Chevron gets green light on $53 billion Hess acquisition

Mega Deal

With the deal, Chevron gets access to one of the biggest oil finds of the decade. Photo via Chevron

Chevron has scored a critical ruling in Paris that has given it the go-ahead for a $53 billion acquisition of Hess and access to one of the biggest oil finds of the decade.

Chevron said Friday that it completed its acquisition of Hess shortly after the ruling from the International Chamber of Commerce in Paris. Exxon had challenged Chevron’s bid for Hess, one of three companies with access to the massive Stabroek Block oil field off the coast of Guyana.

“We disagree with the ICC panel’s interpretation but respect the arbitration and dispute resolution process,” Exxon Mobil said in a statement on Friday.

Guyana is a country of 791,000 people that is poised to become the world’s fourth-largest offshore oil producer, placing it ahead of Qatar, the United States, Mexico and Norway. It has become a major producer in recent years.

Oil giants Exxon Mobil, China’s CNOOC, and Hess squared off in a heated competition for highly lucrative oil fields in northern South America.

With Chevron getting the green light on Friday, it is now one of the major players in the Stabroek.

“We are proud of everyone at Hess for building one of the industry’s best growth portfolios including Guyana, the world’s largest oil discovery in the last 10 years, and the Bakken shale, where we are a leading oil and gas producer,” former Hess CEO John Hess said in a statement. “The strategic combination of Chevron and Hess creates a premier energy company positioned for the future.”

Chevron also said that on Thursday the Federal Trade Commission lifted its earlier restriction, clearing the way for John Hess to join its board of directors, subject to board approval.

Chevron announced its deal for Hess in October 2023, less than two weeks after Exxon Mobil said that it would acquire Pioneer Natural Resources for about $60 billion.

Chevron said at the time that the acquisition of Hess would add a major oil field in Guyana as well as shale properties in the Bakken Formation in North Dakota.

“Given the significant value we’ve created in the development of the Guyana resource, we believed we had a clear duty to our investors to consider our preemption rights to protect the value we created through our innovation and hard work at a time when no one knew just how successful this venture would become,” Exxon Mobil said Friday. “We welcome Chevron to the venture and look forward to continued industry-leading performance and value creation in Guyana for all parties involved.”

Chevron's stock rose more than 3% before the market open, while shares of Hess surged more than 7%. Exxon's stock climbed slightly.

Chevron has a new speed bump on the road to a big acquisition. Photo via Chevron

Chevron's $53B acquisition of Hess Corp. sees hiccup

speed bump

Chevron warned Monday that its pending $53 billion acquisition of Hess may be in jeopardy because it will require the approval of Exxon Mobil and a Chinese national oil company, which both hold rights to development of an oil field off the coast of the South American nation Guyana.

The disclosure in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission raised investor qualms, depressing shares of both Chevron and Hess. Chevron's stock price fell 3% Tuesday morning before rebounding; Hess stock lost 4% of its value but bounced back slightly.

Chevron's acquisition of Hess would add this major oil field in Guyana as well as shale properties in the Bakken Formation in North Dakota. Guyana is a country of 791,000 people that is poised to become the world’s fourth-largest offshore oil producer, placing it ahead of Qatar, the United States, Mexico and Norway. It has become a major producer in recent years, with oil giants including Exxon Mobil, China’s CNOOC, and Hess squared off in a heated competition for highly lucrative oil fields in northern South America.

Chevron said it's been engaged in discussion with Exxon and CNOOC, aka China National Offshore Oil Co. Both companies hold rights of first refusal for decisions regarding the oil field in question, known as the Stabroek Block. Exxon Mobil operates the Stabroek Block and holds 45% interest. Hess holds 30% interest, and CNOOC holds the remaining 25% interest. Production capacity at the field is expected to reach more than 1.2 million barrels per day by the end of 2027, Exxon said in November.

If those discussions and subsequent arbitration fail to set aside those first refusal rights, Chevron said, “the merger would not close.”

Companies including Houston-based Chevron and Hess and BP, each with a Houston presence, offered bids. Photo via Getty Images

Houston oil companies offer $382M for drilling rights in Gulf of Mexico in last offshore sale before 2025

for sale

Last month, oil companies offered $382 million for drilling rights in the Gulf of Mexico on Wednesday after courts rejected the Biden administration's plans to scale back the sale to protect an endangered whale species.

