percent of salary
Named-executive outcomes
| Executive | Target | Paid | Attainment |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ryan M. Lance | $3,060,000 | $4,590,000 | 150% of target |
| Andy M. O'Brien | $796,335 | $1,194,502 | 150% of target |
| William L. Bullock Jr. | $877,427 | $1,316,141 | 150% of target |
| Nicholas G. Olds | $996,312 | $1,494,468 | 150% of target |
| Kelly B. Rose | $904,385 | $1,356,577 | 150% of target |
| Kirk L. Johnson | $796,335 | $1,194,502 | 150% of target |
Employee payout timing and history
Broader employee formulas may include business-unit and individual components on top of the corporate factor, but the local matrices are not published. The corporate factor itself has run 130 percent for 2023, 120 percent for 2024 and 150 percent for 2025 against a 200 percent cap, so a full three-year window has paid above target.
Sales and special incentives
There is no separate sales commission plan. The nearest analogue is the commercial and trading population, where a Houston Crude Optimization Trader appears in the 2025 labour condition applications at a $196,000 base; any trading-specific incentive arrangement is not publicly disclosed. Monthly and quarterly incentive schedules, spot bonuses and deal bonuses are also not disclosed.
Equity — RSUs, PSUs, Options & ESPP
Equity runs through the 2023 Omnibus Stock and Performance Incentive Plan, approved on 16 May 2023 with a ten-year life and a 36.0 million share maximum. The company states that employees at certain salary grades may receive restricted stock units but publishes no minimum eligible grade and no non-executive grant matrix, so the population that actually receives stock is narrower than the population that receives cash incentive.
- Net reserve use since the 2023 plan took effect is 2,924,023 shares, or 8.12 percent of the 36.0 million maximum, so the plan is nowhere near exhaustion. Share counts reflect recycling as well as grants, and the maximum is a ceiling rather than a grant commitment.
- Of 6,257,001 stock-settled RSUs outstanding at year-end 2025, 4,300,663 were unvested and carried $188 million of unrecognised compensation cost over a weighted 1.71-year recognition period, a consequence of three-year cliff vesting concentrating the liability.
- 2025 activity was 2,998,555 RSUs granted, 274,989 forfeited and 2,938,338 issued with a reported $285 million fair value, against an opening balance of 6,471,773. The stock is effectively turning over its outstanding balance every two years.
- Legacy options are running off quickly. 1,086,350 were exercised in 2025 at a $38.71 weighted-average strike, generating $15 million of cash to the company plus $27 million from cashless exercises and a $13 million tax benefit.
- Market values in this section use the $131.96 share price snapshot of 26 August 2026 and are point-in-time notional figures, not accounting fair values.
2023 Omnibus Plan reserve at year-end 2025
Vesting — common reported employee schedule
The standard general and executive RSU shape is a single three-year cliff, which is unusual against the four-year ratable schedules common outside the sector and concentrates retention risk into one date. Two exceptions exist: the variable long-term incentive retention program vests ratably on the first, second and third anniversaries, and special 2026 attraction and retention awards carry three-year and five-year cliffs. Performance Share Program cycles run three overlapping years, so any single calendar year affects three open performance periods at once.
Eligibility by hierarchy level
- Eligibility is described publicly only as employees at certain salary grades. No minimum eligible grade, no standard grant matrix and no percentage-of-base guideline are disclosed for non-executives.
- The modelled threshold used here begins selective eligibility at the senior-professional grades and recurring eligibility around the lead, staff and management grades. That threshold is an analytical judgement, not a company statement.
- Executive target long-term incentive is 65 percent PSP performance shares and 35 percent ERSUP time-vested RSUs, both generally on three-year programs.
- Australia is the only market with clear broad-based employee share ownership, through the Employee Share Plan and the 2024 New Plan sub-plan covered by ATO class rulings.
- 2025 executive awards were sized on the $100.028 average closing price over the ten trading days before grant, while the grant-date accounting fair value used in the proxy tables was $100.9029. The two conventions differ, so proxy stock-award values are not the number used to determine unit counts.
Indicative annual grant value by band — Houston
| Band | Annual value (USD) | Median | Shares at $131.96 |
|---|---|---|---|
| G11–12 | $4K – $6K | $5K | ~28–47 |
| G13–14 | $14K – $23K | $18K | ~103–172 |
| G15–16 | $33K – $56K | $44K | ~252–421 |
| G17–18 | $55K – $92K | $74K | ~419–699 |
| G19–22 | $236K – $394K | $315K | ~1,790–2,984 |
| G23–25 | $1.32M – $2.21M | $1.76M | ~10,031–16,719 |
| G26+ | $3.75M – $6.26M | $5.00M | ~28,446–47,410 |
Annualized planning value (±25%), not the face value of every new-hire grant. Share equivalents use the $131.96 reference price at 2026-08-26 and ignore plan valuation rules and PSU performance. Highlighted rows are disclosed grant-date stock awards.
