Twenty-six Houston-area companies landed on the latest Fortune 500 list. Photo via Getty Images

Houston maintained its No. 3 status this year among U.S. metro areas with the most Fortune 500 headquarters. Fortune magazine tallied 26 Fortune 500 headquarters in the Houston area, behind only the New York City area (62) and the Chicago area (30).

Last year, 23 Houston-area companies landed on the Fortune 500 list. Fortune bases the list on revenue that a public or private company earns during its 2024 budget year.

On the Fortune 500 list for 2025, Spring-based ExxonMobil remained the highest-ranked company based in the Houston area as well as in Texas, sitting at No. 8 nationally. That’s down one spot from its No. 7 perch on the 2024 list. During its 2024 budget year, ExxonMobil reported revenue of $349.6 billion, up from $344.6 billion the previous year.

Here are the rankings and 2024 revenue for the 25 other Houston-area companies that made this year’s Fortune 500:

  • No. 16 Chevron, $202.8 billion
  • No. 28 Phillips 66, $145.5 billion
  • No. 56 Sysco, $78.8 billion
  • No. 75 Conoco Phillips, $56.9 million
  • No. 78 Enterprise Products Partners, $56.2 billion
  • No. 92 Plains GP Holdings, $50 billion
  • No. 143 Hewlett-Packard Enterprise, $30.1 billion
  • No. 153 NRG Energy, $28.1 billion
  • No. 155 Baker Hughes, $27.8 billion
  • No. 159 Occidental Petroleum, $26.9 billion
  • No. 183 EOG Resources, $23.7 billion
  • No. 184 Quanta Services, $23.7 billion
  • No. 194 Halliburton, $23 billion
  • No. 197 Waste Management, $22.1 billion
  • No. 214 Group 1 Automotive, $19.9 billion
  • No. 224 Corebridge Financial, $18.8 billion
  • No. 256 Targa Resources, $16.4 billion
  • No. 275 Cheniere Energy, $15.7 billion
  • No. 289 Kinder Morgan, $15.1 billion
  • No. 345 Westlake Corp., $12.1 billion
  • No. 422 APA, $9.7 billion
  • No. 443 NOV, $8.9 billion
  • No. 450 CenterPoint Energy, $8.6 billion
  • No. 474 Par Pacific Holdings, $8 billion
  • No. 480 KBR Inc., $7.7 billion

Nationally, the top five Fortune 500 companies are:

  • Walmart
  • Amazon
  • UnitedHealth Group
  • Apple
  • CVS Health

“The Fortune 500 is a literal roadmap to the rise and fall of markets, a reliable playbook of the world's most important regions, services, and products, and an indispensable roster of those companies' dynamic leaders,” Anastasia Nyrkovskaya, CEO of Fortune Media, said in a news release.

Among the states, Texas ranks second for the number of Fortune 500 headquarters (54), preceded by California (58) and followed by New York (53).

In partnership with Venture Metals +, Baker Hughes has saved over 125 million pounds of scrap metals from more than 50 of the company's locations around the world. Photo via bakerhughes.com

Houston energy company diverts over 125M pounds of scrap metals from landfills

reduce, reuse, recycle

For three years, Baker Hughes has been working with a full-scale scrap processor partner to divert scrap metal waste from landfills as a part of the company's net-zero commitment by 2050.

In partnership with Venture Metals +, Baker Hughes has saved over 125 million pounds of scrap metals from more than 50 of the company's locations around the world.

Venture Metals + collects, recycles, and manages the full recycling process of scrap materials, providing recycling, reclamation, and investment recovery as a service to industrial, manufacturing, and service facilities.

“The relationship that has been formed between Baker Hughes and Venture Metals is the definition of a true partnership. Over the many years we have collaborated on significant projects and there has been a foundation of trust, transparency and investment on both sides,” Venture Metals’ Vice-Chairman of the Board Mark Chazanow says in a news release. “Together, we have been able to do our part to improve the environment by circular and sustainable recycling while also capturing substantial revenue gain. We look forward to growing the partnership and seeing a bright future ahead together.”

