Good morning, and welcome to the Occidental Petroleum Corp. first quarter 2015 earnings conference call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. After today's presentation there will be an opportunity to ask questions. Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Mr. Chris Degner, Senior Director of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you, Rocco. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for participating in Occidental Petroleum's first quarter 2015 conference call. On the call with us today are Steve Chazen, Oxy's President and Chief Executive Officer; Vicki Hollub, Senior Executive Vice of Occidental and President, Oxy Oil and Gas; Chris Stavros, Chief Financial Officer; Willie Chiang, Executive Vice President of Operations; and Sandy Lowe, President of our International Oil and Gas Operations. In just a moment I will turn the call over to our CEO, Steve Chazen, who will provide an updated outlook for 2015. Our CFO, Chris Stavros, will review our financial and operating results for the first quarter and also provide some guidance for 2015; followed by Vicki Hollub who will provide an update of our activities in the Permian Basin. As a reminder, today's conference call contains certain projections and other forward-looking statements within the meaning of federal securities laws. These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied in these statements. Additional information on factors that could cause the results to differ is available on the company's most recent Form 10-K. Our first quarter 2015 earnings press, the Investor Relations supplemental schedules, our non-GAAP to GAAP reconciliations and the conference call presentation slides can be downloaded off our website at www.oxy.com. I'll now turn the call over to Steve Chazen. Steve, please go ahead. Stephen I. Chazen - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Thank you, Chris. Yesterday we announced that Vicki Hollub has been named to head our worldwide oil company and will succeed me as CEO when I retire. Both of us will be visiting shareholders either at conferences or in their offices over the next few months. My commitment is to remain in…

Thank you, Vicki. I think we'll now open the call up for questions.

And our first question comes from Doug Leggate of Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Please go ahead. Doug Leggate - Bank of America – Merrill Lynch: Thanks. Good morning, everybody. And, Vicki, congratulations. It's nice to get that issue behind us. Looking forward to seeing what you're going to do next. I guess I've got two questions, if I may. The first one is the Al Hosn guidance. I just wonder if you could explain the difference between what you suggested at the beginning of the year and what you're looking at now in terms of the reduction in full year expectations. Then I've got a follow-up please.

Yeah, Doug, this is Sandy Lowe. Plant started up and we have 25% sulfur recovery there. And some of the sulfur units weren't working quite properly so we took them offline, made some modifications. Today the plant is back up to 45% of production, which is about 25,000 BOEs to us and we should be back up at peak production of 1 million a day at the end of the month, beginning of next month. So the guidance that's given already by Chris should be good for the year. Doug Leggate - Bank of America – Merrill Lynch: I guess I had a couple of other issues I was going to touch on, Sandy, but taking advantage of you being there, maybe I'll make my second one on your region if I may.

Sure. Doug Leggate - Bank of America – Merrill Lynch: There's been a fair amount of chatter around both the Adnoc concessions, obviously your – the slowdown, it seems, in terms of asset monetization in the region and finally the prospect of extensions in the Oman contracts. I'm just wondering if you could give us a kind of general update as to how those things stand, and I'll leave it there. Thank you.

Well, I can guide you only as to what you see in the press on the Adnoc concessions. Everybody who's involved is still bound by a confidentiality agreement. The press has been reasonably forthcoming in that respect. As far as asset monetization, this – well, you know, when the price of oil dipped like it is, we have kind of two issues. People want to pay less for it and also they don't have quite as much money to get into it. So things are somewhat held in abeyance at the moment in that regard. And the last question I believe was about Oman, we're in discussions at the moment. We're now at record-breaking production in our block nine, which is the one under discussion of over 100,000 barrels a day. So everybody's happy with that. And so we're just ironing out the details of a new contract with the government. Doug Leggate - Bank of America – Merrill Lynch: Any timeline? Because I believe that contract expires this year, Sandy. So what's the prognosis if you don't get it done in the next six months? Stephen I. Chazen - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: I don't think there'll be an issue with that. So it will be – if it weren't quite complete, I'm sure they would extend us. Doug Leggate - Bank of America – Merrill Lynch: All right. Steve, maybe I will just squeeze just one more in given that you jumped in there. The pace of buybacks given that your stock has lagged -- just curious on your thought process. Then I will leave it there. Thank you. Stephen I. Chazen - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: We continue to buy the stock back on weakness. And so you should expect that we'll buy back shares over the next year or so and eventually get to our target. The exact date or exact number each quarter, just hard to tell. Doug Leggate - Bank of America – Merrill Lynch: All right. Thanks a lot, everybody.

