Exxon to Move HQ to Greater Houston

Exxon Corporate Headquarters Building

Exxon Mobil Corp. will relocate its headquarters to Greater Houston. The multinational oil and gas company is set to leave its current location at the 356,829-square-foot Class A office building in Irving, Texas, for the 385-acre ExxonMobil Corporate Campus in Spring, Texas, some 25 miles north of Houston. Exxon Mobil plans to finalize the move by mid-2023.

The owner-occupied Exxon Corporate Headquarters Building on nearly 23 acres at 5959 Las Colinas Blvd., in Irving, was completed in 1995. The single-building, three-story Class A office property features a parking ratio of 1.7 spaces per 1,000 square feet.

Meanwhile, ExxonMobil Corporate Campus at 22777 Springwoods Village Parkway, in Spring, includes multiple low-rise office buildings along with a research facility, which opened in 2014. The mixed-use business park features a meeting and training center as well as wellness and child development centers and several dining options among other amenities.

The headquarters relocation comes amid internal restructuring, including plans to unite the company’s chemical and downstream oil and gas segments. Starting in April, the restructuring will result in three businesses: ExxonMobil Upstream Co., ExxonMobil Product Solutions and ExxonMobil Low Carbon Solutions with ExxonMobil Technology and Engineering supporting the trio.

Houston office market

The office vacancy rate throughout the Houston office market continued to climb during 2021 and ended the year with a vacancy rate of 24.3 percent, representing a 220-basis-point increase year-over-year and well above the national average of 15.5 percent, CommercialEdge data shows. As of December 2021, the Greater Houston area had more than 5 million square feet of office developments underway, accounting to 2.1 percent of total stock.

Despite uncertainty in the sector, last October, The Howard Hughes Corp. secured a $250 million refinancing for a 806,000-square-foot office high-rise in The Woodlands, Texas, another Houston suburb. More recently, the company also obtained a $127 million loan for an office campus totaling 650,000 square feet in the same Houston suburb.