The auction was the last of several offshore oil and gas lease sales mandated under the 2022 climate law. It comes as President Joe Biden’s Democratic administration tries to navigate between energy companies seeking greater oil and gas production and environmental activists who want to stop new drilling to help combat climate change.

Companies including Houston-based Chevron and Hess and BP, each with a Houston presence, offered bids on more than 300 parcels covering 2,700 square miles (7,000 square kilometers), according to the U.S. Department of Interior's Bureau of Ocean Energy Management.

The dollar amount of the successful bids marked a sharp increase from the previous sale in March 2023, when the Interior Department awarded leases covering about 2,500 square miles (6,500 square kilometers) for $250 million.

The next sale will be conducted in 2025, to the frustration of energy companies and Republicans who say the administration is hampering U.S. oil production.

Wednesday's online auction was originally scheduled for September but got delayed by a court battle after the administration reduced the area available for leases from 73 million acres (30 million hectares) to 67 million acres (27 million hectares) as part of a plan to protect the endangered Rice’s whale.

Chevron, Shell Offshore, the American Petroleum Institute and the state of Louisiana sued to reverse the cut in acreage and block the inclusion of the whale-protecting measures in the lease sale provisions.

A federal judge in southwest Louisiana ordered the sale to go on without the whale protections, which also included regulations governing vessel speed and personnel. Environmental groups appealed, but the New Orleans-based 5th Circuit Court of Appeals last month rejected their arguments against the sale and threw out the plans to scale it back.

The lease sale was required under a compromise with Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, a supporter of the oil and gas industry who cast the deciding vote in favor of the landmark climate law. The measure was approved with only Democratic votes in Congress. Under the terms negotiated by Manchin, the government must offer at least 60 million acres of offshore oil and gas leases in any one-year period before it can offer offshore wind leases that are part of its strategy to fight climate change.

Only a small portion of parcels that are offered for sale typically receive bids, in areas where companies want to expand their existing drilling activities or where they foresee future development potential.

The administration in September proposed up to three oil and gas lease sales in the Gulf of Mexico over the next five years and none in Alaska waters. That was the minimum number the administration could legally offer if it wants to continue expanding offshore wind development.

Environmental groups criticized the five-year plan as a “missed opportunity” to stop the expansion of oil and gas drilling in the Gulf of Mexico and address climate change.

“New oil and gas operations (in the Gulf) will only bring more health risks to Gulf Coast communities and slow our transition to a clean-energy economy,'' said Earthjustice attorney Brettny Hardy.

The industry, meanwhile, said more sales are needed — and sooner.

“In our forward-thinking industry, securing new lease blocks is vital for exploring and developing resources crucial to the U.S. economy,'' said National Ocean Industries Association President Erik Milito. “The Gulf of Mexico is a prime economic engine and investment area, and this (lease sale) was the last chance for companies to secure leases in the near term.''

Holly Hopkins, API vice president of upstream policy, called Wednesday's sale "a "positive step after multiple delays,'' and noted that it generated the highest dollar value for bids in nearly a decade.

The results demonstrate that the oil and gas industry “is working to meet growing demand and investing in the nation’s long-term energy security,'' Hopkins said. “Just as today’s record U.S. production was supported by investment and policy decisions made years ago, new leasing opportunities are critical for maintaining American energy leadership for decades to come.''

The administration's clean-energy ambitions have been hampered by recent project cancellations including two large wind projects shelved last month off the New Jersey coast and the earlier cancellation of three projects that would have sent power to New England.

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Houston American Energy shares details on Baytown recycling facility, new innovation center

coming soon

Houston American Energy Corp. (NYSE: HUSA) plans to break ground on its new advanced recycling facility in the Cedar Port Industrial Park in Q4, the company shared in an announcement this week.

The company acquired a 25-acre, $8.5 million site for development in July from TGS Cedar Port Partners, which handles approximately 5 billion pounds of plastic resin annually. HUSA also plans to build the Abundia Innovation Center on the site.

HUSA named Houston-based Corvus Construction Company the design and construction partner on both projects.

“The site at Cedar Port is in the largest master-planned rail and barge served industrial park in the United States with direct access to the Houston Ship Channel and the Port of Houston,” Ed Gillespie, CEO of HUSA, said in a news release. “It provides robust logistical advantages for the transportation of both feedstock and our low-carbon drop-in fuels and chemical products. Critically, the region has a deep pool of engineering and operations talent. HUSA looks forward to working with local communities and adding economic growth in the Gulf Coast region.”

