We’ve all heard or used the expression “That’s what they pay you (or me) the big bucks for!”

Most of the time, it’s a throwaway line, intended to illustrate that someone is doing the unpleasant stuff that needs to be done, that someone is taking care of the little details while looking at the big picture.

But lately, it’s become a phrase that cuts a little closer to home, and not only are people giving voice to it, they’re wanting some backstory too. It’s no longer enough to claim the big bucks—shareholders want to know that you’re earning the big bucks; boards of directors want to know the same thing, and also that you’ll be around next year and the year after and the year after—barring some sort of ill-timed falling out.

In western Canada, the common consensus—among outsiders at least—is that executives of oil and gas companies are a fat and sassy lot, pulling down exorbitant salaries, sitting on lucrative stock options, coasting towards retirement on pension plans that seem more like budgets for small central American dictatorships.

The truth is that oil and gas executives ARE well paid: the top two executives on the leadership team at Canadian Natural Resources—chairman Allan P. Markin and president Steve W. Laut—for example, pulled down a cool $20.6 million between them last year, what with base salary (Markin received none, Laut about $550,00), options worth about $5.9 million each, and non-equity incentive bonuses of $3.5 million each.

And who’s to say that level of pay wasn’t earned? Last year, Canadian Natural solidified its ranking as Canada’s largest oil and gas producer, according to Oilweek’s Top 100 report, with production of 499,300 barrels of oil equivalent per day, up from 489,159 barrels of oil equivalent per day in 2008. Most of that was because of its Horizon oilsands project near Fort McMurray, Alberta.

That kind of performance was attractive to investors, and the company’s stock—a key measure in most executive compensation plans—responded accordingly, rising from a low in 2009 of $36.54 a share on Feb. 23 to a high of more than $78 a share on Oct. 15, before ending the year at an even $76. That’s the kind of share performance most executive teams would give their right arms for, and I’m not sure anyone can begrudge Mr. Markin and Mr. Laut being rewarded for their efforts.

But in the Canadian corporate constellation—never mind the global universe—oil and gas executives fall about the middle of the pack: Markin and Laut represent the top end of the scale, followed closely by Crescent Point Energy (heard of it, have you?) president Scott Saxberg (a member, incidentally, of Oilweek’s inaugural class of Rising Stars in 2008) at about $8.5 million, but the average compensation for the executives we tracked falls in at around the $1.3-million mark. In 2008, Canadian executives overall averaged about $7 million in compensation, so our oil and gas executives don’t exactly fit the stereotype of fat and sassy oil barons sitting on mountains of cash.

They do, however, fit the stereotype of hard-working, imaginative, and focused entrepreneurs, dedicated to building wealth for their shareholders and energy security for the rest of us. They deserve to be congratulated.