Ryan lance

Birthday: May 21, 1962

Hometown: Butte, MT

Current role: Chairman and CEO of ConocoPhillips (2012-present)

Net worth: At least $170M (WealthX)

2023 compensation: $20.7 million according to the Wall Street Journal

Education: Bachelor of ScienceinPetroleumEngineeringattheUniversity of Montana (1984)

Board memberships, affiliations, and roles (data from WealthX)

• Member of Business Roundtable 

• Member of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers

• Member of The Business Council

• Member of the Society of Petroleum Engineers

• Director of Freeport-McMoRan 

• Director of the Independent Petroleum Association of America 

• Director of the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation

• Director of the Montana Tech Foundation 

• Director of the Yellowstone Park Foundation

• Director of the Greater Houston Partnership 

• Committee Member of the American Petroleum Institute 

• Ambassador of Spindletop charities

• Trustee of the George Bush Presidential Library Foundation

• Trustee of United Way of Greater Houston, Texas

• Trustee of the Professional Golfers’ Association of America

• Trustee of the University of St. Andrews

• Advisory board member of the Energy Institute of the University of Texas at Austin

• Advisory board member at the University of Houston

Past roles (data from WealthX)

• Former roles at ConocoPhillips:

  • Senior VP of Exploration and Production-International (2009)

  • Senior VP of Technology (2006)

  • President of Downstream Strategy, Integration and Specialty Functions (2005)

  • President of Asia Pacific Exploration and Production (2003)

  • VP of Lower 48 (2002)

• General Manager of Phillips Petroleum Company (2001-2002)

  • In 2002, Phillips Petroleum Company merged with Conoco Inc. to form ConocoPhillips

• Manager of Vastar Resources (1996-1998)

  • Subsidiary of ARCO

• VP of Atlantic Richfield Company (ARCO) Alaska (1984-2001)

  • Manager of ARCO (1989-1996)

  • ARCO sold its Alaskan assets to Phillips Petroleum Company in 2000 for $7B

Fun facts: 

• In April of 2023, Lance and his wife donated $31 million to the Montana Technological University, which is three times more than any gift the institution has ever received

• Lance put himself through college by working on oil rigs in Wyoming

ConocoPhillips produced 673 million barrels of oil equivalent per day in 2021 and has an estimated short-term expansion (over the next 1-7 years) of 3,674 million barrels of oil equivalent. In 2023, ConocoPhillips produced over 1.8 billion barrels of oil equivalent per day and released 16 million tonnes of GHG emissions in 2022. 

Many of Ryan Lance’s affiliations with ConocoPhillips have received low scores by InflunceMap because of their fossil fuel-related engagement.

• API received a score of F and has directly advocated for the Willow Project through a letter led by Lisa Murkowski to the Bureau of Land Management in Alaska.

  • Both ConocoPhillips and Ryan Lance have positions on the board

• The US Chamber of Commerce received a score of E- and advocated for the Willow Project through a letter by Lisa Murkowski to the Bureau of Land Management in Alaska.

  • ConocoPhillips has board membership

• Business Roundtable received a score of D+ and praised the Biden Administration’s support for the Willow Project on X

  • Lance is a board member 

• The National Association of Manufacturers received a score of E and advocated for the Willow Project through a letter by Lisa Murkowski to the Bureau of Land Management in Alaska.

  • ConocoPhillips has board membership

The Willow Project

ConocoPhillips has been approved to begin constructing the Willow project in Alaska, estimated to be the “largest oil drilling project in the US to date.” The company bought leases to the land in the 1990s and found oil in 2017. In 2020, the Trump administration’s Department of the Interior approved the project but faced legal resistance from environmental groups in 2021. Despite this resistance, the Biden Administration approved the project and lowered the number of drill sites from 5 to 3 to appease environmental groups.

The Willow Project will generate enough oil to release 9.2 trillion metric tons of carbon pollution annually and 180,000 barrels of oil daily. With this approval, ConocoPhillips may begin drilling in 13 million acres (or over 200 oil wells) in the National Petroleum Reserve located in Alaska’s North Slope and 3 million acres in the Beaufort Sea. The company announced that the project has the potential to generate $17 billion in revenue and create “2,500 construction jobs and roughly 300 permanent jobs.” A report by CAP found that the “lifetime emissions from oil and gas produced at Willow would ‘dwarf’ the climate benefits from wind, solar and offshore wind projects.”

The Willow Project is near the village of Utqiagvik and the town of Nuiqsuit, both home to Indigenous communities. Residents of the area, as well as Mayor Rosemary Ahtuangaruak, have expressed great concern over the impact that the Willow Project will have on their quality of life and on the Lake Caribou herd, a large food source for the community. Native Movement, an organization founded by Indigenous peoples from Alaska, has argued that ConocoPhillips and other developers of the Project haven’t done adequate research on its environmental, health, and social impacts.