Named executive target equity
| Executive | Target | Units / structure |
|---|---|---|
Andy O'Brien President and CEO from 1 September 2026 | $13,080,000 annual LTI target | 65 percent PSP and 35 percent ERSUP, plus prorated additions to the open 2024, 2025 and 2026 PSP cycles. Sits inside $17,500,000 of target direct compensation. |
Ryan Lance Transitional Executive Chair from 1 September 2026 | $12,400,000 2027 LTI target | Paired with a $1,100,000 base and no VCIP participation, for a $13,500,000 salary-plus-LTI target in the transitional role. |
Kontessa Haynes-Welsh SVP and CFO from 1 September 2026 | RSU at 110% of base and PSP at 205% of base | On a $742,972 base, plus prorated PSP additions, inside roughly $3,699,000 of target direct compensation. |
Kirk L. Johnson EVP, Global Operations and Technical Functions | $5,000,000 special 2026 RSU | Target-value retention award vesting at year five, with proration for specified involuntary events and forfeiture on voluntary departure. |
Nicholas G. Olds EVP, Lower 48 and Global HSE | $3,000,000 special 2026 RSU | Target-value retention award vesting at year three on the same proration and forfeiture terms. |
Executive Compensation
2025 was Ryan Lance's last full year as chairman, president and chief executive. A succession filed on 6 August 2026 makes Andy O'Brien president and chief executive from 1 September 2026, moves Lance to a transitional executive chair role and appoints Kontessa Haynes-Welsh senior vice president and chief financial officer. Historical actual pay and incoming target pay are therefore two different things and are kept apart throughout this section.
Reading the package
Salary was 7.7 percent of Ryan Lance's 2025 reported total and stock awards 70.5 percent, with the VCIP payout a further 19.6 percent. No pension or non-qualified deferred compensation increase was reported for him in 2025, which is why his other-compensation line of $517,000 is the smallest relative to total among the named executives. The incoming package is structured more aggressively still: $1.70 million of base against a $13.08 million long-term incentive target and a 160 percent cash target, so roughly 90 percent of Andy O'Brien's $17.50 million target direct compensation is variable.
ConocoPhillips sits third of four on headline chief executive pay: 0.71 times Exxon Mobil and 0.87 times Chevron, but 1.30 times Occidental. Those are Summary Compensation Table totals, not realized pay, and pension accounting, grant-date valuation conventions and equity instrument mixes differ enough between the four that the ordering can invert on a realized-pay basis. ConocoPhillips is also markedly smaller by headcount than the two supermajors, which is part of why its 111:1 ratio is lower than a revenue-based comparison would suggest.
Named Executive Officers & Board
Compensation for regional heads, country presidents, chief human resources officer equivalents and chief technology officer equivalents is not publicly disclosed unless the individual is a named executive officer. The Grade 19 to Grade 26-plus ranges in this report are directional models, not disclosures.
Most continuing named executives received 5.5 percent salary increases effective 1 March 2025, and Andy O'Brien and Kirk Johnson later received 22 percent promotion increases effective 1 June 2025. Those are executive decisions taken by the Human Resources and Compensation Committee, not evidence of a workforce-wide merit matrix or a universal review date. The committee reviews named-executive salaries annually against responsibility, individual performance, market position and salary-grade changes.
Board compensation framework
| Element | Amount | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Annual RSU grant | $220,000 | Fully vested at grant but transfer-restricted on an elected schedule or event, with dividend equivalents credited. |
| Board cash retainer | $115,000 | May be taken in cash, stock, restricted stock units or deferred into a deferred-compensation account. |
| Lead director fee | $50,000 | Additional annual fee for the independent lead director. |
| Audit and Finance Committee chair | $35,000 | Additional annual fee, the highest of the committee chair fees. |
| HRCC and Public Policy chair | $27,500 | Additional annual fee for the Human Resources and Compensation Committee chair and the Public Policy Committee chair. |
| Directors' Affairs Committee chair | $20,000 | Additional annual fee. |
| International director fee | $10,000 | Additional annual fee recognising the travel burden on non-US-resident directors. |
A director with no committee chair receives $335,000 a year in total, of which $220,000 is equity, so the board's pay mix is roughly two-thirds stock. Because the RSU is fully vested at grant and only transfer-restricted, directors carry price exposure but no forfeiture risk, which is a materially different instrument from the three-year cliff RSU an employee receives.