Our next question comes from Evan Calio of Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead. Evan Calio - Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC: Hi. Good morning, guys, and congratulations as well to Vicki. My first question is a strategic question. Oxy was in the midst of a restructuring and successfully unlocking value prior to the cycle turn and positioned you well with large cash position into this downturn. I know there's some leadership transition here yet. How has the cycle changed your restructuring outlook? I know you just mentioned the MENA asset divestiture or the partial divestiture. But does it alter your view as it relates to midstream or chemicals? And given the balance sheet and does it change your willingness to add resource and accelerate that shift here? Stephen I. Chazen - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Sort of a complicated question. The downturn – the cycle of course is – we expect if it stays volatile, whatever that means, we'd expect opportunities to show up during the cycle either to repurchase our stock or to buy other assets just depending on what's going on. Right now the asset market is quite expensive, so there's no reason to believe we'll do much of that. As far as the Middle East assets are concerned, they fall into two classes of asset. Those that are – where we've already spent the money and we're clipping coupons, which seem fairly attractive in a more-volatile oil price environment. And those that are more volatile and follow normal trends which seem less attractive in this environment. So I think that's where we are. Some of those assets require some work and probably in the end divestiture or discontinuation of work there. As far as the chemical business is concerned, the chemical business, once the ethylene…

And our next question comes from Guy Baber of Simmons & Company. Please go ahead. Guy Allen Baber - Simmons & Company International: Good morning, everybody. Congrats on nice quarter, and, Vicki, congratulations to you as well. My first question was on cost structure, but obviously you've been very successful in reducing your cost structure in recent months. You've mentioned $400 million in savings. Can you discuss where you are in that process? Where you see that number potentially going? And then if you could also just discuss for us how much of that you see as structural and permanent versus temporary and what might reverse when prices begin to rise again? Just trying to understand how that outlook might be structurally proving on the cost front. Then I have a follow-up. Vicki A. Hollub - President, Oil & Gas Americas: The cost structure that we're trying to get to is, we currently have some of our contracts with suppliers tied to oil prices, so some of those contracts will go up with oil prices. However, the majority of our contracts for the drilling rigs and for our frac providers are not necessarily tied to an oil pricing index. So what we're really trying to do is get more efficient. And we expect that the cost structure that we're going to achieve by fourth quarter is going be one that does have some exposure to flexibility in prices, but I don't believe that more than 60% to 70% of our cost structure improvement will be associated with oil price changes. Guy Allen Baber - Simmons & Company International: Okay, great. And then I had a follow-up on – I wanted to talk a little bit more about the Permian and capital allocation. But obviously results in the Permian have improved…

And our next question comes from Ed Westlake of Credit Suisse. Please go ahead. Edward George Westlake - Credit Suisse Securities (USA) LLC (Broker): Yes. Congratulations, Vicki. Two questions again on the Permian, it's probably going be a theme. You have a great slide in the deck just in terms of drilling days and getting from your 26 days down to a target of 16. What's the key thing you're doing differently? Is it just as simple as just getting to an efficiency mode or is there other things you need to do to get to the best in class? And then I've got a question on completions. Vicki A. Hollub - President, Oil & Gas Americas: In terms of the drilling days, one of the things our team is doing is they're taking an evaluation of the formations that we're drilling through and modeling what it takes in terms of the weight on our bit and rotation of the bit to really design exactly how much we should do, how fast we should rotate the bit. And how much weight we should put on it by interval. And it's a process that's called mechanical-specific energy and that's one of the processes that's helped us to significantly reduce our drilling days, that, along with the fact that we're better managing our mud systems and we've seen a lot of improvement there. We're seeing significant reduction in nonproductive time during our drilling operations. So – and part of that – a good part of the nonproductive time reduction is due to the efficiencies of our teams and the scheduling. Some of that is due as well to the fact that the Permian is not as stretched in terms of the support system now that activity is lower. So it's a combination…

And our next question comes from Ryan Todd of Deutsche. Please go ahead.

