Hess Corporation (formerly Amerada Hess Corporation) is an American global independent energy company involved in the exploration and production of crude oil and natural gas. It was formed by the merger of Hess Oil and Chemical and Amerada Petroleum in 1968. Leon Hess was CEO from the early 1960s until 1995, after which his son John B Hess succeeded him as chairman and CEO. The company agreed to be acquired by rival oil company Chevron in October 2023, and the acquisition closed in July 2025.
Headquartered in New York City, the company ranked 394th in the 2016 annual ranking of Fortune 500 corporations. In 2020, the Forbes Global 2000 ranked Hess as the 1,253rd largest public company in the world.
The company had exploration and production operations on-shore in the United States (North Dakota) and Libya; and off-shore in the United States (Gulf of Mexico), Canada, South America (Guyana and Suriname) and Southeast Asia (Malaysia and the Joint Development Area of Malaysia and Thailand).
History Amerada Corporation In 1919, British oil entrepreneur Lord Cowdray formed the Amerada Corporation to explore oil production in North America. The firm was incorporated on February 7, 1920, in Delaware as a holding company for its principal subsidiary, the Amerada Petroleum Corporation. The oil producer experienced growth during most of the 1920s, hitting a peak in 1926 with a net income of US$4.9 million. However, in the years leading to the Great Depression, weakness in the oil markets contributed to sluggish profits. The aftermath of the Wall Street Crash of 1929 aggravated an already unsteady oil industry. In the first quarter of 1930, the company experienced a minor loss. The early years of the Depression were a struggle against wavering demand and overproduction in some regions. Later into the 1930s, financial forecasts for Amerada became more positive.
In December 1941, the company reorganized by merging the holding company and the principal operating subsidiary, Amerada Petroleum Corporation, into a simplified operating company. The new entity also adopted the former subsidiary's name.
During the 1950s, the company expanded into pipelining and refining. In 1951, it discovered oil in the Bakken formation near Tioga, North Dakota. In 1955, robust post-war growth grew the company to over US$100 million in annual sales. In 1964, Amerada, Shell plc, Marathon, and Continental formed the Oasis Group, a consortium to explore in Libya.
Hess Oil and Chemical
Hess Oil and Chemical was founded in 1933 by Leon Hess as an operation out of Asbury Park, New Jersey that sold refining leftovers to hotels as heating fuel. In 1938, he purchased land in Perth Amboy for his first oil storage terminal and in 1958 opened the company's first refinery, located in Port Reading. The company went public in 1962 after merging with the Cletrac Corporation, a company that made farm equipment.
In October 1966, the company opened an oil refinery on Saint Croix of the US Virgin Islands under Hess Oil Virgin Islands Corporation.
In 1966, Hess paid $100 million to the British government to acquire 10% of Amerada. Albert Levinson became the senior vice president and designed the modern-day Hess logo.
Amerada and Hess merger In December 1968, Hess and Amerada announced plans for a merger. Some Amerada stockholders, led by Morton Adler, criticized the arrangement as being too favorable for Hess. Before the stockholder vote, Phillips Petroleum, an integrated oil firm, approached Amerada with its merger proposal, but the offer was declined in March 1969. Still interested, Phillips nonetheless stated it would not carry out a lawsuit against the proposed Hess deal.
Hess, fearing such a strategy, made a cash tender offer of US$140 million for an additional 1.1 million shares of Amerada, which would double its holding in the company. The new claims would be employed in a May stockholder vote deciding the merger's fate. The voting took place amidst shareholder rancor that, in addition to echoing Adler's arguments, objected to Amerada's financing of the recently completed tender offer.
Hess planned to cancel the shares, and the newly formed company would absorb the cost of the acquisition. One shareholder at the meeting quipped, "It looks to me as if Hess is buying Amerada with Amerada's money." Proponents of the deal won and the $2.4 billion merger combining a pure production company with a refinery and marketer operation was completed.
However, the controversy was not yet extinguished. A federal class-action lawsuit was filed in 1972, which claimed that the proxy vote information was misleading. In 1976, a court agreed that the company falsely claimed to have considered each company's assets as a reason for the merger.
Amerada Hess Corporation In May 1970, Amerada Hess drilled the first successful wildcat well in Prudhoe Bay on Alaska's North Slope. In August, it joined with seven other companies to form Alyeska Pipeline Service Company in order to build and operate the $900‐million, 800‐mile Trans-Alaska Pipeline System.
In October 1970, Hess stepped down from his role as chairman and CEO. However, after profits declined, he took back his roles in August 1972. The company's president and executive vice president resigned. In October 1974, Hess announced it would close its refinery in Port Reading, New Jersey. To compensate, the company would expand its activities at its Virgin Islands and Mississippi locations, including an $18 million container port in St. Croix.