Regional heads and other officers
The Human Resources and Compensation Committee reviews senior-officer pay equity, but detailed demographic pay-gap statistics were not located in the public filings. Compensation for officers below the named-executive threshold, including the Grade 23 to Grade 25 vice-president tier, is not disclosed individually anywhere.
Insider Trades — SEC Forms 3/4/5
Only three completed 2026 Form 4 dispositions were on file at the report date. ConocoPhillips is a US issuer, so the relevant filings are SEC Forms 3, 4 and 5, Rule 144 notices and Schedules 13D and 13G; Rule 144 notices are not treated here as completed trades until a Form 4 or equivalent confirms execution.
| Date | Person | Transaction | Shares | Price | Value |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-03-31 | Ryan M. Lance Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer | Sale Reported at a weighted-average price with an execution-price range. Gross shares times weighted-average price before taxes, fees and cost basis. | 113,221 | $132.71 | $15.03M |
| 2026-03-23 | Nicholas G. Olds EVP, Lower 48 and Global HSE | Sale The smallest of the three 2026 dispositions, at roughly 0.9 times his 2025 reported salary. | 6,994 | $127.06 | $889K |
| 2026-03-06 | Tim A. Leach Director | Sale Non-employee director disposition at the lowest of the three prices, roughly 10 percent below the March close. | 40,000 | $118.79 | $4.75M |
Reading guide
Benefits & Perks
Benefits are evidenced country by country through official ConocoPhillips careers pages rather than through a single global schedule. That reflects the company's home-payroll-country philosophy: the same grade carries materially different non-cash value depending on where the employee is paid, and the Norwegian pension in particular narrows the cash gap to Houston more than any city factor suggests.
United States
- Retirement — Savings plan match. At least a 1 percent employee contribution per pay period unlocks a 6 percent company match. Company materials also describe a possible additional 0 to 6 percent company contribution. Exact eligibility and vesting follow the plan documents. [official]
- Retirement — Defined-contribution expense. Company expense for US defined-contribution plans was $160 million in 2025. That is aggregate expense across the US population, not a per-employee value. [official]
- Health — Medical, dental and vision. Medical, dental and vision cover plus health savings and flexible spending account categories, with life and disability insurance. Providers, premiums and limits vary by plan year. [official]
- Time off — Vacation, holidays and leave. Paid vacation, company holidays and leave programmes. The exact day counts by service and employee group are not publicly disclosed. [official]
- Equity — RSU eligibility by salary grade. Employees at certain salary grades may receive restricted stock units. The minimum eligible grade and the grant matrix are not disclosed. [npd]
- Cash incentive — VCIP participation. Substantially all regular employees participate in the Variable Cash Incentive Program, paid annually as a lump sum after the committee certifies results. [official]
Global programs
- Cash incentive — Variable Cash Incentive Program. Substantially all regular employees participate worldwide. The 2025 corporate payout was 150 percent of target against a 200 percent cap, following 120 percent for 2024 and 130 percent for 2023. [official]
- Equity — RSUs at selected salary grades. Restricted stock units under the 2023 Omnibus Plan, generally cliff-vesting at three years, with dividend equivalents generally paid or reinvested. Eligibility is limited to certain salary grades that the company does not identify. [official]
- Pay philosophy — Home-payroll-country benchmarking. Pay is benchmarked to the market of the country that runs the employee's payroll rather than to a single global scale, which is why a single worldwide salary table would misrepresent the company. [official]
- Development — Development and internal mobility. Company materials describe competitive, equitable and performance-based pay, family-friendly benefits, wellness, development and internal mobility programmes without quantifying any of them. [official]
Benefit fields not publicly quantified
Learning vendors, certification caps, sabbatical rules, phone and internet allowances and global hybrid-working day counts are not publicly disclosed. Nor are expatriate, housing, field, rotation and tax-equalisation schedules, which matters most in Alaska, the Bakken, Equatorial Guinea and Qatar, where those elements can be a larger share of the package than the salary grade.
Performance Review & Pay Progression
ConocoPhillips discloses how it decides executive pay in detail and discloses almost nothing about how it decides everyone else's. The company confirms that salaries are benchmarked annually against responsibility, individual performance, market position and salary-grade changes, and that the Variable Cash Incentive Program is the principal annual recognition vehicle. Beyond that, the machinery is proprietary.