Great. Thanks, and congratulations, Vicki. Maybe another follow-up question on the Permian. You have some slides in there that update on well cost deflation in the Permian. Can you – I guess with the 2014 level, a current level and a target level, I guess can you talk a little bit about where the current level of well costs are relative to what you implied in the 2015 budget? And then is the target well costs kind of a year end 2015 target? Is that an eventually full blown development program target? I guess maybe talk a little bit about how much of that is from service cost deflation versus improved efficiencies. Vicki A. Hollub - President, Oil & Gas Americas: Yeah, the target that we're trying to achieve, we already have achieved that with some of our wells. So the current costs where I'm saying we are there is that3 basically an average of what we're seeing. That is actually our planned numbers were a little bit higher than what – certainly what our target is and sort of in between our target and our current. But in terms of where we expected to be for Q1, we're ahead of schedule because we're implementing these things as we go. So the target was where we expect to be by year end. But we think we will be ahead of that.

Great. That's helpful. And then, you addressed costs a little bit earlier and I wasn't clear whether you addressed this point or not. Last quarter you had targeted $500 million of cost savings. You said you'd captured $400 million to date. Any update on whether you expect greater than $500 million at this point, or is that a still a reasonable target for the year? Stephen I. Chazen - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: This is Steve. I think it's a reasonable target for the year. I think we'll sort of get there. But I think – it could be more than that but I think right now we'll stick with that.

Great. I appreciate it. I'll leave it there.

And our next question comes from Roger Read of Wells Fargo. Please go ahead.

Yeah, good morning, and congrats, Vicki, on your new role there. Coming back around to the Permian Resources for the obvious reasons – as you talked about guidance and being in a situation where you could potentially still exceed that, can you quantify at all how much of that is the well performance issues that you highlighted earlier in terms of IP rates and 30 day rates and how much of it is just executing on getting the wells in the ground, sort of that if you spud today, whether or not you can get it started late Q3 or if it slides well into Q4? Vicki A. Hollub - President, Oil & Gas Americas: Currently it's principally performance execution. It's accelerating the well delivery. However, we do have a couple of areas where we're seeing improved performance. You'll notice that the graphs from the Delaware basin, we're still seeing strong performance versus our peers in the Wolf Bone and the Barilla Draw area. There are other areas where we're seeing improved performance in terms of our program design. So we're still seeing opportunities to increase our per-well performance and we're seeing – and then the main thing that we're doing there is targeting better landing zones. So I would say that right now just to go back and bottom-line answer the question, it's incredible execution on the part of our teams to get the wells on faster. And part of it is a little bit of improved recovery on a per-well basis, but we still expect there will be more of that to come.

Okay. Thanks. And then Yemen, as you said earlier that was going to go away anyway. But I was wondering what was the margin or cash margin per unit that that impacts you? Stephen I. Chazen - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: I don't remember. Chris has got it. Christopher G. Stavros - Executive Vice President & Chief Financial Officer: It was generating about $15 million a quarter after tax if you want to think about it that way.

Okay. Appreciate it. Thank you.

Our next question comes from Paul Sankey of Wolfe Research. Please go ahead.

