August 3, 2024
Josh Friedman
As companies continue to move out of California, the oil giant Chevron has announced that it will move its headquarters from California to Texas. (LA Times)
Chevron, the second-largest oil company in the United States, was founded in California 145 years ago and is currently headquartered in the East Bay area city of San Ramon. Chevron plans to soon move its headquarters to Houston.
Chevron CEO Mike Wirth said some operations and hundreds of employees will remain in San Ramon, but the company plans to move all of its corporate functions to Houston within the next five years.
The company previously relocated its subsidiary, Chevron Energy Technologies, to Texas. Two years ago, Chevron began moving jobs to Houston and sold its San Ramon campus. Chevron already has about 7,000 employees in the Houston area.
Last fall, California’s attorney general filed a lawsuit against Chevron and several other major oil companies, alleging that their production and refining operations caused billions of dollars’ worth of damages. The lawsuit also alleged that the oil companies misled the public about the risks of fossil fuels to global warming.
Chevron’s move to Texas comes amid a trend of large corporations fleeing California. Recently, Elon Musk said he was moving SpaceX from California to Texas. Similarly, over the past decade, numerous companies in technology and other industries have fled California, many of which blame the state’s high operating costs and unhelpful policies for their relocation.
Chevron said in a statement that the move to Texas will allow the company to be “co-located with other senior executives and better collaborate and engage with executives, employees and business partners.”