Not publicly disclosed
Modeled promotion planning timeline
| Band | Years to next scope | Promotion hike | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| G8–10 | 2-3 years to Grade 11-12, typically an 8 to 15 percent increase | Not disclosed | Modeled planning interval |
| G11–12 | 2-4 years to Grade 13-14, typically an 8 to 15 percent increase | Not disclosed | Modeled planning interval |
| G13–14 | 3-5 years to Grade 15-16, typically a 10 to 18 percent increase | Not disclosed | Modeled planning interval |
| G15–16 | 3-6 years to Grade 17-18, typically a 10 to 20 percent increase | Not disclosed | Modeled planning interval |
| G17–18 | 4-7 years to Grade 19-22, typically a 12 to 25 percent increase | Not disclosed | Modeled planning interval |
| G19–22 | Variable to Grade 23-25 and role-specific; pay mix changes more than salary at officer selection | Not disclosed | Modeled planning interval |
| G23–25 | Variable to Grade 26-plus; board and CEO succession decisions govern | Not disclosed | Modeled planning interval |
| G26+ | Role-specific; the CEO appointment is a board decision with a separately designed target | Not disclosed | Modeled planning interval |
The modelled timeline runs 2 to 3 years from the early-career grades to Grade 11-12, 2 to 4 years to Grade 13-14, 3 to 5 years to the lead and staff grades, 3 to 6 years to principal and manager, and 4 to 7 years into the director and general manager tier. Above Grade 19 progression stops being a timeline and becomes officer selection, governed by board and chief executive succession decisions rather than by tenure. The 22 percent promotion increases granted to Andy O'Brien and Kirk Johnson in June 2025 are the only publicly visible promotion increments anywhere in the company.
Pay progression evidence
Modelled promotion increases run 8 to 15 percent through the professional grades, 10 to 20 percent through lead, staff and principal, and 12 to 25 percent into the leadership tier. The more important effect is on mix rather than level: target incentive percentages rise faster than salary midpoints, so a promotion from Grade 17-18 to Grade 19-22 roughly doubles base but takes target cash incentive from 25 percent to 45 percent of base and moves long-term incentive from a possibility to the largest single component. That is why the ladder's total-compensation curve steepens sharply above the principal grades while its base-salary curve does not.
H-1B / LCA Visa Footprint — United States
ConocoPhillips is a light H-1B sponsor by the standards of large US employers, and the sample skews heavily senior. Thirteen labour condition applications were indexed for 2025, concentrated in staff, principal, trader, strategic-advisor and management titles rather than entry-level engineering.
Dataset summary
| Dataset | Result | Interpretation |
|---|---|---|
| H1BData.info labour condition applications, 2025 | 13 records, $185,688 median | Indexes Department of Labor LCA disclosures. An LCA does not prove a petition was filed, approved or used, and the wage is base salary only. |
| MyVisaJobs petition and adjudication analytics | 15 FY2025 approvals and no denials; 12 FY2026 approvals and no denials | A petition and adjudication oriented dataset with a different definition and count from the LCA sample. The current-year figure may be incomplete. |
| MyVisaJobs average proffered salary | $194,501 for 2025, $217,436 for 2024, $199,937 for 2023 | A different sample and aggregation from the H1BData median, and highly sensitive to the senior-role mix in a set this small. Not a whole-workforce salary measure. |
| US DOL OFLC performance data | Underlying disclosure source | The primary government release that both third-party indexes draw on. |
City-level H-1B wage history
| City | P25 | Median | P75 | Records |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Houston Headquarters and the source of nine of the thirteen records, spanning process safety, completions, trading, analytics and one global-operations leadership title. | $186K | $206,000 | $213K | 9 |
Midland Three records, two of them Staff Geologist roles at an identical $182,400 and one Supply Chain Specialist at $133,000, which is what pulls the 25th percentile down. | $158K | $182,400 | $182K | 3 |
Bartlesville A single Analytics Cloud Services Staff Engineer record. Identical percentiles here are an artefact of one observation, not a distribution. | $181K | $180,560 | $181K | 1 |
All-years aggregates. P25/P75 are rounded reconstruction values marked modeled; medians and record counts are the stronger fields.
