Beach Elected Chairman at Unocal Meeting
Unocal Corp. Chief Executive Roger C. Beach was elected to the additional job of chairman at the company’s annual meeting Monday, succeeding Richard Stegemeier, who retired.
Beach, 58, has been chief executive of the oil and gas company since last May, when Stegemeier retired as chief executive. Stegemeier’s resignation as chairman had been previously announced.
Beach joined Los Angeles-based Unocal when its Union Oil Co. of California operating unit acquired Pure Oil Co. He became general superintendent of the company’s Beaumont, Tex., refinery in 1972, and held a variety of positions before being named president of the company’s refining and marketing division in 1986.
He was named a senior vice president in 1987, and president and chief operating officer in 1992.
Stegemeier, 66, who will remain a board member, joined Union Oil in 1951, was named president of Unocal in 1985, chief executive in 1988 and chairman in 1989.
Unocal’s annual meeting was held outside Los Angeles for the first time in 105 years. Unocal’s exploration and development operations now are based in Sugar Land, Tex., where the company has about 900 employees.
The board also elected two new directors. John W. Creighton Jr., president and chief executive officer of Weyerhaeuser Co., was elected for a two-year term and J. Steven Whisler, president of Phelps Dodge Mining Co. and senior vice president of Phelps Dodge Corp., was elected for a three-year term.
Two stockholder proposals were rejected at the meeting, including one that would have required the board of directors to review and update the company’s statement of principles for doing business internationally.
The current Unocal principles were issued in July, 1994. More than 94% of the votes cast at the meeting were against the proposal.
The other proposal--rejected by the same margin--would have required a full written report on various aspects of a sour-gas processing plant that has been constructed adjacent to existing oil and gas facilities in northern Alberta, Canada, on contested aboriginal lands of the Lubicon Lake Indian Nation. Sour-gas processing plants treat natural gas that contains hydrogen sulfide or another acid gas.
Leaders of the Lubicon Lake Indian Nation have accused Unocal of poisoning them with the processing plant near Edmonton.
About 50 representatives of environmental groups demonstrated outside the shareholders’ meeting, contending Unocal moved the meeting to Texas to avoid protests over its anti-environmental policies.
