U.S. oil and gas giant Chevron announced Friday it will relocate its corporate headquarters from its long-time location in San Ramon, hashtag#California to Houston, hashtag#Texas in the coming months.
In a release, the company said chairman and CEO Mike Wirth and vice-chairman Mark Nelson will relocate to hashtag#Houston by the end of this year, with remaining headquarters employees to make a gradual migration over the next five years. Employees who support the company’s remaining California operations will remain in San Ramon. Currently, Chevron has 2,000 employees in California, and 7,000 in various Texas locations.
Friday’s announcement seems symbolic of the diminishing presence of both Chevron and the oil industry itself in California. As state leaders have moved to force a transition away from oil and its related products, the state’s once-thriving industry has gradually declined in significance.
Chevron and its predecessor companies have a long history in the state, tracing the company’s origins to 1879 and the founding of the Pacific Coast Oil Company. In 1900, Pacific Coast was bought out by John D. Rockefeller’s hashtag#StandardOil Company. What we currently call Chevron was created in 1911 under the name of Standard Oil of California with the breaking up of the Standard Oil monopoly.
Chevron grew in great spurts over the past 40 years through big mergers and acquisitions. It purchased Gulf Oil Company in 1984, and merged with hashtag#Texaco 17 years later, changing its name to Chevron Texaco. For the next four years, the running joke in the industry was that the company’s name is Chevron Texaco, but the “Texaco” is silent. That became reality in 2005 when the company purchased hashtag#Unocal and dropped the “Texaco” name entirely.
Most recently, Chevron paid $13 billion to buy big independent producer hashtag#NobleEnergy during the depths of the 2020 Covid-19 pandemic, and last October entered into a $53 billion all-stock deal to merge with Hess Corporation.
The Bottom Line
California’s state leaders have made it increasingly clear that they no longer value the oil and gas industry, preferring to import most of their oil from places like hashtag#Venezuela and a rising share of their electricity from other states as they strive to outlaw internal combustion engines and gas-powered lawn equipment. It thus should come as no surprise to anyone that the oil giant that had its founding and literally made its name in the Golden State would move its headquarters to the city that has long served as the veritable capital of the domestic U.S. oil and gas industry.
Source: David Blackmon, Energy Writer, Podcast host LinkedIn
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