Chevron, America’s second-largest oil company, has announced it will move its headquarters from California to Texas as the leftist state continues to throttle businesses.
The company, which operates multiple crude oil fields, technical facilities, and refineries and supplies more than 1,800 retail stations in California, announced Friday that its home base will be moved from San Ramon, California, to Houston, Texas.
Chevron already has more employees in the Houston area than in California, with roughly 7,000 workers there compared to approximately 2,000 employees in San Ramon, which is near San Francisco.
The oil giant’s chairman and CEO Mike Wirth and vice chairman Mark Nelson will move to Houston before the end of 2024 “to co-locate with other senior leaders and enable better collaboration and engagement with executives, employees, and business partners,” the announcement stated.
The move comes as California becomes a more hostile environment for businesses, especially those in the oil and gas industry.
Chevron has repeatedly called out a law that authorizes the California Energy Commission (CEC) to set a maximum gross gasoline refining margin and a penalty for refiners that exceed it.
The law was signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) in March 2023 and took effect June 2023, according to the CEC.
“Unfortunately, the distortive effects of such a policy would likely run counter to the goal of ensuring that gasoline remains affordable and reliable, in addition to ever cleaner,” Andy Walz, president of Americas products at Chevron, wrote in a December 2023 letter to the CEC.
“Rather than solving supply challenges or enabling increased production of clean, affordable gasoline, a margin penalty would contribute to a decades-long trend of decreasing investment and tightening supply,” Walz explained. “Since the 1980s, dozens of refineries have closed due to an increasingly harsh regulatory environment, which has resulted in increased gasoline price volatility and reduced production. A margin penalty will only exacerbate this troubling trend.”
Walz criticized the policy again in a May 2024 letter to the CEC, writing that “decades of restrictive state policies” are the real reason behind high gas prices:
Chevron is concerned about the impact a margin cap could have on gasoline supply. An ill-defined and arbitrary maximum margin for refiners will not lower gasoline prices this summer. As we explained in our letter to the CEC in December, we do not believe this policy would lower the price of gasoline at any link in the supply chain. Rather, it would likely reduce gasoline supply and discourage refiner investment in California – resulting in higher prices, a decreased and less reliable fuel supply, and increased reliance on imports.
Instead, we encourage the CEC to leverage the abundance of available data to drive productive change. We ask you to address the real causes behind high gasoline prices. Any effective solution begins with understanding how we got where we are: decades of restrictive state policies that have caused investment dollars to flee California’s refinery sector.
The California Fuels and Convenience Alliance (CFCA) also filed a lawsuit against the CEC to challenge the implementation of the law, known previously as SB X1-2, claiming in a March press release it imposes “unreasonably burdensome requirements” and “drastically” increased regulatory control over the transportation fuels market.
Following Chevron’s recent announcement, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) voiced his support on X:
“WELCOME HOME Chevron! Texas is your true home,” the Republican governor wrote. “Drill baby drill.”
Chevron executives clarified in their announcement that there will be “minimal immediate relocation impacts to other employees currently based in San Ramon,” and that all corporate functions will migrate to Houston “over the next five years.”
“Positions in support of the company’s California operations will remain in San Ramon,” they added.
The oil company’s declaration follows Elon Musk’s announcement in July that he would move the headquarters of X and SpaceX to Texas from California as well, Breitbart News reported.
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