Good morning, everyone, and congratulations, Vicki. Steve, you start your slides in a differentiated way with talk about dividend growth. And I think and I assume Vicki will continue this as the primary ultimate aim of OXY. Can you square the circle because, as I said, that's a differentiated strategy from most other if not all other U.S. E&Ps. Does it mean you have better geology costs, lower growth? How is it that you're going be able to deliver a higher dividend growth than others in essentially the same place? Thanks. Stephen I. Chazen - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Well, most of them don't have any dividends. So comparing against an environment with – so we're sort of a tall midget here. So I think the -- dividends, if there is religious activity here, I think that's it. It provides discipline to the management, otherwise you print shares, do all sorts of wealth destructive things. The dividends give you discipline. We have a more diverse business than the typical E&P. We've got the sort of stable stuff that we've already spent the money on in the Middle East to generate cash. We've got the Chemical business, which always generates cash. We have a midstream business which generates cash, and we have less debt, relatively. So all that provides more cash than the typical, and what we do with the cash is we buy in some shares. And we pay more dividends. You have to have something that – you can't be at our size – you can't try to compete with somebody makes 10,000 barrels a day and grow. So we think that our long standing acreage position, that's also part of it, we didn't just acquire the acreage last month or last year. We got the EOR business which generates a lot of cash. In economic terms, those are called monopoly profits and that's what you're seeing. It's the same thing you see at the large integrateds. That's what differentiates it. The other guys have a different strategy. Nothing wrong with their strategy, it's just different but we think the cash here will be strong and we invest sometimes unpopularly, by the way, in things that will generate a lot of cash for a long period of time. So we always are thinking about how we're going grow the dividend. I guess she can speak for herself but I think Vicki and Chris have the same basic belief because they've been hearing it for a long time. So... Christopher G. Stavros - Executive Vice President & Chief Financial Officer: Yeah. Stephen I. Chazen - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: And that's – and Chris is planning on staying so Chris will be your principal person to talk to about financial matters, but Vicki will certainly set the strategy.

Well, I'm glad to hear that Vicki's not planning to fire Chris. Could – I guess theoretically. Let's skip over your politically-incorrect comment and just say, assuming you're that not comping against other E&Ps, but I would assume an above inflation rate of growth, otherwise you're not growing the dividend. Would that mean that ultimately given the assets that you listed are all more/less zero growth once we get through some of the project start-ups, would that mean that we align your long-term volume growth with your long-term dividend growth? Stephen I. Chazen - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yeah, that probably about right.

Which would be 5%-plus percent but not 10% I guess. Stephen I. Chazen - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: That's right. It's hard to say exactly. Because you have the chemical business which is a little different and that's going to generate a sizable amount of free cash out here. I'm sure it will generate $1 billion in free cash. And so that will cover a fair amount of the dividend without doing anything and some growth there. It's sort of a GDP grower when all is said and done on its cash flow.

Yeah. Stephen I. Chazen - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: So I mean...

Go ahead. Stephen I. Chazen - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: That provides the base. And we just – the dividends are the cost of keeping the shareholders. It's cost of capital. However you want to say it. And without that sort of discipline, you'd do all kinds of crazy stuff.

Yeah, and just finally, would it be fair, if harsh, to say the other element here is you're coming off a lower base in terms of your operational performance in the Permian and that provides the potential for greater growth? And I'll leave it there. Thanks. Stephen I. Chazen - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: I don't know. Maybe. But I think growth is growth. We've spent a lot of time building to this so that we wouldn't be in the same situation that a number of other companies are. We've spent money and time. And so we started the acceleration when we knew what we were doing, mostly. And that's really what – and I think we've told you that in the past, which nobody listened to.

Okay, thanks, Steve.

And our last question comes from John Herrlin of Société Générale. Please go ahead.

Yeah, hi, just a quick one for me. Steve nobody would accuse Oxy as being a contra plastic but regarding the Permian, you're going to drill in the Resources division, I guess Vicki, 150 wells. Can you give me a sense what the split would be, Delaware, central basin and midland? And that's it. Vicki A. Hollub - President, Oil & Gas Americas: Yes of the 150 wells, none of them will be on the Central Basin platform. It'll be almost split half-and-half between the Midland Basin and the Delaware Basin.

Okay, great. That's it for me. Thank you. Stephen I. Chazen - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Thanks, John.

And thank you. This concludes our question-and-answer session. I'd like to turn the conference back over to Mr. Degner for any closing remarks.

Hi. Yes. Thanks, everyone, for participating. I know it's been a busy day for you. Please give us a call if you have any follow-up questions.

Thank you, sir. Today's conference has now concluded. We thank you all for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect your lines.