Selected title / worksite records
| Title | Worksite | Proffered wage | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Global Operations Chief | Houston | $369,600 | The single highest record in the sample and the only one that reaches the modelled Grade 19-22 leadership band on base pay alone. |
| Strategic Advisor | Houston | $241,000 | Above the modelled Grade 17-18 anchor, illustrating how far senior individual-contributor advisory roles can run. |
| Principal Process Safety Engineer | Houston | $213,200 | One of the two cleanest principal-tier anchors in the set and a direct input to the Grade 17-18 row. |
| Staff Completions Engineer | Houston | $213,200 | A staff title paid identically to the principal process safety role, which is why the Grade 15-16 and Grade 17-18 base anchors sit closer together than the titles suggest. |
| Supervisor, Dewitt Development | Houston | $206,000 | A first-line management record at the Houston median, useful as a management-track counterpart to the staff engineering titles. |
| Crude Optimization Trader | Houston | $196,000 | The only commercial trading record in the sample. Any trading-specific incentive arrangement is not publicly disclosed. |
| Staff Geologist | Midland | $182,400 | Two identical records, the strongest single evidence point for the Grade 15-16 anchor and for the Permian factor. |
| Analytics Cloud Services Staff Engineer | Bartlesville | $180,560 | The only Bartlesville record. At 0.88 times a comparable Houston staff wage it corroborates the Bartlesville city factor. |
| Architect, Digital Oil Field Solutions | Houston | $154,000 | Digital and IT architecture pays below the petroleum-technical staff titles at ConocoPhillips, a reversal of the technology-sector pattern. |
| Cloud Integration Platforms Senior Engineer | Houston | $143,000 | The lowest Houston record in the sample and the closest thing it contains to a Grade 13-14 anchor. |
Reading the data correctly
- A labour condition application is a wage attestation, not proof that a petition was filed, approved or used. The two datasets referenced here count different things and should not be added together.
- The proffered wage is base salary only. It excludes VCIP cash incentive, restricted stock units and every benefit, so a Houston staff engineer's real package sits well above the $180,000 to $213,000 band the records show.
- Thirteen records cannot describe a 9,900-person company. The sample is a window into senior specialist hiring in three US cities, nothing more.
- Single-record cities have identical 25th, 50th and 75th percentiles by construction. Bartlesville's figures are one observation shown three times.
- City-level approval rates and any forward-looking approval likelihood are not publicly disclosed.
- The sample contains no Norway, Canada, Australia or Equatorial Guinea evidence at all, because H-1B records exist only for US worksites.
Key Nuances & Insights
Substantially all regular employees participate in VCIP, but recurring restricted stock units begin only at selected salary grades the company will not name. That single asymmetry explains most of the shape of the ladder: total compensation tracks base plus bonus closely up to the lead and staff grades and then diverges sharply, because equity rather than salary is what changes above them.
ConocoPhillips states in its proxy that management, supported by Mercer, assigns each position to a salary grade and that midpoints rise with grade. It has never published the grade-to-title catalogue. Public filings and job records expose examples around Grade 15-16 and the senior-officer thresholds, and nothing in between, so any external grade ladder is an interpolation between two known points.
The company explicitly says target incentive percentages rise faster than salary midpoints. In practice that means a promotion changes what your pay is made of more than it changes how much it is. Between Grade 17-18 and Grade 19-22 base rises about 46 percent while target cash incentive rises from 25 to 45 percent of a larger base and long-term incentive stops being optional.
Pay is benchmarked to the market of the country running the employee's payroll. That is why Stavanger at 0.78 and Kuala Lumpur at 0.35 are not evidence of the same job being valued differently, but of two separate market references. It also means an internal transfer is a change of pay reference, not a percentage adjustment.
No significant current ConocoPhillips India or Bengaluru payroll was evidenced anywhere in the research. For a company of this size that is unusual, and it means the offshore-delivery pay model that dominates comparisons of large employers simply does not apply. Importing an Indian IT-services pay structure here would be a category error, not a modelling shortcut.
There is no US employee stock purchase plan. Australia has an Employee Share Plan and a 2024 New Plan sub-plan offering matching rights or shares to eligible employees, evidenced by the company benefits page and ATO class rulings CR 2025/8 and CR 2025/42. An Australian employee below the RSU-eligible grades therefore has a share-ownership route that an American colleague at the same grade does not.
General and executive RSUs generally cliff at year three rather than vesting ratably, and $188 million of unrecognised compensation cost sits over a weighted 1.71-year period. All three completed 2026 insider sales fall in a single March window, which is what cliff settlement looks like from the outside. Leaving three months before a cliff forfeits a full grant, not a quarter of one.
964,725 options remain outstanding and exercisable at a $48.17 weighted strike, worth about $80.83 million of intrinsic value at $131.96, with a 1.03-year weighted remaining term. New option grants stopped in 2018. Anyone still holding them is holding a closing position, and the 1,086,350 exercised during 2025 suggest the run-off is nearly complete.
The November 2024 Marathon Oil acquisition is visible in assumed awards, in special retention RSUs and in $286 million of 2025 severance expense. No merged grade-conversion table was published, so how the two legacy title systems were harmonised is invisible from outside, and a legacy Marathon employee's grade cannot be inferred from their title.
Qatar, China and Singapore each rest on a handful of observations, and the local-national versus expatriate split is disclosed nowhere. In markets like these a few expatriate packages carrying housing, schooling and tax equalisation will move any average by a wide margin, so these factors should be read as location-premium models rather than as local pay scales.
