BUSINESS BRIEFING / ENERGY

Last year’s oil price run-up made it a good time to be an oil company chief executive with a fistful of stock options, and Ray Irani of Occidental Petroleum Corp. made the most of it, cashing in $184.4 million worth.

Filings show the largest sales took place April 28 at $87.15 a share. At the time, oil prices were on their way to a July peak and Occidental’s shares were headed toward a May 20 closing-price high for the year of $97.85.

Irani’s options exercise dwarfed his pay of $30.4 million last year as calculated by the Associated Press. That was down by about 11% from his 2007 pay.