A recent study* commissioned by Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS), a provider of proxy voting and corporate governance services, cites Occidental as an "excellent example" of good corporate governance and credits our above-average industry returns over three, five and 10 years to our governance policies.

In the 1990s, our board implemented corporate governance practices, such as a Code of Business Conduct and a strict definition of independent director, that are now mandated by the Securities and Exchange Commission and New York Stock Exchange.

* "The Correlation between Corporate Governance and Company Performance", Lawrence D. Brown, Ph.D., Distinguished Professor Accountancy, George State University, and Marcus L. Caylor, Ph.D. Student, Georgia State University, 2004 (Research study commissioned by Institutional Shareholder Services).