CHEVRON CORP

Predecessors

Star Oil and Pacific Coast Oil Company

One of Chevron's early predecessors, "Star Oil", discovered oil at the Pico Canyon Oilfield in the Santa Susana Mountains north of Los Angeles in 1876. The 25 barrels of oil per day well marked the discovery of the Newhall Field, and is considered by geophysicist Marius Vassiliou as the beginning of the modern oil industry in California. Energy analyst Antonia Juhasz has said that while Star Oil's founders were influential in establishing an oil industry in California, Union Mattole Company discovered oil in the state eleven years prior.

In September 1879, Charles N. Felton, Lloyd Tevis, George Loomis and others created the "Pacific Coast Oil Company", which acquired the assets of Star Oil with $1 million in funding. Pacific Coast Oil eventually became the largest oil interest in California, and in 1900, John D. Rockefeller 's Standard Oil acquired Pacific Coast Oil for $761,000. In 1906, the Pacific Coast acquired the business operations and assets of the Standard Oil Company (Iowa). At this time, Pacific renamed itself the Standard Oil Company (California).

Texaco

Since the acquisition of the Pacific Coast Oil Company by Standard Oil, the Standard descendant had traditionally worked closely with Texaco for 100 years, before acquiring Texaco outright in 2001. Originally known as the Texas Fuel Company (later the Texas Company), Texaco was founded in Beaumont, Texas, as an oil-equipment vendor by "Buckskin Joe". The founder's nickname came from being harsh and aggressive. Texas Fuel worked closely with Chevron. In 1936, it formed a joint venture with California Standard named Caltex, to drill and produce oil in Saudi Arabia. According to energy analyst and activist shareholder Antonia Juhasz, the Texas Fuel Company and California Standard were often referred to as the "terrible twins" for their cutthroat business practices.

Formation of the Chevron name

In 1911, the federal government broke Standard Oil into several pieces under the Sherman Antitrust Act. One of those pieces, Standard Oil Co. (California), went on to become Chevron. It became part of the " Seven Sisters ", which dominated the world oil industry in the early 20th century. In 1926, the company changed its name to Standard Oil Co. of California (SOCAL). By the terms of the breakup of Standard Oil, at first Standard of California could use the Standard name only within its original geographic area of the Pacific coast states, plus Nevada and Arizona; outside that area, it had to use another name.

Today, Chevron is the owner of the Standard Oil trademark in 16 states in the western and southeastern United States. Since American trademark law operates under a use-it-or-lose-it rule, the company owns and operates one Standard-branded Chevron station in each state of the area. However, though Chevron (as CalSo) acquired Kyso in the 1960s, its status in Kentucky is unclear after Chevron withdrew its brand from retail sales from Kentucky in July 2010.

The 'Chevron' name came into use for some of its retail products in the 1930s. The name "Calso" was also used from 1946 to 1955, in states outside its native West Coast territory.

Standard Oil Company of California ranked 75th among United States corporations in the value of World War II military production contracts.

In 1933, Saudi Arabia granted California Standard a concession to find oil, which led to the discovery of oil in 1938. In 1948, California Standard discovered the world's largest oil field in Saudi Arabia, Ghawar Field. California Standard's subsidiary, California-Arabian Standard Oil Company, grew over the years and became the Arabian American Oil Company (ARAMCO) in 1944. In 1973, the Saudi government began buying into ARAMCO. By 1980, the company was entirely owned by the Saudis, and in 1988, its name was changed to Saudi Arabian Oil Company— Saudi Aramco.

Standard Oil of California and Gulf Oil merged in 1984, which was the largest merger in history at that time. To comply with U.S. antitrust law, California Standard divested many of Gulf's operating subsidiaries, and sold some Gulf stations in the eastern United States and a Philadelphia refinery which has since closed. Among the assets sold off were Gulf's retail outlets in Gulf's home market of Pittsburgh, where Chevron lacks a retail presence but did retain a regional headquarters there between 2010 to 2021, partially for Marcellus Shale -related drilling. The same year, Standard Oil of California also took the opportunity to change its legal name to Chevron Corporation, since it had already been using the well-known "Chevron" retail brand name for decades. Chevron would sell the Gulf Oil trademarks for the entire U.S. to Cumberland Farms, the parent company of Gulf Oil LP, in 2010 after Cumberland Farms had a license to the Gulf trademark in the Northeastern United States since 1986.

In 1996, Chevron transferred its natural gas gathering, operating and marketing operation to NGC Corporation (later Dynegy) in exchange for a roughly 25% equity stake in NGC. In a merger completed February 1, 2000, Illinova Corp. became a wholly owned subsidiary of Dynegy Inc. and Chevron's stake increased up to 28%. However, in May 2007, Chevron sold its stake in the company for approximately $985 million, resulting in a gain of $680 million.

