Sen. Schumer calls on FTC to stop Chevron merger with Hess

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has called on the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to intervene in the proposed merger between Chevron (CVX) and Hess (HES), valued at $53 billion. Schumer claims the merger will allow oil companies to raise gas prices.

Yahoo Finance Anchors Seana Smith and Jared Blikre discuss what these developments mean for the energy sector.

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This post was written by Nicholas Jacobino

Video transcript

Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer.

He actually called on the FTC to stop Chevron's proposed $53 billion acquisition of Hess Schumer saying that the mega murder is going to give oil companies quote more fuel to raise gas prices.

We aren't seeing much of a movement now here in Chevron earnings but not necessarily a huge surprise when you take into account some of the rhetoric that we have heard from Zer and his colleagues here over the last several weeks.

But again, just at the, at least this time urging the FTC to stop this merger, we'll see.

Yeah, we'll have to see.

This comes after a couple of different, a couple of big deals in the oil patch Exxon just closed its deal with pioneer.

That was a $60 billion deal.

That was its biggest acquisition in two decades.

So this one with Hess that Chevron has been considering, this is a pretty big deal as well.

It's to increase some of their foothold in Guyana.

That's an and coming field, uh the fields in South America by Venezuela, those dwarf what we have in Saudi Arabia, Arabia and some of the Middle East.

So there's lots to be done there and we're just in the beginning stages, but it always comes back in the oil patch to returning uh shareholder capital.

So they got to do buy backs, they got to invest in Capex or they got to do some kind of M and A and that seems to be one of the later trends.