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Five Executive Talent Priorities for Oil and Gas:
A Board and Leadership Guide

Five Executive Talent Priorities for Oil and Gas: A Board and Leadership Guide

By Chadwick D. Covey and Nathan E. Wiita, Ph.D.
October 2025

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The oil and gas industry has gone through a protracted cycle of cost-cutting and consolidation in the past decade, with major implications for leadership succession. Since 2015, the sector has lost nearly 80,000 jobs to structural cost-cutting, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, yet U.S. oil production has increased by about 45% over the same period. Those cuts have removed nearly an entire layer of high-potential leaders, and today there are simply fewer people in the pipeline with the experience and capabilities to make them serious candidates for the CEO role.

That hasn’t hurt companies — yet. Industry consolidation means there are fewer CEO spots available, and some boards have deprioritized CEO succession planning and development as they take on more urgent business challenges. The current state of play will last only so long, as current CEOs retire or step down and boards face a narrow pipeline of potential successors — at a time when demands on CEOs are greater than ever.

Now is the time for oil and gas companies to get serious about succession planning.

Now is the time for oil and gas companies to get serious about succession planning. The industry faces a confluence of trends, including growing demand, valuation challenges in the capital markets and the continued — albeit diminishing — need to navigate policy around the energy transition. These and other complexities, including growing market and geopolitical uncertainty, make the job of leading oil and gas companies more difficult than in the past, requiring leaders with a broader range of experience and capabilities.

To meet this challenge, CEO succession planning needs to be at the top of the agenda for companies and boards in the industry. Here are five priorities to consider.

Traditional succession planning considers a small number of leaders with a narrow profile — often a “safe pick,” meaning the same type of leader that has succeeded in the past. Given the amount of change in the oil and gas industry, succession planning needs to be “always on” and built for adaptability. Boards should consider a wider range of market scenarios, identify a larger number of potential leaders and place greater emphasis on talent development.

Boards should assess leadership bench strength throughout the organization, discuss key competency gaps in current and future leaders, and review updated assessments regularly.

The goal is to widen the funnel and consider leaders with a broad array of experiences, perspectives and skills. In practice, that often means including candidates who may not be a perfect match with the job criteria that has worked in the past but who bring new skills that the organization could require in the future.

Experience remains important, especially in a sector where engineering and operational expertise are critical. But in periods of uncertainty and disruption — like most oil and gas players face today — experience isn’t enough. Leaders need to be more flexible in synthesizing new information and adapting to emerging business realities. Boards should look at CEO and C-suite candidates that have been forced to build new capabilities in response to adversity, or those that have been thrown into unfamiliar settings and had to mobilize teams quickly to deliver results.

The silver lining from the current wave of market consolidation is that it can create opportunities for leaders to find new roles and for organizations to move leadership talent. A merger may push out some executives who find a role at another company, and the need to adapt to a different culture and way of working will only benefit those individuals over the course of their careers. Mergers can also create new positions with a larger set of responsibilities to test and develop up-and-coming leaders. The post-merger integration process for the acquiring company should redefine roles and capabilities based on the needs of the combined organization and incorporate a fresh look at the pipeline for top roles. This, in turn, will help shape leadership development processes going forward. As deal activity can make high-potential executives at other organizations available, well-positioned companies should consider proactively ramping up their recruitment efforts, selectively recruiting talented executives to supplement the pipeline for key leadership roles.

By monitoring external talent pools, organizations can be clear-eyed about the strengths and development gaps of internal talent. External benchmarking exercises also can surface exceptional talent, especially in critical areas such as finance, technology and operations, allowing companies to selectively make strategic hires that add external perspective and boost the succession bench. Hiring below the C-suite allows leaders time to learn the culture and different parts of the business, preparing them for future C-suite opportunities, which is less risky than hiring outside directly for a key C-suite role. When recruiting executives from outside the sector, it’s critical to assess their ability to adapt to new environments, their willingness to dig in and learn new ways of working, and how their leadership style aligns with the culture of the company.

Mergers can also create new positions with a larger set of responsibilities to test and develop up-and-coming leaders.

Last, and most important, boards must move from passive oversight to active strategic involvement in developing leadership talent. Specifically, boards need to establish talent risk as a board-level strategic priority. They should assess leadership bench strength throughout the organization, discuss key competency gaps in current and future leaders, and review updated assessments regularly.

Longer term, boards should understand the implications of an evolving business strategy, and how those changes translate to new capabilities needed in the CEO and overall leadership team. Based on that linkage, they should ensure succession plans take into account potential strategic pivots — and that leadership development creates options for multiple potential scenarios.

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The oil and gas industry continues to face massive change and increased complexity. In this environment, companies can best compete by revamping their approach to talent development and top-level succession planning. Get that right, and you’ll put the right team in place to succeed regardless of what the future brings.

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