Oxy, seeking to shore up confidence, names former Schlumberger CEO to board
Occidental Petroleum added a former chief executive of Schlumberger to its board as the company aims to instill more confidence with shareholders after risking its future to buy Anadarko Petroleum for $38 billion last year.
Andrew Gould, who previously led the world’s largest oil field services firm until 2011, will join the board in March as Oxy looks to cut costs, reduce debt and sell assets after making the biggest energy acquisition of the past few years to secure its position as the largest producer in the booming Permian Basin.
Gould said he has long admired Oxy, including the company’s leading role in injecting carbon dioxide into more mature wells to produce additional oil and gas, a technique called enhanced oil recovery.
Gould led Schlumberger as the chairman and CEO from 2003 to 2011. He then chaired the United Kingdom’s BG Group until 2016 when it was bought by Royal Dutch Shell. The Anadarko sale was the biggest energy deal in the world since the BG deal.
Gould also is a board member with the stateowned energy giant Saudi Aramco. Landry’s reports data security issue affecting some
Landry’s, Inc. — the restaurant chain from local billionaire Tilman Fertitta — is alerting the public of a recent security incident involving payment processing that may have affected some customers.
Customers’ payment cards could have been mistakenly swiped by waitstaff on the orderentry systems instead of the point-of-sale terminals used for payment processing, the company said in a statement.
Landry’s said an investigation identified “malware designed to access payment card data from cards used in person on systems at its restaurants,” but that the system’s encryption technology was effective in preventing access to payment-card data when cards were used on those encryption devices.
The company implemented payment processing with end-to-end encryption technology in 2016, a year after it faced a massive data breach.
Customers with questions or concerns can call 833-991-1538 for more information. Texas again sees more shipments coming than going
Texas reclaimed its status as a place for predominantly inbound moves in 2019, according to the 2019 Atlas Van Lines Migration Patterns report. The state registered its highest percentage of inbound moves since 2015.
In 2019, 56.1 percent of shipments to Texas were inbound, a jump from 2018 when 52.4 percent of the moves were inbound. Last year, 6,323 shipments moved into the state, while 4,945 moved out, according to Atlas Van Lines. Prior to 2016, Texas had been an inbound state for numerous years.
Texas was considered by Atlas Van Lines to be a balanced state, meaning moves in and out were roughly equal, from 2016 to 2018. The moving company classifies a state as inbound when more than 55 percent of moves are coming in.
The top inbound states in 2019 were Idaho, at 62.3 percent; Washington, 60.5 percent, North Carolina, 59.3 percent, and New Mexico, 59.0 percent, according to Atlas Van Lines. The top outbound states were New York at 62.7 percent, West Virginia, 62.5 percent, South Dakota, 61.7 percent and Illinois, 61.4 percent.
The results mirrored a separate report by United Van Lines. Out of 15,596 shipments to Texas, 8,671 or 55.6 percent were inbound,
American Furniture Warehouse completed the purchase of a 30acre tract at Interstate 45 and River Plantation Drive in Conroe for its third Houston-area location.
The site will house a 443,375-square-foot store, including 150,000 square feet of showroom space and 293,375 square feet of storage, according to Baker Katz, which represented American Furniture Warehouse in the deal. A time frame for breaking ground has not been set.
American Furniture Warehouse made its Houston debut in September with a 355,000square-foot store in Webster. The Colorado company, which was founded by Jake Jabs, is building a 500,000square-foot location in Katy that is slated to open in April.
Ben Brown of Baker Katz represented the buyer. Mark Terpstra of Caldwell Cos. represented the seller, Gross Land Fund I LP. Furniture chain is expanding in Conroe according to the company’s 2019 National Movers Study.