Exxon Mobil Corp. (NYSE: XOM) is renovating its 385-acre headquarters in Spring to accommodate a new research center, which will relocate up to 600 employees to the Houston area and hire additional people locally.
The oil and gas supermajor is closing its other research centers around North America — two locations in Canada and one in New Jersey — and will build up the Houston area as its only remaining research center in the region. However, a few employees will remain in Canada and report to Houston.
While the company has other research centers around the world, Exxon decided this was the best move for North America.
“Houston is, from a research perspective, the mass center of activity. We do some work in other parts of the world, but our research capability is one that we predominantly deliver from the U.S. — and in particular, Houston — in the future,” Mike Zamora, president of ExxonMobil Technology and Engineering Co., told the Houston Business Journal.
“[The consolidation] stems from a belief that we can more effectively deliver the technology we need in the future if we bring it all together in Houston.”
Although Exxon has had a huge presence in Houston for years, it officially moved its headquarters to Spring last year. Zamora said having the research facility at the center of the headquarters — in the Science building, to be specific — will breed the necessary collaboration for the technology business, given its involvement with every aspect of Exxon’s business.
The research center will take up a large portion of the Science building, using space on the campus that in the past may have been considered available to lease out to outside parties. In 2022, the Wall Street Journal reported that Exxon was considering leasing or selling unused office space because less than 50% of the campus was being used on a day-to-day basis. Now, Exxon is not exploring options to lease out space at its Spring headquarters at this time.
The center's initial construction will take place over 18 to 24 months, and the consolidation of the research centers should be complete by early 2028. In that time, Exxon will be moving equipment from New Jersey to Spring and to the Baytown area to set up demonstration facilities.
“We're building [the research center] out to be much bigger than it is today, but it's really… sized for us to deliver the technologies that we need for the future,” Zamora said.
“We’re not building this for the next two years. We’re designing this to deliver the technology that is the foundation of the future success of Exxon Mobil. We're a technology company, so technology is the foundation of that future success.”
Of the researchers affected by the consolidation, most are located in Clinton, New Jersey, and they were all offered jobs in the Houston area, across Spring, Baytown and Friendswood. In total, 600 people were given offers to relocate in the coming years, and Exxon is encouraging them to do so if they can.
“We've offered relocation to hundreds of people that we really want to entice to come down here,” Zamora said. "In fact, we've given them a lot of information and done fairs up in New Jersey. We're bringing them down here later this year to show them not only what Exxon Mobil has to offer, but what Houston has to offer, in the hopes of encouraging them to come, and we've gotten favorable feedback thus far."
Exxon will also be hiring locally to find talent that can operate the laboratories and pilot plants. The company said it will determine those hiring needs closer to the completion of the consolidation in 2028.
Zamora added that the Houston area has a great amount of talent to recruit from, which will help fill an ongoing need for employees at the research center.
“If you think about the depth of the industry that exists in Texas, and in particular in the Houston area, we think that's an awesome place to source talent with the skills required today and in the future,” Zamora said.
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