The new advanced recycling facility will convert plastic waste into pyrolysis oil and will serve as a hub for a five-year development plan designed to scale production capacity.

The facility will be built around New York-based Abundia Global Impact Group LLC’s technologies and proprietary pyrolysis process, which converts plastic and certified biomass waste into high-quality renewable fuels.

HUSA acquired AGIG this summer. At the time, the combined company shared that it planned to serve a multi-billion-dollar global demand for renewable fuels, Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) and recycled chemical feedstocks.

The Abundia Innovation Center is planned to serve as a state-of-the-art research and development facility for the renewable energy sector, aiding in the commercial and technical validation of new technologies. HUSA previously announced that Nexus PMG, also based in Houston, will provide strategic support and guidance in the development of the innovation hub.

According to HUSA, the recycling facility and innovation center will “create the foundation for HUSA’s long-term vision to be a leader in the low-carbon fuels sector by driving collaborative innovation.”

UH researchers make breakthrough in cutting carbon capture costs

Carbon breakthrough

A team of researchers at the University of Houston has made two breakthroughs in addressing climate change and potentially reducing the cost of capturing harmful emissions from power plants.

Led by Professor Mim Rahimi at UH’s Cullen College of Engineering, the team released two significant publications that made significant strides relating to carbon capture processes. The first, published in Nature Communications, introduced a membraneless electrochemical process that cuts energy requirements and costs for amine-based carbon dioxide capture during the acid gas sweetening process. Another, featured on the cover of ES&T Engineering, demonstrated a vanadium redox flow system capable of both capturing carbon and storing renewable energy.

“These publications reflect our group’s commitment to fundamental electrochemical innovation and real-world applicability,” Rahimi said in a news release. “From membraneless systems to scalable flow systems, we’re charting pathways to decarbonize hard-to-abate sectors and support the transition to a low-carbon economy.”

According to the researchers, the “A Membraneless Electrochemically Mediated Amine Regeneration for Carbon Capture” research paper marked the beginning of the team’s first focus. The research examined the replacement of costly ion-exchange membranes with gas diffusion electrodes. They found that the membranes were the most expensive part of the system, and they were also a major cause of performance issues and high maintenance costs.

The researchers achieved more than 90 percent CO2 removal (nearly 50 percent more than traditional approaches) by engineering the gas diffusion electrodes. According to PhD student and co-author of the paper Ahmad Hassan, the capture costs approximately $70 per metric ton of CO2, which is competitive with other innovative scrubbing techniques.

“By removing the membrane and the associated hardware, we’ve streamlined the EMAR workflow and dramatically cut energy use,” Hassan said in the news release. “This opens the door to retrofitting existing industrial exhaust systems with a compact, low-cost carbon capture module.”

The second breakthrough, published by PhD student Mohsen Afshari, displayed a reversible flow battery architecture that absorbs CO2 during charging and releases it upon discharge. The results suggested that the technology could potentially provide carbon removal and grid balancing when used with intermittent renewables, such as solar or wind power.

“Integrating carbon capture directly into a redox flow battery lets us tackle two challenges in one device,” Afshari said in the release. “Our front-cover feature highlights its potential to smooth out renewable generation while sequestering CO2.”

As electric bills rise, evidence mounts that data centers share blame

Data Talk

Amid rising electric bills, states are under pressure to insulate regular household and business ratepayers from the costs of feeding Big Tech's energy-hungry data centers.

It's not clear that any state has a solution and the actual effect of data centers on electricity bills is difficult to pin down. Some critics question whether states have the spine to take a hard line against tech behemoths like Microsoft, Google, Amazon and Meta.

But more than a dozen states have begun taking steps as data centers drive a rapid build-out of power plants and transmission lines.

That has meant pressuring the nation's biggest power grid operator to clamp down on price increases, studying the effect of data centers on electricity bills or pushing data center owners to pay a larger share of local transmission costs.

Rising power bills are “something legislators have been hearing a lot about. It’s something we’ve been hearing a lot about. More people are speaking out at the public utility commission in the past year than I’ve ever seen before,” said Charlotte Shuff of the Oregon Citizens’ Utility Board, a consumer advocacy group. “There’s a massive outcry.”

