Judging by the size of his paycheck, Valero Energy Corp.'s top lawyer, Jason Fraser, had a pretty good first year on the job.

Fraser, who took over the international fuel manufacturing and marketing company's legal department at the beginning of 2019, received $5.5 million in total compensation, according to a proxy filing on Thursday. 

Fraser has worked for Valero since 1999 and previously oversaw the San Antonio, Texas-based company's European commercial businesses as the firm's London-based vice president. He went on to hold various leadership positions within the company before he was tapped to succeed Jay Browning, who retired. 

Browning took home a total of $3.3 million in 2018, down from $4.9 million the prior year, according to Valero's 2019 proxy statement. His base salary for 2018 was $650,000. 

Fraser, who started with a base salary of $600,000, took home nearly $2.3 million in stock awards last year, compared with Browning's stock awards of $1.7 million for 2018. Fraser also received a $700,000 bonus, an 85% increase over his bonus target of $480,000. 

Meanwhile, Valero CEO Joseph Gorder's compensation totaled more than $28 million last year. His massive payday included nearly $14.5 million in stock awards and a $4.1 million bonus. 

"We delivered another year of steady earnings despite a challenging environment for the refining business during 2019," Gorder said in an earlier statement. "We ran our business well by delivering the best year ever on employee safety performance along with the lowest number of environmental events in company history."

Valero reported $108.3 billion in revenue and $2.4 billion in net income for 2019, down from 2018's $117 billion and $3.1 billion, respectively.

Last year, the company had to navigate U.S. sanctions that prevented Valero from importing crude from Venezuela state-owned oil company Petróleos de Venezuela SA, or PDVSA, the parent company of Citgo and several other subsidiaries. 

An attempt to speak with a Valero representative on Friday was not immediately successful. 

Read More: