Occidental Petroleum to split company, move to Houston

Occidental Petroleum, the largest public company in Los Angeles, recently announced it will move its headquarters to Houston from its current location in Westwood Village, in the building adjacent to the UCLA Hammer Museum.

Only three Fortune 500 companies will remain headquartered in Los Angeles after the company, which is commonly known as Oxy, completes its move. None will be headquartered in Westwood. Last year, there were 43 Fortune 500 companies based in New York City and 24 based in Houston.

Oxy officials also announced it will separate its California business into a new company that will have about 8,000 employees and be the state’s largest natural gas producer, according to a press statement released this month.Oxy has not announced where the new company’s headquarters will be located, but politicians in Long Beach have expressed interest in hosting it.

“Creating two separate energy companies will result in more focused businesses that will be competitive industry leaders,” said Stephen I. Chazen, president of Oxy, in the press release.

Melissa Schoeb, Oxy’s vice president of communications and public affairs, said she anticipates Oxy will continue to own the Wilshire Boulevard building for the next few years, and that it will keep some employees there for the next year or two.

The Hammer Museum has the option to purchase the 15-story building and the adjacent museum building for $55 million using funds in its investment portfolio, when the museum’s rent-free lease agreement with Oxy expires in 2021. The option was made possible about 25 years ago when the museum first opened. Hammer Museum was founded by Armand Hammer, the former chairman of Oxy.

Sarah Stifler, spokeswoman for the Hammer Museum, said the museum has not made a final decision about its option to purchase the building.

Although Oxy’s staff will no longer be housed in the Westwood building in 2021, the Hammer Museum will still have the option to purchase the building, Schoeb said.

The Los Angeles Business Journal reported last year that Oxy had been slowly moving staff from the Westwood building to Houston and the company was only using a few of the building’s floors.

Steve Sann, chairman of the Westwood Community Council, said the possibility of new tenants in Oxy’s building in the future is promising for Westwood’s local economy.

“While we’re sorry to see any company leave Los Angeles, there could in the end be a silver lining for Westwood,” Sann said.

He said that because Oxy kept the building largely empty for the past several years, it reduced the number of people who worked, ate lunch and spent money in Westwood.

Sann added that the building is a valuable piece of real estate because it is on Wilshire Boulevard and near the planned Westwood Purple Line subway stop.

Jeff Millman, a spokesman for Mayor Eric Garcetti, said in an email statement that the move was unsurprising because Oxy has business operations outside of California and had been discussing moving for a long time. He said the mayor is working to bring new companies and jobs to L.A.

Oxy expects to announce the management of the new California company and complete the separation by the beginning of 2015, the press release said.