Chevron to Move 10% of California Workforce to Houston

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 email made public Friday.

The move would over two years shift more than 10% of the employees from Chevron's San Ramon, Calif., 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.

As of 2011, Chevron was one of the largest leaseholders in the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico, producing a daily average of 106,000 barrels of crude oil and 62 million cubic feet of natural gas.

Chevron in 2010 said it would invest about $7.5 billion to develop the St. Malo and Jack fields in the ultradeep water Gulf of Mexico, about 280 miles south of Louisiana in waters 7,000 feet deep. The production facility, still being built, is expected to produce up to 170,000 barrels of oil and 42.5 million cubic feet of natural gas per day.

Chevron has about 27,000 employees in all of the U.S.