According to the release, Baker Hughes plans to grow the partnership to introduce similar programs at five key locations around the world. Venture Metals+ also set up Baker Hughes with customized containers to help separate titanium, stainless steel, Inconel, and other recyclable metals.

“Reducing our environmental footprint is a critical focus area for our sustainability strategy as we continue to reduce waste, minimize the resources we use and promote circularity,” Allyson Anderson Book, chief sustainability officer at Baker Hughes, adds. “Through partners like Venture Metals +, we are minimizing waste and reusing scrap materials as much as possible for more sustainable operations.”

The number one thing that consumers can remember when it comes to recycling is that thin, pliable plastic should be excluded from standard blue recycling bins. Photos by welcomia/Canva.

Yet another reason to loathe plastic bags

Guest column

As waste-to-energy gains a foothold in the energy transition, trash's more palatable cousin, recycling, sits just close enough for deeper inspection. Plastic, by and large, one of the most loved and loathed petroleum by-products, is often singled out as the most nefarious contributor to our declining climate.

With significant efforts underway to reduce the volume of single-use plastic while reusing or repurposing stronger plastics, let us turn attention to the third action in the timeless mantra–recycling.

Over the last few decades, we have embraced recycling globally, assured in our noble commitment to derive further utility out of items that no longer serve an immediate purpose from our unique perspective.

However, the act of recycling still closely resembles taking out the trash. We place items deemed worthy of secondary use into large, usually plastic, bins for carting far away from the rest of the things that still provide utility to our personal household or place of business.

For the most part, simply believing that there could or should be further utility of an item is criterion enough to warrant placement in the exalted blue bin. The small hit of dopamine elicited from the satisfaction that we are “doing our part” is just strong enough to reinforce the idea that we have also “done enough.”

But according to Vu Nguyen, director of corporate development and innovation, Waste Management, one of Houston’s leading trash, recycling, and environmental services companies, there remains one elusive challenge: the plastic bag.

The plastic bag proves problematic for a multitude of reasons, not least because of its role in ruining literally every.other.recyling.effort.ever. On the whole, we have been blissfully ignorant of the recycling process, and even more so of how much our good intentions to reuse and recycle are thwarting the same process for so many other reusable materials.

“The number one thing that consumers can remember when it comes to recycling is that thin, pliable plastic [like] bags and wrappers should be firmly excluded from standard blue recycling bins,” Nguyen shared at a Houston Tech Rodeo event earlier this spring.

After collection, simple but effective mechanisms sort items delivered to a recycling facility. Individuals pick through discarded materials placed on conveyor belts before the remaining items work their way through heavy magnets that extract useful metals while bursts of air pressure push lightweight items like paper away from heavier items like glass.

Plastic bags, including the lovely little blue ones so many of us like to purchase to fill our quaint non-standard recycling bins, tangle up in these conveyor belts, causing shutdowns to unravel them from materials otherwise well-suited for these sorting efforts. Downtime on the sorting line can get expensive, so much so that many recycling facilities often turn away entire trucks filled with potentially reusable items if even a single plastic bag is discovered inside.

Consider this the start of a public service announcement campaign to raise awareness of that simple fact.

Yasser Brenes, area president – south for Republic Services, echoes this sentiment as he shares a few tips and reminders with EnergyCapitalHTX.

     
  • Know What to Throw: Educate yourself on what can and cannot go inside your recycling bin. Focus on only recycling rigid plastic containers such as bottles, jugs and tubs, metal food and beverage containers, glass bottles and jars, paper and cardboard. Don’t be a wish-cycler, never throw items in your recycling bin if you are unsure if they can be recycled or not.
     
  • Empty, Clean, Dry: Recyclables should be rinsed free of residual food and liquid. If recyclables are not empty, clean and dry the residual food or liquid could contaminate other more fragile recyclables, like paper and cardboard, and require them to be thrown away.
  • Don’t Bag It: Recyclables should always be placed loose inside your recycling bin. Flexible plastics, such as grocery bags, wrap and tangle around the sorting equipment and should never be placed in your recycling bin.

That’s not to say that plastic bags and wrappers cannot be recycled at all; on the contrary, they absolutely can. The mechanisms for sorting them from other materials like paper, aluminum, glass, and heavy plastics just aren’t quite mature enough… yet.