Acquisitions and diversification

2000s

The early 2000s saw Chevron engage in many mergers, acquisitions, and sales, the first largest of which was the $45 billion acquisition of Texaco, announced on October 15, 2000. The acquisition created the second-largest oil company in the United States and the world's fourth-largest publicly traded oil company with a combined market value of approximately $95 billion. Completed on October 9, 2001, Chevron temporarily renamed itself to ChevronTexaco between 2001 and 2005; after the company reverted its name to Chevron, Texaco became used as a brand by the company for some of its fueling stations.

2005 also saw Chevron purchase Unocal Corporation for $18.4 billion, increasing the company's petroleum and natural gas reserves by about 15%. Because of Unocal's large South East Asian geothermal operations, Chevron became a large producer of geothermal energy. The deal did not include Unocal's former retail operations including the Union 76 trademark, as it had sold that off to Tosco Corporation in 1997. The 76 brand is owned by Phillips 66, unaffiliated with Chevron.

Chevron and the Los Alamos National Laboratory started a cooperation in 2006, to improve the recovery of hydrocarbons from oil shale by developing a shale oil extraction process named Chevron CRUSH. In 2006, the United States Department of the Interior issued a research, development and demonstration lease for Chevron's demonstration oil shale project on public lands in Colorado's Piceance Basin. In February 2012, Chevron notified the Bureau of Land Management and the Department of Reclamation, Mining and Safety that it intended to divest this lease.

In 2008, Chevron Limited, a subsidiary of Chevron, sold its equity distributor business in the UK to GB Oils Limited for £21.9 million.

2010s

Starting in 2010, Chevron began to reduce its retail footprint and expand in domestic natural gas. In July 2010, Chevron ended retail operations in the Mid-Atlantic United States by removing the Chevron and Texaco names from 1,100 stations. In 2011, Chevron acquired Pennsylvania-based Atlas Energy Inc. for $3.2 billion in cash and an additional $1.1 billion in existing debt owed by Atlas. Three months later, Chevron acquired drilling and development rights for another 228,000 acres in the Marcellus Shale from Chief Oil & Gas LLC and Tug Hill, Inc. In September 2013, Total S.A. and its joint-venture partner agreed to buy Chevron's retail distribution business in Pakistan for an undisclosed amount.

In October 2014, Chevron announced that it would sell a 30 percent holding in its Canadian oil shale holdings to Kuwait 's state-owned oil company Kuwait Oil Company for a fee of $1.5 billion. Despite these sales, Chevron continued to explore acquisitions, a trend which had reinvigorated in 2019 and extended throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. In April 2019, Chevron announced its intention to acquire Anadarko Petroleum in a deal valued at $33 billion, but decided to focus on other acquisitions shortly afterwards when a deal could not be reached. Despite the failed acquisition of Anadarko, Chevron did acquire Noble Energy for $5 billion in July 2020.

Chevron sold its North Sea operations in May 2019 to Ithaca Energy for $2 billion.

Chevron was not spared from the pandemic, however, as Chevron announced reductions of 10–15% of its workforce due to both the pandemic and a 2020 oil price war between Russia and Saudi Arabia. During the pandemic, Chevron considered a merger with rival ExxonMobil in 2020 during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic that drove oil demand sharply down. It would have been one of the largest corporate mergers in history, and a combined Chevron and ExxonMobil (dubbed "Chexxon" by Reuters ) would have been the second-largest oil company in the world, trailing only Saudi Aramco.

Later in the pandemic, Chevron began requiring some employees, namely expatriate employees, those working overseas, and workers on U.S.-flagged ships, to receive COVID-19 vaccinations after having some key operations, the off-shore platforms off the Gulf of Mexico and Permian Basin for example. The requirement will begin for workers off the Gulf of Mexico on the first of November.

2020s

In the 2020s, Chevron's primary focus was on alternative energy solutions, gradual pullouts from Africa and Southeast Asia, and an increased focus on the Americas with a lessened albeit still present interest in natural gas. Chevron in February 2020 joined Marubeni Corporation and WAVE Equity Partners in investing in Carbon Clean Solutions, a company that provides portable carbon capture technology for the oil field and other industrial facilities. Two years later, Chevron announced that it will acquire Renewable Energy Group, a biodiesel production company based in Ames, Iowa. The acquisition was completed just under four months later on June 13.

In the Americas, Chevron acquired natural gas company Beyond6, LLC (B6) and its network of 55 compressed natural gas stations across the United States from Mercuria in November 2022. However, Chevron's largest American moves in the 2020s were in Venezuela, as the Biden administration relaxed restrictions on Chevron from pumping oil in the South American nation, originally imposed due to corruption scandals and human rights violations by Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro. The relaxed restrictions, however, came with severe limitations, including provisions which prohibited Chevron from selling to Russian or Iranian-affiliated agencies and from allowing any direct profits to go to Venezuelan oil company PDVSA.

On November 29, 2022, Venezuelan Government Petroleum Minister Tarek El Aissami met in Caracas, Venezuela, with the president of Chevron, Javier La Rosa. The Venezuelan ruling party said it was committed to "the development of oil production" after the easing of sanctions.

