Chevron says it is moving its headquarters out of California

Chevron is moving its headquarters out of California, the company announced Friday.

The oil giant said it would be relocating its corporate offices from San Ramon, where they have been since 2002, to Houston. This will be the first time Chevron will be headquartered outside of California since its founding more than a century ago.

Chevron chairman and CEO Mike Wirth and vice chairman Mark Nelson will move to Houston by the end of 2024, while other corporate operations will slowly relocate over the next five years.

The company added that some roles will stay at the San Ramon offices, namely those necessary to support its “crude oil fields, technical facilities, and two refineries and supplies more than 1,800 retail stations in California.”

The oil giant currently has about 2,000 employees based in San Ramon and approximately 7,000 in the Houston area.

Chevron is the latest in a growing number of companies that have left California over a combination of increased operating costs and either a refusal or inability to abide by the state’s strict regulatory laws.

Chevron’s exodus from the Bay Area comes on the heels of Elon Musk’s announcement last month that SpaceX and X, formerly known as Twitter, would be relocating to Texas, as well.

Musk said “the final straw” was the SAFETY Act, a law California Governor Gavin Newsom signed that will prohibit school districts from requiring teachers to inform parents if a child wants to be identified by a different gender.

“Because of this law and the many others that preceded it, attacking both families and companies, SpaceX will now move its HQ from Hawthorne, California, to Starbase, Texas,” Musk posted on X, adding that X would be moving to Austin, Texas.

While Chevron did not cite specifics in its decision to move its base of operations, the company has long been the subject of multiple lawsuits over environmental and public health damage allegedly caused by its business and production practices, as well as criticism by environmental activists fighting against climate change.

Last September, the state of California sued Chevron and four other major oil companies over what the state said was a long-standing pattern of deceiving the public over the risks associated with fossil fuels and causing billions of dollars in damage to communities and the environment.

At the time, a Chevron spokesperson told CNN that “climate change is a global problem that requires a coordinated international policy response, not piecemeal litigation for the benefit of lawyers and politicians. California has long been a leading promoter of oil and gas development. Its local courts have no constructive or constitutionally permissible role in crafting global energy policy.”