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Daily Caller

‘A Tough Place To Do Business’: Chevron Exec Details Company’s Decision To Move HQ Out Of California

Published

8 months ago

5 minute read

From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By Nick Pope

 

A top Chevron executive detailed his company’s decision to move its headquarters out of California in a Thursday roundtable with reporters.

Andy Walz, president of Chevron Americas products, said that California’s crusade against conventional energy producers played a role in the company’s decision to move its headquarters to Texas. Measures like California’s 2035 ban on internal combustion engine vehicles and its emissions cap-and-trade rules were specific headwinds that played a role in the company’s decision to move its headquarters to Houston, Walz said.

“It is a difficult place to do business. It’s a difficult place to be headquartered. And we finally said, ‘Hey, that’s enough. We’ve got critical mass, we’re gonna move.’ We’re also going to improve our performance by getting everybody in the same location,” Walz explained.

Walz made clear that part of the reason for Chevron’s headquarters relocation is that parts of its operations and senior leadership have already been stationed in Texas, and that the company believes its performance can improve if employees and executives are in the same place. The company is not walking away from its assets in California, andChevron plans to continue operating them into the future, Walz said.

“California is a tough place to do business. It’s a tough place to recruit people. It’s a tough place to move employees. A lot of our employees move up through the company, they gain experiences in different geographies, different locations, and we have a lot of people that will not move to California. That makes it difficult,” Walz said. “California is a tough place to have a big employee base. It’s tough, its cost of living is expensive, and we were not able to get employees that didn’t live there to move there. And that’s not sustainable for us, to be honest.”

California has the third-highest cost of living of all states, trailing only Hawaii and Massachusetts, Forbes Magazine assessed in July. Overall, California has seen net outflows of population in recent years, with more than 800,000 people moving out of the state in 2022 alone, according to Forbes.

Additionally, more than 350 companies moved their headquarters out of the state between 2018 and 2022, according to Forbes.

“California has said, ‘Hey, you cannot buy a new car that has an internal combustion engine in it after 2035.’ So, that’s a headwind against investing in a refinery. On the books, they have a windfall profits tax or penalty, they’re evaluating how to deal with that, they want to cap the amount of profits you can make in your refinery. That is a headwind for anybody that would want to put money into it to try to get a return on their investment,” Walz said. “And the third thing that maybe is even a bit more crippling is this: they have a program called cap and trade, where they tax your CO2 emissions in the state of California. And that tax continues to go up every year, and it gets more burdensome every single year. So those three regulations, those three policies, really make it hard for me to want to put more capital into the state of California. Therefore, I think the business case there is really challenging.”

“Our competitors are looking at the exact same equation I’m looking at, and our money is going other places, and California can’t get supplied from Houston,” Walz said. “It doesn’t work.”

The Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) recently-finalized tailpipe emissions standards for light- and medium-duty vehicles — which have been characterized by critics as an “EV mandate” — are another policy that Walz believes will have “consequences” if implemented.

Walz’s comments on the business environment in California echo Chevron CEO Mike Wirth’s recent remarks to The Wall Street Journal, in which he said that “California has a number of policies that raise costs, that hurt consumers.”

As news of Chevron’s headquarters relocation broke earlier in August, the office of Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom told the Daily Caller News Foundation that the company’s decision was the “logical culmination of a long process that has repeatedly been foreshadowed by Chevron.”

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2025 Federal Election

‘I’m Cautiously Optimistic’: Doug Ford Strongly Recommends Canada ‘Not To Retaliate’ Against Trump’s Tariffs

Published on April 2, 2025

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From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By Jason Cohen

Ontario Premier Doug Ford urged Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney to avoid retaliation against the tariffs President Donald Trump announced on Wednesday.

Trump announced in the White House Rose Garden that he would impose “a minimum baseline tariff of 10%” on all goods entering the United States, with Canada not being included on the list of countries with higher rates. When asked about what Canada’s response would be on “Bloomberg: Balance of Power,” Ford said he was “cautiously optimistic” about Canada’s omission from the higher-tier tariffs and emphasized the importance of a cooperative relationship with the U.S.