Chevron Corporation, et al., Petitioners v. City of Hoboken, NJ, et al.

The city of Hoboken, NJ recently filed a lawsuit against the big oil and gas corporations, including ConocoPhillips, Chevron, BP, ExxonMobil, and API. The lawsuit accused the major oil and gas companies of misleading the public and covering up information regarding climate change and its effects on the community. The area has experienced extreme weather patterns due to climate change, most notably Hurricane Sandy, which cost the city $100M in damage. The Supreme Court permitted the case to be tried in State court, despite pushback from the lead lawyer representing the oil companies, Ted Boutrous. 

ConocoPhillips was represented by the law firms Chiesa Shahinian & Giantomasi and McCarter & English.

Ryan Lance has a net worth of at least $170 million and his total compensation in 2022 was $19,972,339, with a base salary of $1,685,833. Lance is a partial owner of a Dassault Falcon 2000 plane, estimated to be worth roughly $1 million, and he owns property in Pebble Beach, CA, estimated to be worth $13 million. Lance has $2 million in shares in Freeport-McMoRan, $11.5 million in shares in ConocoPhillips, and $140 million in previous salaries, bonuses, and investments (WealthX).

Lance is involved with several nonprofit organizations, including the Yellowstone Park Foundation, Montana Tech Foundation, Spindletop International, and the University of Houston (WealthX).

Philanthropic Donations (WealthX):

• 2023: $31 million to Montana Technological University 

• 2015: $1 million to Montana Tech of the Univ. of Montana 

• Undisclosed amounts in 2018 and $200+ in 2017 to National Fish & Wildlife Foundation

• 2013: $10,000to Yellowstone Park Foundation 

Ryan Lance has earned several awards throughout his career. In 2021, Lance received Montana Technological University's first Chancellor’s Award of Distinction and the McLane Leadership in Business award from the Mosbacher Institute.

Ryan Lance is the Chairman and CEO of ConocoPhillips, a crude oil company featured among the Fortune 500 companies. Lance is directly connected to the production part of the fossil fuel commodity chain and has strong ties with other large oil companies, politicians, and major banks. 

2,182 investors have invested a total of $110,774M in ConocoPhillips. Top investors in ConocoPhillips include: 

• Vanguard – $11.824B in total investments

• BlackRock – $9.979B

• Capitol Group – $8.832B

• State Street – $6.403B

• JPMorgan Chase – $5.691B

ConocoPhillips releases annual sustainability reports, but the language used by the company doesn't overlap with the recommendations of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Despite claims to transition towards more sustainable practices, the company’s Willow Project directly goes against the IPCC’s “recommendations that advise against the incompatibility of new fossil fuel projects with the 1.5°C goal.” In 2020, ConocoPhillips ramped up its climate goals, but there’s limited evidence of how these new goals for “35-45% reduction in scope 1 and 2 emissions intensity by 2030 and for net zero by 2050” will be achieved.

ConocoPhillips has faced significant backlash from the environmental movement for its role in the polluter industrial complex. The company has received the most criticism for its controversial Willow Project. Climate activists went viral on TikTok for their posts to the #StopWillow campaign, which featured direct attacks at ConocoPhillips. The #StopWillow campaign has gained traction online, receiving over 88 million views in April 2023 alone. Protect the Arctic created a petition demanding that the Biden Administration halt the Project, receiving over 5 million signatures. Young climate activists have also sent millions of letters to President Biden.

Many leaders of environmental organizations have taken public stances on the Willow Project. For example, the president of Earthjustice, Abigail Dillen, said that “we are too late in the climate crisis to approve massive oil and gas projects that directly undermine the new clean economy that the Biden Administration committed to advancing.” The executive director of Evergreen Action, Lena Moffitt, directed a message to the Biden Administration saying that “approving the Willow Project is an unacceptable departure from President Biden’s promises to the American people on climate and environmental justice.”

• “[The Willow Project] fits within the Biden administration’s priorities on environmental and social justice.” -Ryan Lance, 2023

• “We are going to go through an energy transition, so eventually there will be a peak in demand” and “The world is demanding action on climate. We understand that. But we also understand that there’s going to be a need for fossil fuels” -Ryan Lance, 2020

• “Even if you subscribe to the 2 degree Celsius change, by 2050, 60 to 70 percent of the world's energy demand is still going to be filled by fossil fuels. So you know, to be—to be in a position to even have cheap, affordable energy around the world, we've got to figure out how to do that sustainably. You can't—there is no pathway that I've seen by anybody that would suggest that renewables gets us there by 2040. It takes a century to turn over an energy system in the globe today” -Ryan Lance, 2015