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Lindsey Ferrell is a contributing writer to EnergyCapitalHTX and founder of Guerrella & Co.

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Houston American Energy closes acquisition of New York low-carbon fuel co.

power deal

Renewable energy company Houston American Energy Corp. (NYSE: HUSA) has acquired Abundia Global Impact Group, according to a news release.

Houston American reports that the acquisition will allow it to create a combined company focused on converting waste plastics into high-value, drop-in, low-carbon fuels and chemical products. It plans to move forward with Abundia’s plans for developing large-scale recycling projects, with a new facility previously announced for the Gulf Coast, located in Cedar Port Industrial Park, near the Baytown area of Houston.

New York-based Abundia used its proprietary pyrolysis process to convert plastic and certified biomass waste into high-quality renewable fuels. Its founder, Ed Gillespie, will serve as CEO of the combined company and will join HUSA’s board of directors. Peter Longo, who previously served as HUSA's CEO, will serve as chairman of the board. Lucie Harwood was named CFO and Joseph Gasik will serve as COO.

“The completion of this acquisition represents a pivotal transformation for HUSA,” Longo said in a news release. “Abundia has a commercially ready solution for converting waste into valuable fuels and chemicals, with a backlog of development opportunities utilizing proprietary technologies and key industry partnerships. This transaction gives HUSA shareholders a ready-made platform and project pipeline for future value generation as the fuel and chemical industries accelerate their adoption of low-carbon solutions and sustainable aviation fuel.”

The combined company plans to serve what it estimates is a multi-billion-dollar global demand for renewable fuels, Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) and recycled chemical feedstocks, according to the news release.

“This is a landmark moment for Abundia and a major step forward for the renewable industry,” Gillespie added in the release. “Joining forces with HUSA and entering the public capital markets positions us to accelerate growth, scale our technology and expand our influence within the renewable and recycling industries. I am proud of the hard work and determination of both the AGIG and HUSA teams to finalize this transaction. We look forward to delivering shareholder value and critical technologies to reduce carbon emissions.”

Houston American Energy announced the deal in March. The company also closed a $4.42 million registered direct offering in January.

Tesla announces annual meeting under pressure from shareholders

Tesla Talk

Tesla has scheduled an annual shareholder meeting for November, one day after it came under pressure from major shareholders to do so.

Billionaire Elon Musk's company said in a regulatory filing on Thursday that the meeting would be held Nov. 6, but that may prove troublesome because it comes nearly three months after it is required to do so under state law in Texas, where the company is incorporated.

The annual meeting, given Tesla's fortunes this year, has the potential to be a raucous event and it is unclear how investors will react to the delay, which is rare for any major U.S. corporation.

Tesla shares have plunged 27% this year, largely due to blowback over Musk's affiliation with President Donald Trump, as well as rising competition.

The announcement of the meeting comes a day after a group of more than 20 Tesla shareholders sent a letter to the company's board pressing for an annual meeting after receiving no word of one with the deadline just days away.

Many shareholders have been miffed by Musk's participation in the Trump administration this year, saying he needs to focus on his EV company which is facing extraordinary pressures.

“An annual meeting provides shareholders with the opportunity to hear directly from the board about these concerns, and to vote for or against directors, the board’s approach to executive compensation, and other matters of material importance,” the group said in the letter.

The group cited Texas law, which requires companies to schedule annual shareholders meetings within 13 months of the prior annual meeting.

Tesla’s last shareholders meeting was on June 13 of last year, where investors voted to restore Musk’s record $44.9 billion pay package that was thrown out by a Delaware judge earlier that year.

Also on Thursday, Musk that the Grok chatbot will be heading to Tesla vehicles.

“Grok is coming to Tesla vehicles very soon. Next week at the latest,” Musk said on social media platform X, in response to a post stating that Grok implementation on Teslas wasn't announced on a Grok livestream Wednesday.

Grok was developed by Musk’s artificial intelligence company xAI and pitched as an alternative to “woke AI” interactions from rival chatbots like Google’s Gemini, or OpenAI’s ChatGPT.

Shares of Tesla rose 3% at the opening bell after tumbling this week when the feud between Trump and Musk heated up again.