Updates
December 23, 2012: the link to this story was sent by a reader. Without question, it is one of the best stories I've seen in the past few days. See my original post below and then compare to the story being linked now. It will be interesting to follow this story over the next twelve months. Without further ado, here's the story: green California to vie with Texas as U.S. oil heartland: energy.
Original Post
Chevron Corp. (CVX) will move up to 800 of its California positions to Houston to strengthen its upstream business, the U.S. oil major told employees in an e-mail made public Friday.
The move would over two years shift more than 10% of the employees from Chevron's San Ramon, CA, headquarters to Houston, considered the capital of the U.S. Gulf Coast energy industry. Chevron, the third-largest oil and gas producer in the U.S., is moving to increase its oil production operations in the ultradeep area of the Gulf of Mexico, where rigs must drill holes in a seafloor thousands of feet below water.
"The positions are to support a variety of global upstream projects that are based in Houston," said Chevron spokesman Morgan Crinklaw.Okay. Sounds plausible.
Folks may recall Chevron experienced a fire at one of their refineries in northern California earlier this year. I'm probably wrong, but it's my impression Californians in the local area of the refinery have never been happy with Chevron.
It would be interesting to know the "back" story of Chevron's decision of moving 800 of its employees out of state. San Ramone, CA, is the headquarters of Chevron. There are about 3,500 employees in San Ramone according to the link which seems at variance of the press release (800/3,500 --> almost 25%).
Maybe they were tired of the turn over rate due to high taxes and felt it was a strategy to keep some talent?
ReplyDelete1. If you go back to the post just a few days ago, ND and Texas were among top 10 for business climate. California not even in the top ten; not even mentioned in the article.
Delete2. The writing is on the wall in California; there are no plans to develop their oil industry.
3. If CA won't even drill much on-land, they certainly are not going to drill off-shore where most of the new oil is and where Chevron has huge expertise (Gulf of Mexico).
4. And, in the deal, Chevron gets to shoot a warning shot over the bow of the Legislature. 800+ folks who are top earners; this is not trivial. Other corporations will take note. There's a reason Apple is moving to North Carolina.