In this undated photo provided by Nabors Industries, Chairman, Director and CEO Eugene Isenberg is shown. (AP Photo/Nabors Industries) (AP)
Hide Caption
Nabors, the world's largest drilling contractor, debuts a new rig line called Pace Wednesday November 4, 2009 at its yard in Crosby, TX. The new rig includes features for quicker setup and take down as well as a automated catwalk that moves piping into place without workers having to touch the pipe. Nabors Drilling USA Pace rig number M-52 pictured.
(Nathan Lindstrom / For the Chronicle)
Hide Caption
Drilling trainee for Nabors Drilling USA, Juan Berry, 29, of Monroe, La., learns how to use the new Programmable Alternating Current Electric Rig 1500 (PACE), the company is bringing into the field, on a $400,000 simulator in their north Houston offices, Friday, June 23, 2006. The simulator allows trainees to make mistakes without other safety issues they would normally face training in the field.
(Johnny Hanson / For the Chronicle)
Hide Caption
Nabors, the world's largest drilling contractor, debuts a new rig line called Pace Wednesday November 4, 2009 at its yard in Crosby, TX. The new rig includes features for quicker setup and take down as well as a automated catwalk that moves piping into place without workers having to touch the pipe. Nabors Drilling USA Pace rig number M-52 pictured.
(Nathan Lindstrom / For the Chronicle)
Hide Caption
Nabors, the world's largest drilling contractor, debuts a new rig line called Pace Wednesday November 4, 2009 at its yard in Crosby, TX. The new rig includes features for quicker setup and take down as well as a automated catwalk that moves piping into place without workers having to touch the pipe. Nabors Drilling USA Pace rig number M-52 pictured. (Nathan Lindstrom / For the Chronicle)
Hide Caption
Trevor Brinkley, an HSE coordinator for Nabors Drilling USA, shows Mary Sue Wilson of El Paso Exploation the 275 ton Canrig Top Drive assembly on the Nabors Pace rig number M-52 Wednesday afternoon November 4, 2009 during the debut of a new rig line called Pace at Nabor's yard in Crosby, TX. Nabors, the world's largest drilling contractor, built the new rig with features for quicker setup and take down as well as a automated catwalk that moves piping into place without workers having to touch the pipe. (Nathan Lindstrom / For the Chronicle)
Hide Caption
Nabors, the world's largest drilling contractor, debuts a new rig line called Pace Wednesday November 4, 2009 at its yard in Crosby, TX. The new rig includes features for quicker setup and take down as well as a automated catwalk that moves piping into place without workers having to touch the pipe. Nabors Drilling USA Pace rig number M-52 pictured. (Nathan Lindstrom / For the Chronicle)
Hide Caption
Nabors, the world's largest drilling contractor, debuts a new rig line called Pace Wednesday November 4, 2009 at its yard in Crosby, TX. The new rig includes features for quicker setup and take down as well as a automated catwalk that moves piping into place without workers having to touch the pipe. Nabors Drilling USA Pace rig number M-52 pictured. (Nathan Lindstrom / For the Chronicle)
Hide Caption
Nabors, the world's largest drilling contractor, debuts a new rig line called Pace Wednesday November 4, 2009 at its yard in Crosby, TX. The new rig includes features for quicker setup and take down as well as a automated catwalk that moves piping into place without workers having to touch the pipe. Nabors Drilling USA Pace rig number M-52 pictured. (Nathan Lindstrom / For the Chronicle)
Hide Caption
This PowerCat(TM) Automated Catwalk is a Canrig product designed to individually index racked drill collars, drill pipe and casting into a center carrier where they can be lifted onto the drill floor is built into the new Nabors Pace rig number M-52. Nabors, the world's largest drilling contractor, debuts a new rig line called Pace Wednesday November 4, 2009 at its yard in Crosby, TX. (Nathan Lindstrom / For the Chronicle)
Hide Caption
The Nabors drilling rig F10 is shown Tuesday, Nov. 18, 2008, in Nome, Texas. (Brett Coomer / Chronicle)
When Nabors Industries’ overpaid chairman, Eugene Isenberg, agreed last week to give up his $100 million severance, the word “charity” came up a lot. Isenberg himself said he hoped that the company used “a substantial portion of these savings for worthy charitable purposes.”
The “savings” apparently refers to the money the company’s long-suffering shareholders won’t have to pay Isenberg.
Meanwhile, Isenberg’s successor as chief executive, Anthony Petrello, said: “The company intends, subject to future operating results, to make charitable contributions to benefit the educational and other charitable needs of its employees and to benefit other community-based causes.” Petrello specifically cited the Nabors Charitable Foundation, a tax-exempt charity that Isenberg set up to provide college scholarships for children of Nabors employees. Isenberg, he noted, contributed his annual salary to the charity since 2009.
Eugene Isenberg (AP)
Isenberg’s base salary was $1.2 million in 2010. That was before taxes and also included $47,500 in directors fees.Yet he donated less than $466,000 to the charity, according to the Nabors Charitable Foundation’s annual report filed with the Internal Revenue Service.That’s less than 38 percent of his base salary and a little more than 3 percent of his total compensation of $13.5 million for the year.
Nabors itself gave almost $124,000, and the charity awarded almost $319,000 in scholarships and gave about $3,600 for disaster relief in Haiti.
Those contributions, by the way, are the only ones on record. Tax records for the two previous tax years show the charity received no contributions, and in 2009, it didn’t award any scholarships or make any donations for disaster relief. In the 2008 tax year, it awarded $14,000 to three Nabors’ employees for Hurricane Ike relief.
During that same period, Isenberg received almost $109 million in total compensation from Nabors.
No one, of course, can say how much is appropriate for anyone to give to charity, and providing almost a half a million dollars for scholarships is admirable. The problem is that Nabors has touted the charitable giving as an excuse for its exorbitant executive pay, as if that somehow should make shareholders feel better for paying so much for the stock’s poor returns in recent years.
Below is the latest tax return for the Nabors Charitable Foundation. I’ve omitted the last few pages, which list the names of the students who received the scholarships.