The most important joint ventures where Chevron is involved in Venezuela are Petroboscán, in the west of the nation, and Petropiar, in the eastern Orinoco Belt, with a production capacity of close to 180,000 barrels per day between both projects. In the case of Petroboscán, current production is nil and, in Petropiar, current records indicate close to 50,000 barrels per day.

On March 20, 2023, Tareck El Aissami resigned from his government post amid serious corruption allegations. Moreover, El Aissami, a longtime Maduro ally, has a $10mn US government reward on his head for allegedly facilitating drug trafficking from Venezuela. He played a key role in helping Nicolas Maduro's government dodge US economic sanctions, using his Syrian and Lebanese parentage to open up new business channels to Iran and Turkey.

On January 5, 2022, Chevron temporarily decreased production in Kazakhstan 's Tengiz Field due to the 2022 Kazakh protests, which were motivated by heavy oil price increases. Later that month, Chevron also announced it would end all operations in Myanmar, citing rampant human rights abuses and deteriorating rule of law since the 2021 Myanmar coup d'état. A statement released by the company on its website stated while Chevron was committed to an orderly exit which ensured it could still provide energy to Southeast Asia, Chevron remained firmly opposed to the human rights violations committed by the current military rule in Myanmar.

Also in 2022, Chevron was reported to explore the sale of stakes in three fields located in Equatorial Guinea. It was suggested by Reuters that the sales are intended to attract smaller oil companies.

Chevron, however, did not do business in the 2020s without controversy and regulatory obstacles. Chevron Phillips Chemical, a company jointly owned by Chevron and Phillips 66, agreed to pay $118 million in March 2022 as a result of violating the Clean Air Act at three of its chemical production plants in Texas. According to the United States Department of Justice and United States Environmental Protection Agency, Chevron and Phillips failed to properly flare at the plants, causing excess air pollution. The companies agreed to add pollution control systems to the plants as well.

Despite the major oil and gas companies, including Chevron, reporting sharp rises in interim revenues and profits due to the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, the world's-largest oil companies received immense backlash for such profits. In total, Chevron made US$246.3 billion in revenue and $36.5 billion in profit within 2022, both of which are records for the company. In addition, days before the company reported its full year earnings, Chevron increased its dividend and announced a $75 billion stock buyback program, a move which attracted a heated response from the Biden administration as well as from news commentators within the United States.

The 2020s also saw efforts by Chevron to expand into the clean energy industry. Across the 2020s, Chevron invested stakes into fusion power companies, the two largest of them being Zap Energy and TAE Technologies. September 2023 saw Chevron acquire a majority stake in a Utah hydrogen storage facility, which is poised to be the world's largest storage facility for hydrogen in renewable energy.

In October 2023, Chevron Corporation acquired Hess Corporation in an all-stock deal for $53 billion. The acquisition, which was announced on October 23, 2023, opens up new opportunities in the US shale plays and in oil-rich Guyana. Hess Corporation, ExxonMobil and China's CNOOC, key players in Guyana, have been producing a combined 400,000 barrels per day from two offshore projects. With the potential to develop 10 more projects, Guyana becomes one of the fastest-growing oil regions that Chevron now has access to. Hess approved the merger in May 2024, but the deal was held up by an arbitration claim from ExxonMobil, which argued that it had right of first refusal on Hess's Guyana oil field shares. In September 2024, the Federal Trade Commission cleared the merger if Hess CEO John B. Hess is refused a place on Chevron’s board.

In 2023, Chevron entered into a 10-year agreement with state-owned Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Ltd (HPCL) to license, manufacture, distribute and sell Chevron lubricants in India under the Caltex brand.

In August 2024, Chevron earmarked $1 billion in a new research and development (R&D) hub called Chevron Engineering and Innovation Excellence Center (ENGINE) in Bengaluru, India. The ENGINE facility opened in October 2025.

In October 2024, Chevron sold some of its Kuparuk and Prudhoe Bay Oil Fields in Alaska to ConocoPhillips Alaska for $300 million.

In February 2025, Chevron announced plans to cut 20% of its workforce by the end of 2026. The company aims to reduce its payroll expenses by $2 to $3 billion.

On February 26, Chevron had its license revoked by Donald Trump, forcing the company to cease operations in Venezuela.

On August 15, 2025, Chevron resumed Venezuelan oil exports to the U.S. after receiving a new Treasury license, with two tankers carrying heavy crude bound for Texas and the West Coast.

In April 2026, Chevron agreed to an asset swap with Venezuela's state-owned oil company PDVSA, increasing its interest in the Petroindependencia joint venture to 49% and giving its Petropiar joint venture rights to develop the adjacent Ayacucho 8 area in the Orinoco Oil Belt. in exchange, Chevron transferred several interests in Venezuelan oil and gas assets to PDVSA.

In July 2026, one year after completing its acquisition of Hess Corporation, Chevron reported that it had fully integrated Hess and had achieved $1.5 billion in cost synergies, exceeding its initial target of 50% and reaching the target 6 months ahead of schedule.