Chevron gets go ahead for $53B Hess deal, and access to one of the biggest oil finds this 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.
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 disagree with the ICC panel's interpretation but respect the arbitration and dispute resolution process,' Exxon Mobil said in a statement on Friday.
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.'
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Independent
5 hours ago
- The Independent
Fire at Iran's largest oil refinery kills 1 in the country's southwest
A fire at Iran's oldest and largest refinery in the southwest killed one person, state media reported Sunday. A leaky pump in an under-repair unit at Abadan refinery caused the fire on Saturday, killing a worker, according to the state-owned IRAN newspaper. Firefighters put out the blaze in two hours and operations remained unaffected, the report said. Iran's deputy parliament speaker, Ali Nikzad, confirmed Sunday that some workers were also injured, media outlets said. Abadan oil refinery, some 670 kilometers (nearly 416 miles) from the capital Tehran, began its operation in 1912. It is the biggest in the Islamic Republic, producing about 25% of the country's fuel with more than 5,200,000 barrels of oil refined daily. Several fires have broken out across Iran over the past week at residential and commercial buildings, with authorities saying gas leaks and electrical short-circuiting were to blame. Iran is one of the world's major producers of oil, though sanctions by Western countries have limited its sales.
The Guardian
a day ago
- The Guardian
Chevron closes $55bn Hess takeover after winning Exxon legal battle
Chevron closed its $55bn acquisition of Hess on Friday after winning a landmark legal battle against its larger rival Exxon Mobil to gain access to the largest oil discovery in decades. The strategy of Chevron's CEO, Mike Wirth, to turn around his company's lagging performance hinged on the acquisition, one of the largest energy deals in the past decade. The prize is a stake in the prolific Stabroek Block off the coast of Guyana that holds more than 11bn barrels of oil and is one of the fastest-growing oil provinces in the world. 'This merger of two great American companies brings together the best in the industry,' Wirth said in a statement. Exxon and the China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC), Hess's partners in Guyana, had filed arbitration disputes that claimed they held a pre-emptive right to purchase Hess's stake, which delayed Chevron's closure of the Hess acquisition for over a year. 'We disagree with the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) panel's interpretation but respect the arbitration and dispute resolution process,' Exxon said in a statement. '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 pre-emption 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,' the company added. CNOOC said it was also disappointed with the ruling. There is no appeals process at the International Chamber of Commerce, the court that oversaw the arbitration case. Even as it awaited the arbitration verdict, Chevron was making preparations so it could close the deal with Hess quickly, Reuters previously reported. Information technology workers from Chevron and Hess have met regularly to plan the integration, and Hess employees were informed that they could request a severance package following the deal's close. In an interview with Reuters on Friday, Wirth said converting technology and combining employees from both companies would take a few months. Shares of Chevron and Exxon were marginally lower in morning trading.
Telegraph
a day ago
- Telegraph
It's time the world woke up and noticed the Argentinian miracle
Okay, it is still only on a par with Egypt and Suriname. But the credit ratings agency Moody's this week gave Argentina its second upgrade since its radical libertarian president Javier Milei took power. It is yet more evidence of the dramatic improvement in the country's fortunes. Growth has accelerated, inflation is coming under control, rents are falling and its debts are steadily becoming more manageable. The dire warnings from the economic establishment that Milei's bold experiment in slashing the burden of the state have been proved woefully wide of the mark. The only question now is this: when will the rest of the world wake up to the Argentinian miracle? While France scraps bank holidays to keep the bond markets happy, while the Chancellor Rachel Reeves struggles to fill the latest 'black hole' in the nation's books, and while even the United States bond market frets about the independence of the Federal Reserve, one country – and a very unlikely one as well – is getting upgraded. Moody's this week bumped up Argentina, a nation that for 50 years has been characterised by bailouts and mismanagement, from Caa3 to Caa1. It cited 'the extensive liberalisation of exchange and (to a lesser extent) capital controls' for the improving outlook. Sure, it is still technically rated as 'junk' – after all, this is a country with nine debt defaults, including the largest in IMF history, over the last 200 years. But the direction of travel is clearly right. That is just one indicator among many. The economy overall is expected to expand by 5.7pc this year despite the huge cuts to public spending and the 'chainsaw' applied to government employment by the president. Inflation came down to a monthly rate of 1.6pc last month, which may not exactly count as Swiss-style stability, but is a lot lower than the 200pc-plus it was running at when Milei took office. The IMF has rolled over the massive loan it extended to the country under the previous administration. Rents, a major problem with housing unaffordable to many people, have fallen by 40pc over the last year after the government scrapped all rent controls, bringing a flood of properties on to the market. Bond prices are rising, with the government able to borrow money on the global markets again. Sure, there are plenty of challenges ahead. Poverty is widespread, and there are still relatively few new industries, although its shale oil and gas sector is starting to boom, with Vista Energy reporting a 57pc increase in output this year, and forecasting it will double over the next 24 months. One point is surely clear, however: in the 18 months since Milei took office, Argentina's economy has been transformed. It has been achieved by radically slashing the size of the state. Promising a 'shock therapy' for the economy, the government has laid off more than 50,000 public sector workers, closed or merged more than 100 state departments and agencies, frozen public infrastructure projects, cut energy and transport subsidies, and even returned the state budget to a surplus. Milei has not followed through on all his promises. Argentina has not switched to the dollar as its official currency, as he pledged it would, and doesn't look likely to any time soon (although come to think of it, on current trends its peso may be a better bet than the American currency). But he has gone further and faster in deregulating the economy than any politician in modern times. The improvements in its performance are a stark contrast to the catastrophe that was forecast, and probably quietly hoped for, by a majority of the Left-leaning economic establishment. On taking office, 103 prominent economists, including France's Thomas Piketty, wrote a public letter warning that 'apparently simple solutions may be appealing, they are likely to cause more devastation in the real world'. It hasn't happened. Instead, Argentina is steadily recovering from decades of mismanagement. The real question is this: when will the rest of the world wake up and notice? The bulk of the policy-making and financial establishment still inhabits a mental universe where government spending is what drives growth, where regulation is seen as the key to innovation, where 'national champions' are expected to lead new industries, while industrial strategies will pick the winners of the future, and the only role for the private sector is a 'partner' for the finance ministry. We see that in the UK, with the National Wealth Fund getting billions in funding even though no one knows what it will actually do, and with GB Energy getting even more for the green transition. We see it across the European Union, with endless regulations that are bizarrely designed to promote competitiveness, and with the Commission in Brussels only this week proposing a turnover tax on every business of any significant size within the bloc. We even see it in the US, with Donald Trump, hardly an economic liberal, imposing tariffs to try to reshape the economy instead of leaving it to the market to decide where companies should invest. And we see it most of all in China, with industries from autos to aerospace to artificial intelligence receiving huge state support to conquer the world. Argentina under Javier Milei is the only major country taking a different path. Perhaps because subsidies, controls and protectionism have turned it into a basket-case, it was ready to try the alternative. The results are now clear. In reality, open, free markets and a smaller state are the only way to restore growth, and Milei is proving it all over again.
