“This merger of two great American companies brings together the best in the industry,” said Chevron Chairman and CEO Mike Wirth. “The combination enhances and extends our growth profile well into the next decade, which we believe will drive greater long-term value to shareholders.”
According to Wirth, the final agreement to acquire Hess included a favorable arbitration decision regarding Hess’s offshore Guyana asset. In addition, on July 17, 2025, the FTC lifted its earlier restriction, imposed under the Biden administration, that had prevented former Hess CEO John Hess from joining Chevron’s board of directors.
Under the original FTC antitrust complaint filed in September 2024, the FTC alleged that Hess communicated with the past and current secretaries general of OPEC and an official from Saudi Arabia, both publicly and privately.
“Mr. Hess’s communications with competitors about global oil output and other dimensions of crude oil market competition disqualify him from serving on Chevron’s board of directors,” said Henry Liu, former director of the FTC’s Bureau of Competition, who left the federal regulatory agency when President Donald Trump took office.
Under the FTC 3–2 ruling on July 17, Hess is allowed to serve on the Chevron board, solely related to interactions and discussions with Guyanese government officials about Hess’s oil-related and health ministry-related activities in the South American country.
“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,” Hess said in a statement.
In announcing the deal in late 2023, Chevron said it would acquire Hess’s holdings in the Bakken shale play in North Dakota and the 30 percent stake in Guyana’s Stabroek offshore oil field—a key deepwater asset with proven reserves of more than 11 billion oil-equivalent barrels.
Bank of America analyst Jean Ann Salisbury told The Epoch Times that ExxonMobil, a competitor of Chevron, along with China National Offshore Oil Corp. (CNOOC), are also partners with Hess in the deepwater oil project in Guyana. After the Chevron-Hess deal was announced in late 2023, they filed a losing arbitration claim, asserting that they held a right of first refusal to buy Hess’s stake in the Stabroek block.
“Strategically, the proposed Hess deal would be transformative for Chevron, adding advantaged oil volumes and provide geographic diversification, complementing Chevron’s Permian and (Tengiz Field) barrels,” Salisbury wrote in a July 10 research note shared with The Epoch Times.
According to Chevron, the Hess deal is expected to drive significant free cash flow and production growth over the next decade, achieving $1 billion in annual run-rate cost synergies by the end of 2025. Going forward, the combined company’s capital expenditures budget is expected to be between $19 and $22 billion.
“All of this should enable even higher returns to shareholders over the long term,” said Chevron CFO Eimear Bonner.