Chevron and Exxon discussed the merger last year: reports

Chevron and ExxonMobil CEOs discussed the possibility of merging the two companies last year, The Wall Street Journal reported Sunday, citing anonymous people familiar with the talks.

The newspaper reported that Chevron CEO Michael Wirth and Exxon CEO Darren Woods talked about the outlook after the Covid-19 pandemic began to negatively impact oil prices.

The talks are not ongoing and were described as preliminary, according to the newspaper. Representatives of both companies declined to comment. Reuters later reported the talks.

A merger between Chevron and Exxon would be one of the most important in history and would likely face an antitrust control by President Joe Biden’s Justice Department. Both companies come from John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil, which was broken by the Supreme Court in 1911.

Chevron’s market cap is $ 164 billion and Exxon’s is $ 189 billion, which means the combined company would be worth $ 350 billion to the north. The combined company would be the second largest oil and gas company in the world, after Saudi Aramco.

Oil prices have recovered much of their losses since the March crater, although they have remained somewhat depressed amid slower-than-expected vaccine deployments and concerns about new variants of the coronavirus.

– CNBC’s Pippa Stevens contributed to this report.