Pioneer founder Scott Sheffield no longer wants to join Exxon board after FTC ruling

Longtime shale boss and North Texas energy titan Scott Sheffield said he’s no longer interested in joining Exxon Mobil Corp.’s board after the U.S. Federal Trade Commission set aside orders barring the founder of Pioneer Natural Resources Co. from the oil giant.

The agency, which on Thursday also cleared the way for Hess Corp. Chief Executive Officer John Hess to join Chevron Corp.’s board, had blocked both executives saying they sought to communicate with OPEC about oil pricing and output.

“Exxon signed a rushed, baseless and illegal order barring me and other Pioneer employees from taking an Exxon board seat,” Sheffield said Friday in a statement. “In doing so, they effectively broke the commitment they made to me in their merger agreement with Pioneer, the company I founded and led for over 40 years.”

Exxon didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Both Sheffield and Hess deny they colluded with OPEC. Exxon bought Pioneer last year for $63 billion. Chevron’s proposed $53 billion takeover of Hess is still pending. The deal cleared a key hurdle Friday when Hess and Chevron won in an arbitration case filed by Exxon to block the deal over a massive oil field in Guyana.

Chevron said it welcomed the FTC’s decision.

“Mr. Hess is a highly respected industry leader, and our board would benefit from his global experience, relationships and expertise,” a company spokesman said in a statement.

Chevron and Hess jointly petitioned the FTC to remove its ban on John Hess, while Sheffield filed his request on his own. The requests came just weeks after President Donald Trump fired the agency’s two Democratic commissioners and Republican dissenters from the Sheffield and Hess rulings assumed the majority.

FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson, who took the helm of the agency in January when U.S. President Donald Trump began his second term, had dissented from the decision to bar Sheffield and Hess from the boards.

After reviewing the earlier rulings, the commissioners concluded that since the agency didn’t find that takeovers would be anticompetitive or violate any antitrust laws, barring Hess and Sheffield from the boards would undermine the FTC’s mission and damage its credibility, the agency said Thursday.

- David Wethe and Kevin Crowley for Bloomberg