In December 1981, Hess joined with Mobil in its bid to acquire Marathon and avoid antitrust concerns. However the deal ultimately fell through and United States Steel Corporation proved to be the winning bid. Hess stepped down from his role as CEO in May 1982. Company president Philip Kramer replaced him, while Hess remained chairman. In November 1985, the company acquired the London-based Monsanto Oil Company from Monsanto to increase its interests in two oilfields in the North Sea. In July 1988, Amerada Hess announced it would acquire Whitehall Ltd., a British oil and gas exploration company, from Pearson PLC for $160 million. The deal included Whitehall's interests in the Ivanhoe, Rob Roy, Waverley, Forties, Alba, and Anglia oil fields, as well as significant North Sea gas reserves.
In September 1990, Amerada Hess acquired British Petroleum's stake in Norway's Brage oil field, which was due to start producing in 1994. The company closed a Mississippi refinery in January 1994, eliminating 160 jobs. In October, Amerada Hess formed a joint venture with Gabon to gain access to the Rabi-Kounga oil field. In 1995, Hess stepped down as chairman and CEO of the company, and was replaced by his son, John Hess. He died in May 1999.
In April 1996, Petro-Canada paid $538 million to Amerada Hess Corp. for all shares of its Amerada Hess Canada Ltd subsidiary. In May, Hess announced it would sell nine United States oil and natural gas fields and use the expected $324 million in proceeds to pay off debt. It also allowed the company to focus on its more profitable operations in the Virgin Islands and North Sea. In February 1998, Hess sold 50% of its Virgin Islands refinery for $625 million. Operations were taken over by Hovensa LLC, a joint venture between Hess and the Venezuelan state-owned PDVSA.
In February 2000, Hess acquired the Meadville Corporation and rebranded all 178 Merit gas stations as Hess. The Merit gas station chain was primarily located in the Boston, New York, and Philadelphia markets. In April, the company spent $555 million for a 49% stake in the state-owned Sonatrach to develop the El Gassi, El Agreb and Zotti fields in Algeria.
In July 2001, Amerada Hess purchased Triton Energy Limited for $2.6 billion in order to put more focus on exploration. After the deal, the company's oil production increased to 535,000 barrels a day and 38% of its reserves were outside of the US and North Sea. Triton's major oil and gas assets in West Africa, Latin America and Southeast Asia would strengthen its exploration and production business and provide access to long life international reserves. Hess also stated that the purchase was expected to immediately increase the company's per-day barrel output by more than 25 percent.
Similarly in 2001, Amerada Hess entered into a joint venture with A.T. Williams Oil Co. of Winston-Salem, North Carolina. The company and the gas stations were changed and called WilcoHess. After the joint merger, there existed some 1200 WilcoHess stations.
Following on the heels of the Triton purchase, energy prices fell and global economies weakened. Amerada Hess struggled through the following years, and in 2002 posted a US$218 million loss due primarily to a US$530 million charge relating to its write-down of the Ceiba oil field. In March 2002, TXU Europe bought the UK retail gas and electricity business of Amerada Hess. It also sold its 1.5 percent stake in the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System to ConocoPhillips in February 2003. In2June, the company 6 oil and gas fields in the Gulf of Mexico to the Anadarko Petroleum Corporation and agreed to trade some properties with the EnCana Corporation. Further, Amerada Hess cut exploration and production jobs by 30 percent and reduced office space in Aberdeen, Scotland, and London.
However, from 2003 through 2006, Amerada Hess posted steadily increasing profits as the company reported US$1.920 billion in net income.
Hess Corporation In May 2006, Amerada Hess Corporation changed its name to Hess Corporation. In May 2010, Hess announced a joint venture with Toreador Resources of France to develop Toreador's one million gross acres in France's Paris Basin. In July, Hess announced it would acquire the independent American Oil & Gas for $445 million.
Proxy battle with Elliott Associates In the first half of 2013, Hess was subjected to a proxy battle against activist investor Elliott Associates, which owned 4% of its stock at the time. Elliott criticized Hess for being "distracted" from oil exploration and production by other activities, wasting capital, and relying too heavily on the Hess family and their allies.
In January 2013, Elliott announced its intentions to acquire additional Hess stock. It also called on Hess to sell certain assets and asked Hess investors to vote for five new directors as part of an effort to reconfigure the oil firm and thus boost its share price. "Buried within Hess Corp. is one of the premier U.S. resource play-focused companies," Elliott wrote. Another Hess stockholder, Relational Investors, came out in support of Elliott.
A point of contention was that several members of the company's board were close associates of the Hess family and did not have experience in oil. These included former New Jersey governor Thomas Kean, former Georgia senator Samuel A. Nunn, and Gregory Hill, the president of worldwide exploration and production for Hess. Elliott announced five candidates for board seats.
In March, Hess announced that it was acting on some of Elliott's suggestions. It replaced six directors, raised its dividends, and introduced a stock buyback. The company also announced its plan to sell off the Hess stations division and all other consumer-facing endeavors. However, Elliott said that Hess' changes fell far short of what was needed. Relational was also unimpressed. In April, it was reported that Hess would close its London office on Elliott's advice.
By May, Elliott had the support of influential advisors Institutional Shareholder Services and Glass Lewis. The company announced it would split the chief executive and president roles in a move to appease shareholders. John B. Hess remained as chief executive. A deal was finally reached hours before the company's annual investor meeting with shareholders. Hess agreed to give Elliott three board seats if it supported the company's five nominees.