Unocal’s Richard Stegemeier to Step Down as Chief Executive : Management: Roger Beach will take over for local oil company’s longtime leader.

In a long-expected change of leadership, Unocal Corp. said Tuesday that Richard J. Stegemeier, a 42-year veteran of the company, would step down as chief executive in April and be replaced by Roger C. Beach, the oil company’s president and chief operating officer.

Stegemeier--widely credited with guiding a painful but necessary restructuring of Los Angeles-based Unocal to reduce a heavy burden of debt--will continue as chairman of the board until April, 1995, and will remain on the board for a year after that.

“It is an orderly progression in a large company,” said J. Robinson West, president and chief executive of Washington-based Petroleum Finance Co.

Unocal closed at $26.50, unchanged, on the New York Stock Exchange.

Beach began his career with Pure Oil Co., which operated refineries in the Midwest before merging with Unocal in 1964.

At Unocal, he became general superintendent of the company’s Beaumont, Tex., refinery in 1972. After a series of promotions, he was named a senior vice president in 1987. He joined Unocal’s board in 1988 and became president and chief operating officer last year.

Beach joined senior management at a particularly tough time for the company. Burdened with $6.1 billion in debt after successfully repulsing a hostile takeover attempt by T. Boone Pickens in 1985, Unocal was beginning a companywide restructuring, as were many other U.S. energy companies.

“I didn’t have to look around for any goals,” Beach said Tuesday.

In 1986, oil prices fell to $10 a barrel. “That made this company a very delicate operation to manage,” Stegemeier recalled Tuesday.

Stegemeier instituted a series of cost-cutting measures and restructuring in which Unocal sold $2.4 billion in assets, including chemicals operations and a nationwide chain of truck stops, cut back less profitable operations and reduced the work force from 22,000 in 1985 to 14,000 currently.

“It’s a lot more fun to grow than shrink,” Stegemeier recalled. “Early retirements, layoffs--for me that’s been a very painful experience. . . . I know thousands of these people.”

Beach said Tuesday that he expects crude oil prices to remain relatively low, in the range of $15 to $20 a barrel. But he said that’s enough for Unocal to remain profitable.

“Those prices won’t restrict our ability to grow,” Beach said. “And the exciting part is the many new opportunities, new prospects,” particularly in natural gas. More than half of Unocal’s energy reserves are in natural gas, which is being promoted by the Clinton Administration and environmentalists as the fossil fuel of preference, he noted.

Though Smith Barney Shearson on Monday lowered its investment rating on Unocal by a peg, analysts generally perceive the company as much strengthened today.

“Unocal still has a lot of challenges in front of it,” West said. “But their cost structure is excellent. They’re a very efficient finder and producer of oil and gas.”

The company is the largest natural gas producer in Thailand and a player in Azerbaijan. And it has plans to exploit its large domestic U.S. holdings.

Bio: Roger C. Beach Unocal Corp. announced Tuesday that Beach will succeed Richard J. Stegemeier as chief executive of the Los Angeles-based oil company.

Age: 57

Birthplace: Lincoln, Neb.

Education: Received bachelor’s degree in petroleum refining engineering from Colorado School of Mines in 1961.

Family: Beach and his wife, Karen, live in Rancho Palos Verdes. They have three grown children, two daughters and a son.

Resume: Beach began his career in Ohio and Illinois in various positions at Pure Oil Co., before Pure merged with Unocal in 1964. At Unocal he was named general superintendent of the company’s Beaumont, Tex., refinery in 1972, then director of refining and marketing planning in 1977. He became president of the refining and marketing division in 1986, senior vice president in 1987, member of Unocal’s board the next year and president and chief operating officer in 1992.

Business philosophy: Beach believes that Unocal is on “very firm footing to quit shrinking and start growing.”