Equatorial Guinea employs more of the company than Malaysia does, yet has essentially no public pay evidence. The 0.28 Malabo factor covers local-national payroll only; the LNG operation also runs rotational and expatriate packages whose roster, hardship and tax-equalisation components are not comparable to local pay and are not modelled anywhere in this report.
Thirteen records with a $185,688 median look high until you see the titles: staff, principal, strategic advisor, trader and one global operations chief at $369,600. The company is not sponsoring entry-level engineers, so the sample says something about scarce senior specialist skills and nothing about graduate pay.
Ryan Lance's 2025 reported total was $23.45 million, inflated by a $16.543 million grant-date stock value. Andy O'Brien's incoming target direct compensation is $17.50 million. The two numbers are not comparable: one is an accounting total for a year that happened, the other is a design target for a role that starts on 1 September 2026.
The $212,063 median employee figure follows the SEC's pay-ratio methodology, includes benefits, and comes from a 10,008-person population including intermittent and temporary employees with 395 employees in six countries excluded under the de minimis rule. Reading it as a median base salary overstates cash pay materially.
Research control
Against the US majors and large independents, ConocoPhillips is a mid-pack payer at the top and an unremarkable one in the middle. Ryan Lance's $23.45 million is 0.71 times Darren Woods at Exxon Mobil and 0.87 times Mike Wirth at Chevron, but 1.30 times Vicki Hollub at Occidental Petroleum. The 111:1 pay ratio is lower than the supermajors' largely because the workforce is smaller and more technical, which lifts the median employee to $212,063. Structurally the differences that matter are the absence of a US employee stock purchase plan, the unusually broad VCIP participation, and a three-year cliff on RSUs where four-year ratable vesting is the norm outside the sector.
Evidence classification
| Label | Meaning | Examples and permitted use |
|---|---|---|
| Verified | A ConocoPhillips filing, official benefits page, government rule or central-bank rate. The bundle's class A. | Quote directly. Executive pay, board pay, VCIP payouts, equity plan terms, headcount and country benefit structures all sit here. |
| Reported | An observable external market record: a DOL-indexed labour condition application, an employee-submitted salary or a job-advertisement estimate. The bundle's class B. | Treat as a real observation of one worksite or one submission, not as a company range. Best used to sanity-check a modelled band, which is how the Grade 15-16 and Grade 17-18 rows were built. |
| Modeled | A normalized grade and location range: an anchor observation times a city calibration factor times the exchange rate, inside a planning envelope. The bundle's class C. | Use for the shape of the ladder and the relative distance between markets. Do not quote a single cell as a salary range or an offer. |
| Not publicly disclosed | The company does not publish it and no credible external record was found. The bundle's class ND. | Read the absence as information. Several of the most negotiation-relevant items in this report, including the minimum RSU-eligible grade, sit here. |
Explicit “Not publicly disclosed” index
Known gaps and diligence before relying on a cell
- 1The CEO row is excluded from the band table. In the source bundle it appears in every city table at an identical $1.70 million base and $17.50 million total, because chief executive pay is board-set and not location-scaled. Including a globally fixed row at the top of a location-scaled ladder would drag every market's senior cells toward parity, so the chief executive is carried in the executive section only.
- 2No level-dependent factor interpolation is applied. The source's own city tables damp Grade 19-plus pay toward global parity, taking Malabo from 0.28 at the professional grades to 0.89 at Grade 26-plus. That is a property of globally benchmarked officer roles rather than of the Equatorial Guinean labour market, so the two officer rows here carry the same local factor as the rest of the ladder and should be read as an indicative local-market equivalent, not as the package an appointed officer would receive.
- 3Total compensation has been rebuilt from base plus target bonus plus annualized equity. The source's published totals include a notional employer benefit value, which is employer cost rather than pay, and run 3 to 13 percent higher at the junior grades as a result. Where the residual between the source total and cash fell inside the disclosed modelled grant range for a grade it was used as the equity figure; at Grade 8-10 and Grade 11-12 it exceeded the range, so equity was capped and the total rebuilt downward.
- 4Base and total factors are identical for every city because the source publishes a single Houston factor per location and applies it to both. There is no independent total-compensation calibration to draw on, so any city-level difference in equity participation is invisible here.
- 5Perth, Darwin, Bengaluru and Jakarta are omitted entirely. Perth and Darwin follow the 2020 sale of the Australia-West interests and no current material payroll was established for any of the four. Assigning them factors would imply payroll markets the research did not evidence.
