Chevron Moving to Houston – Mabel SELL the House!!!

A couple of weeks ago, a fellow Realtor approached me – “Have you heard that Chevron is pulling out of San Ramon?”

Well, that rocked my boat!

Can you imagine anything worse for San Ramon, Contra Costa County and local East Bay real estate???

The loss of the area’s major employer – Chevron - would be a disaster.

I took a couple of deep breaths and asked the source of the rumor. Well, the grapevine – obviously not a good year or vintage.

I quickly called a fellow real estate agent that handles many relocations for top Chevron people. She advised that this rumor and question has been around a long time and is surfacing again because a couple of the top-dogs at Chevron will be reaching mandatory retirement in the next few years.

This is leading to renewed speculation that Chevron will consolidate it’s world headquarters in Houston, Texas.

According to my relocation Realtor associate, Chevron, in the last few years, has moved more executive staff into San Ramon than out of San Ramon. Her thinking is that Chevron may continue to consolidate some divisions in Houston, but she thinks Chevron is in San Ramon for the long haul.

Checking in with my Chevron Cousin

I have a cousin that works for Chevron. He travels the world for them and is pretty well connected in the corporation. Here is his reply to my email inquiry:

There has been talk for a year or more about Chevron moving out of Chevron Park. The main reason is that it is difficult to entice people to transfer there or start careers there because of the high cost of living.

San Ramon is the corporate HQ and houses the execs and their staffs and a number of corporate level admin groups. The technical HQ for the company is in Houston where we have no less than 5 or so large buildings scattered around the city with world wide operations groups and high level technical support departments.

A number of groups have already migrated from SR to here in the past two years.  No indication yet of when a mass migration may take place. However,  age demographics suggest that a large fraction of employees will reach retirement age in the next 3 yrs or so. This will cause some attrition in SR and ease the transition from there to Houston as new hires will be brought here. Hope this helps. I'll keep you posted if any news comes along.

More Chevron Cousin

My cousin followed up with another email a few days later:

See dialogue below which refutes the idea that the company may move out of SR anytime soon…..

Q:  By the way.  Is there any truth to the rumor that Chevron will move out of Chevron Park and transfer all departments elsewhere (such as Houston)?

A:  That's a rumor that I've never heard before.  They aren't saying anything to us about that!  I'd be pretty shocked.  We'd move but I bet 90% of folks here might not.

Q:  Don't know if this was any more than a rumor or perhaps an extrapolation of a trend over the past 2 years of migrating departments to Houston. 

A:  In fact the number of people here (San Ramon) has been growing- they are leasing more space in Bishop Ranch-1 next door to accommodate.  But the visible growth is in support groups and downstream (refining and marketing).  I think it makes sense for a lot of the upstream (oil field) technical and operations types to be in Houston vs here- although the Asia Pac upstream headquarters are here.

So, from what I can gather, this is just the resurfacing of a rumor that has yet to run its course. And as we all know, there is little that will stop a rumor – especially in this day of corporate suspicion and conspiracy theory.

As I heard one rumor-monger say – I don’t spread rumors, I merely disseminate speculation.

I think – Rest Easy San Ramon – is the word here. At least from three sources closer to the action than your humble real estate tech guy.