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“Well, let’s see where these tariffs go. I’m cautiously optimistic that I never saw Canada or Mexico on that list. And it just goes to show you two great countries working together, collaborating together and building relationships,” Ford said. “So again, I’m cautiously optimistic. I think if that’s the case, it’s the right thing for both the U.S and Canada.”

Host Kailey Leinz noted that there are currently tariffs on Canada in place as well as an exemption for goods that are in compliance with the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA).

“Does that mean, sir, at least in your mind, that it wouldn’t be appropriate for Canada to retaliate for this at this time?” Leinz asked.

“That is correct. If that’s the case, then I would highly recommend to the prime minister not to retaliate. And let’s carry on a strong relationship,” Ford answered. “Let’s build the American-Canadian fortress around both countries and be the wealthiest, most prosperous, safest two countries in the world.”

Trump declared a national emergency to levy a slew of reciprocal tariffs on what he has deemed “Liberation Day.”

“My fellow Americans, this is Liberation Day, April 2, 2025, will forever be remembered as the day American industry was reborn, the day America’s destiny was reclaimed, and the day that we began to make America wealthy again,” Trump said.

The president also announced that he would proceed with implementing a 25% tariff on “all foreign-made automobiles” that will take effect at midnight.

Ford in March had imposed a 25% surcharge on electricity to New York, Michigan and Minnesota, but promptly rescinded the policy and apologized to Americans on WABC’s “Cats & Cosby” radio show the following day. The tariffs were a retaliatory measure against Trump’s flurry of tariffs against Canada since starting his second term.

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Daily Caller

Biden Administration Was Secretly More Involved In Ukraine Than It Let On, Investigation Reveals

Published on March 31, 2025

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From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By Wallace White

The U.S was far more directly involved in aiding Ukrainian forces against Russia than previously understood, a New York Times investigation revealed Monday.

American backing of Ukraine was an instrumental piece in forces of the eastern European nation wounding or killing more than 700,000 Russian soldiers during the course of the war, according to the NYT. Methods the U.S. used to aid Ukraine included giving target information while officially obfuscating their nature, dispatching American advisers close to the frontlines and sweeping oversight over its use of missile systems granted by officials.

One European intelligence official was taken aback as to how deep U.S. involvement was, telling the NYT that American officials had become “part of the kill chain.”

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Ukrainian officials met in Wiesbaden in Spring 2022, the headquarters of the U.S. European Command, to discuss strategy with U.S. forces and the extent to which the U.S. would aid the Ukrainians.

During the meeting, U.S. European Command settled with Ukrainian officials that they would reportedly dispense target locations as “points of interest” to the Ukrainians, not officially calling them “targets” as they believed the language would be too “provocative.”

“If you ever get asked the question, ‘Did you pass a target to the Ukrainians?’ you can legitimately not be lying when you say, ‘No, I did not,’” a U.S. official told the NYT. Most artillery strikes were carried out with the M777 Howitzer system, in part provided by the U.S.

Due to diplomatic risks, the Biden administration wanted to share intel in the most plausibly deniable way possible, with a total restriction on sharing the whereabouts of Russian military figures and targets on Russian soil, one senior U.S. official told the NYT. The information shared would have to adhere to NATO guidelines of intel sharing to not provoke the Russian’s ire against other nations in the alliance.

“Imagine how that would be for us if we knew that the Russians helped some other country assassinate our chairman,” the official told the NYT. “Like, we’d go to war.”

European Command also had sweeping oversight of the Ukrainian use of the HIMARS missile system, the Americans retaining the ability to shut off the activation key cards required to fire the missiles, according to the NYT. HIMARS strikes regularly resulted in hundreds of Russian deaths weekly.

Advisers regularly made visits to the frontlines of the war, referred to as “subject matter experts” in their official capacity, according to the NYT. Their official names only changed back to “advisers” once Ukrainian leadership changed, which was also followed by a threefold increase in advisers.

Despite the deep cooperation, there was often tension between the U.S. and Ukraine, with Kiev often accusing the Americans of being overbearing, while the Americans questioned why sometimes Ukrainians did not heed their advice, according to the NYT.

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