Occidental

In a computer room crammed with students, freshman George-Michael Bluth is conferring with his dad, Michael, about his ambitious plans to create a social media website. The scene, featuring actors Michael Cera and Jason Bateman, was set at UC Irvine but played out on the campus of Occidental College, where the crew of the TV series “Arrested Development” spent two days last week filming around the campus. Occidental College is perhaps best known as the school once attended by President Obama.

Exxon Mobil Corp.andOccidental Petroleum Corp.said second-quarter earnings took a hit from lower oil and natural gas prices, a pattern that analysts expect to be repeated throughout the energy industry. But in an economy that is struggling to gain momentum, the oil business is still posting numbers that many others would love to have. Exxon Mobil, in fact, reported record profits, but it needed the help of asset sales to do it. Analysts said the stage for this week's earnings reports was set when oil declined nearly 9% and natural gas plunged 46% during the quarter compared with year-earlier prices.

Crude prices fell by more than 29% between late February and late June, and that was enough to ensure that the oil companies would see lower second-quarter profits compared with 2011. But in an economy that is still struggling to gain momentum, the industry is still posting numbers that many other businesses would love to have. Occidental Petroleum, for example, posted a second-quarter net profit of $1.3 billion, or $1.64 a share, the company announced in a statement. That was a decline of 27.7% compared with the $1.8 billion, or $2.23 a share, the company earned a year earlier.

Occidental Petroleum on Friday announced that former Goldman Sachs managing director Cynthia L. Walker will officially become an executive vice president and its chief financial officer on Aug 6. Walker, 35, in a 12-year stint with Goldman Sachs provided clients with strategic advice in high-profile energy industry transactions as a senior member of the Global Natural Resources Group located in Houston. Walker also served as a member of Goldman Sachs' Mergers and Acquisitions Group.

When it comes to creating value, Occidental Petroleum Corp. Chief Executive Stephen I. Chazen beats out other Southern California business leaders, according to a new report from Pepperdine University. Chazen helped his Los Angeles company pull in $3.4 billion in so-called economic profit in 2011, an increase of $1.6 billion from 2010, according to the self-funded report from the university's Graziadio School of Business and Management along with management consultant SCCO International.

Occidental Petroleum Corp. posted a slight increase in first-quarter profit on higher oil prices and record production as energy giants Exxon Mobil Corp. and Royal Dutch Shell reported lower net income. Westwood-based Occidental, the fourth-largest U.S. oil company, said it generated net income of $1.56 billion in the first quarter, or $1.92 a share, up from $1.55 billion, or $1.90, in the same quarter of 2011. Revenue jumped to $6.27 billion from $5.73 billion a year earlier. Occidental Chief Executive Stephen I. Chazen said production rose to the equivalent of 755,000 barrels of oil a day, "the highest in Occidental's history," from 730,000 barrels a day in the first quarter of 2011.

Occidental Petroleum Corp., the nation's fourth-largest oil company, saw a slight increase in first-quarter profits compared to a year ago and set records in oil and natural gas production, the company said in a news release Thursday. The Westwood-based company said it generated a net profit of $1.56 billion in the first quarter, or $1.92 a share. That compared to the 2011 results of $1.55 billion and $1.90 a share. Sales jumped to $6.27 billion compared to $5.73 billion a year earlier.

Occidental Petroleum Corp. reaped a bigger profit in 2011 — and the energy company reduced its new chief executive's compensation. Stephen I. Chazen, who took over the chief executive job in May from Ray R. Irani, received a compensation package worth $31.7 million last year, compared with $38.1 million in 2010 when he was president, the Westwood energy company said in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing Tuesday. After years of shareholder criticism about how much Occidental paid its top officers, the fourth-largest U.S. oil company decided in 2010 to change how it determined executives' payout to make it more difficult to receive maximum compensation.

After Benedict Freedman and his wife, Nancy, turned the true-life adventure of a teenager who married a Canadian Mountie into the bestselling 1947 novel "Mrs. Mike," one reviewer theorized that the couple partly based the book's happy marriage on their own. The Freedmans collaborated well into their 80s, writing 10 books that included two late-in-life sequels to "Mrs. Mike," which is still in print. It has appeared in 27 foreign editions and received the Hollywood treatment in a 1949 film of the same name starring Evelyn Keyes and Dick Powell.