Not the typical electric customer

Some data centers could require more electricity than cities the size of Pittsburgh, Cleveland or New Orleans, and make huge factories look tiny by comparison. That's pushing policymakers to rethink a system that, historically, has spread transmission costs among classes of consumers that are proportional to electricity use.

“A lot of this infrastructure, billions of dollars of it, is being built just for a few customers and a few facilities and these happen to be the wealthiest companies in the world,” said Ari Peskoe, who directs the Electricity Law Initiative at Harvard University. “I think some of the fundamental assumptions behind all this just kind of breaks down.”

A fix, Peskoe said, is a “can of worms" that pits ratepayer classes against one another.

Some officials downplay the role of data centers in pushing up electric bills.

Tricia Pridemore, who sits on Georgia’s Public Service Commission and is president of the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners, pointed to an already tightened electricity supply and increasing costs for power lines, utility poles, transformers and generators as utilities replace aging equipment or harden it against extreme weather.

The data centers needed to accommodate the artificial intelligence boom are still in the regulatory planning stages, Pridemore said, and the Data Center Coalition, which represents Big Tech firms and data center developers, has said its members are committed to paying their fair share.

But growing evidence suggests that the electricity bills of some Americans are rising to subsidize the massive energy needs of Big Tech as the U.S. competes in a race against China for artificial intelligence superiority.

Data and analytics firm Wood Mackenzie published a report in recent weeks that suggested 20 proposed or effective specialized rates for data centers in 16 states it studied aren’t nearly enough to cover the cost of a new natural gas power plant.

In other words, unless utilities negotiate higher specialized rates, other ratepayer classes — residential, commercial and industrial — are likely paying for data center power needs.

Meanwhile, Monitoring Analytics, the independent market watchdog for the mid-Atlantic grid, produced research in June showing that 70% — or $9.3 billion — of last year's increased electricity cost was the result of data center demand.

States are responding

Last year, five governors led by Pennsylvania's Josh Shapiro began pushing back against power prices set by the mid-Atlantic grid operator, PJM Interconnection, after that amount spiked nearly sevenfold. They warned of customers “paying billions more than is necessary.”

PJM has yet to propose ways to guarantee that data centers pay their freight, but Monitoring Analytics is floating the idea that data centers should be required to procure their own power.

In a filing last month, it said that would avoid a "massive wealth transfer” from average people to tech companies.

At least a dozen states are eyeing ways to make data centers pay higher local transmission costs.

In Oregon, a data center hot spot, lawmakers passed legislation in June ordering state utility regulators to develop new — presumably higher — power rates for data centers.

The Oregon Citizens’ Utility Board says there is clear evidence that costs to serve data centers are being spread across all customers — at a time when some electric bills there are up 50% over the past four years and utilities are disconnecting more people than ever.

New Jersey’s governor signed legislation last month commissioning state utility regulators to study whether ratepayers are being hit with “unreasonable rate increases” to connect data centers and to develop a specialized rate to charge data centers.

In some other states, like Texas and Utah, governors and lawmakers are trying to avoid a supply-and-demand crisis that leaves ratepayers on the hook — or in the dark.

Doubts about states protecting ratepayers

In Indiana, state utility regulators approved a settlement between Indiana Michigan Power Co., Amazon, Google, Microsoft and consumer advocates that set parameters for data center payments for service.

Kerwin Olsen, of the Citizens Action Council of Indiana, a consumer advocacy group, signed the settlement and called it a “pretty good deal” that contained more consumer protections than what state lawmakers passed.

But, he said, state law doesn't force large power users like data centers to publicly reveal their electric usage, so pinning down whether they're paying their fair share of transmission costs "will be a challenge.”

In a March report, the Environmental and Energy Law Program at Harvard University questioned the motivation of utilities and regulators to shield ratepayers from footing the cost of electricity for data centers.

Both utilities and states have incentives to attract big customers like data centers, it said.

To do it, utilities — which must get their rates approved by regulators — can offer “special deals to favored customers” like a data center and effectively shift the costs of those discounts to regular ratepayers, the authors wrote. Many state laws can shield disclosure of those rates, they said.

In Pennsylvania, an emerging data center hot spot, the state utility commission is drafting a model rate structure for utilities to consider adopting. An overarching goal is to get data center developers to put their money where their mouth is.

“We’re talking about real transmission upgrades, potentially hundreds of millions of dollars,” commission chairman Stephen DeFrank said. “And that’s what you don’t want the ratepayer to get stuck paying for."

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