- 6The two datasets behind the H-1B section disagree by construction. The LCA index shows 13 records for 2025 with a $185,688 median; the petition dataset shows 15 FY2025 approvals and a $194,501 average proffered salary. They count different things and neither is a whole-workforce measure.
- 7Named-executive other-compensation figures in the executive table combine the proxy's pension and non-qualified deferred compensation column with its all-other-compensation column, because the shared report schema carries a single other-pay field. The components are stated separately in the 2026 proxy.
- 8Only three completed Form 4 dispositions were on file at the report date, all in March 2026. Aggregate 2025 option exercises and RSU issuances are far larger but are not attributable to named individuals outside Section 16 filings.
- 9Public reporting of a broader 20 to 25 percent workforce reduction uses employee-plus-contractor denominators and should not be compared with the audited employee counts used here, which show a 16.1 percent decline.
FX rates used — 1 USD equals, snapshot 2026-08-26
Single-date conversion layer for comparability; it ignores payroll-date FX, tax, purchasing power, benefits valuation and hedging. Compensation intelligence, not legal, tax, investment, immigration or employment advice.
Source register — 31 sources
| A1 | 2025 Annual Report and Form 10-K · ConocoPhillips · 2026-02-17. Headcount, revenue, severance, benefits expense, share plans and equity activity. |
| A2 | 2026 Proxy Statement (DEF 14A) · ConocoPhillips via SEC EDGAR · 2026-03-30. Executive and director pay, VCIP, PSP and ERSUP design, pay ratio, equity reserve. |
| A3 | Form 8-K, leadership succession · ConocoPhillips via SEC EDGAR · 2026-08-06. Incoming chief executive, chief financial officer and executive chair compensation, and the 2026 special retention awards. |
| A4 | Leadership succession press release · ConocoPhillips · 2026-08-06. Succession timing and role context. |
| A5 | SEC Form 4, Ryan M. Lance · SEC EDGAR · 2026-03-31. 113,221-share sale at a weighted-average $132.7085. |
| A6 | SEC Form 4, Tim A. Leach · SEC EDGAR · 2026-03-06. 40,000-share sale at a weighted-average $118.7921. |
| A7 | SEC Form 4, Nicholas G. Olds · SEC EDGAR · 2026-03-23. 6,994-share sale at a weighted-average $127.059. |
| A8 | United States benefits page · ConocoPhillips Careers · 2026-08-26. Savings-plan match, retirement, health and welfare, leave and equity categories. |
| A9 | Australia rewards and benefits page · ConocoPhillips Careers · 2026-08-26. Annual bonus, annual salary adjustment, Employee Share Plan and salary sacrifice. |
| A10 | Norway benefits page · ConocoPhillips Careers · 2026-08-26. Defined-contribution pension at 7 percent to 7.1G and 22 percent above. |
| A11 | United Kingdom benefits page · ConocoPhillips Careers · 2026-08-26. Private medical, pension, holiday and flexible benefits. |
| A12 | Canada benefits page · ConocoPhillips Careers · 2026-08-26. Canadian performance pay and benefit categories. |
| A13 | Global careers site · ConocoPhillips · 2026-08-26. Current hiring geographies and the absence of an India operation. |
| A14 | Australia location page · ConocoPhillips Careers · 2026-08-26. Current Brisbane and Gladstone footprint. |
| A15 | Completion of the Australia-West sale · ConocoPhillips · 2020-05-27. Historical context for the Perth and Darwin exclusions. |
| A16 | Daily exchange rates · Reserve Bank of Australia · 2026-08-26. AUD, GBP, CAD, MYR, CNY and SGD cross-rates. |
| A17 | DEXNOUS Norwegian krone series · Federal Reserve via FRED · 2026-08-21. NOK per USD, the last observation available before the snapshot date. |
| A18 | Monetary policy tools · Qatar Central Bank · 2026-08-26. QAR fixed parity of 3.64 per USD. |
| A19 | Class Ruling CR 2025/8 · Australian Taxation Office · 2025. Australian employee share-plan tax treatment. |
| A20 | Class Ruling CR 2025/42 · Australian Taxation Office · 2025. Australia 2024 New Plan sub-plan and matching rights or shares. |
| A21 | 2025 Proxy Statement · ConocoPhillips via SEC EDGAR · 2025. 2024 VCIP corporate payout of 120 percent. |
| A22 | 2024 Proxy Statement · ConocoPhillips via SEC EDGAR · 2024. 2023 VCIP corporate payout of 130 percent. |
| A23 | OFLC performance data · US Department of Labor · 2026-08-26. Underlying labour condition application disclosure data. |
| B1 | ConocoPhillips salaries · Levels.fyi · 2026-08-26. Cross-role US compensation distribution used to calibrate the professional bands. |
| B2 | ConocoPhillips Houston salaries · Glassdoor · 2026-08-26. Houston reservoir, geology, geophysics, drilling, engineering and finance samples. |
| B3 | ConocoPhillips salaries · Comparably · 2026-08-26. Company-wide base and bonus averages as a cross-check. |
| B4 | ConocoPhillips engineer salaries · Indeed · 2026-08-26. US engineer pay anchor. |
| B5 | ConocoPhillips salaries in Australia · SEEK · 2026-08-26. Australian job-advertisement and role estimates behind the Brisbane and Gladstone factors. |
| B6 | ConocoPhillips Australia salaries · Glassdoor Australia · 2026-08-26. Australian adviser, engineer, manager, superintendent, technician and operator samples. |
| B7 | ConocoPhillips 2025 records · H1BData.info · 2025. Thirteen labour condition application salary records with titles and worksites. |
| B8 | ConocoPhillips employer profile · MyVisaJobs · 2026-08-26. Petition and adjudication analytics and average proffered salary by year. |
Recent News & Workforce Trend
The pay-relevant events of the last two years are a leadership succession, a large restructuring and an unusually strong incentive year. Headcount fell about 16 percent while the corporate incentive paid 150 percent of target, which is the tension worth holding in mind when reading the rest of this report.
Public reporting of a broader 20 to 25 percent reduction used employee-plus-contractor denominators and should not be compared directly with the audited employee counts above. Voluntary attrition, quarterly attrition and trailing-twelve-month attrition are not disclosed, and neither is city-level headcount. No credible announcement of a company-wide 2026 merit increase percentage, salary freeze or campus-offer revision was found.
All notional equity market values here use the 26 August 2026 close. At that price the 964,725 legacy options carry $80.83 million of intrinsic value and the 6,257,001 outstanding stock-settled RSUs about $825.67 million. These are point-in-time figures and should be refreshed before any negotiation.
Effective 1 September 2026 Andy O'Brien becomes president and chief executive on a $1.70 million base, a 160 percent VCIP target and a $13.08 million long-term incentive target, for $17.50 million of target direct compensation. Ryan Lance moves to a transitional executive chair role at a $1.10 million base with no VCIP and a $12.40 million 2027 long-term incentive target. Kontessa Haynes-Welsh becomes SVP and CFO at a $742,972 base and an 83 percent target.
Kirk L. Johnson received a $5 million target restricted stock unit award vesting at year five and Nicholas G. Olds a $3 million target award vesting at year three, both with proration for specified involuntary events. The five-year cliff is longer than any standard ConocoPhillips vesting schedule and is a direct read on succession-period retention risk.
Ryan Lance's disposition at a weighted-average $132.7085 was the largest of the three completed 2026 Form 4 trades on file and roughly eight times his annual salary. The filing reports an execution-price range alongside the weighted average.
Chief executive compensation of $23,469,730 was measured against a median employee of $212,063 drawn from a 10,008-person population including intermittent and temporary employees, with six countries totalling 395 employees excluded under the SEC de minimis rule.
The corporate payout rose from 120 percent for 2024 and 130 percent for 2023, against a 200 percent cap. The 2025 scorecard weighted health, safety and environment 20 percent, operations 30 percent, financial measures 30 percent and strategic milestones 20 percent, and every named executive was paid at the same corporate factor.
The disposition was struck at a weighted-average $118.7921, the lowest of the three 2026 prices and roughly 10 percent below the level at which the chief executive sold three weeks later.
Year-end 2025 employment fell roughly 1,900 from about 11,800 a year earlier. Share-based compensation expense rose to $336 million from $268 million in 2024, and 2,998,555 stock-settled RSUs were granted during the year.
The severance charge was allocated across the operating segments and corporate. It is the accounting trace of the year-on-year headcount reduction and the clearest quantification of the restructuring's cost to employees.
1,086,350 options were exercised during 2025 at a $38.71 weighted-average strike, generating $15 million of cash to the company plus $27 million from cashless exercises and a $13 million tax benefit. 964,725 remained outstanding at year-end with a 1.03-year weighted remaining term. New option grants stopped in 2018.
His 2025 total included $4.88 million of stock awards, a $1.32 million VCIP payout on the highest non-CEO target in the group at 115 percent, and $739,000 of pension and deferred compensation increase, the largest such figure among the named executives.
Both received 22 percent promotion adjustments effective 1 June, on top of the 5.5 percent salary increases most continuing named executives received effective 1 March. These are the only publicly visible promotion increments anywhere in the company and are committee decisions, not a workforce-wide merit matrix.