The largest companies in Houston: 30 headquarters ranked by revenue, 23 of them in energy

This ranking is for readers who need the Houston area's largest headquarters in order with figures they can trace: job seekers, suppliers and contractors chasing corporate work, investors, and B2B sellers planning energy accounts. It covers SEC-registered public companies whose latest 10-K gives a head office in the Houston-Pasadena-The Woodlands metro. For the full market of 162,055 business establishments, see companies in Houston.

The 30 largest companies headquartered in Houston

Each row comes from the company's latest annual report on Form 10-K: the head office on its cover, revenue as reported, and the headcount in its human capital section.

Headcounts are worldwide and use each filing's definition. Exxon Mobil counts "regular employees" and gives the figure in thousands. Enterprise Products has no employees of its own; it reports the personnel of its affiliate EPCO who work on its business. Occidental's figure excludes OxyChem, which it reports as a discontinued operation. LyondellBasell's 10-K lists three principal executive offices, in Houston, London and Rotterdam. Plains GP Holdings, which consolidates Plains All American, and Cheniere Energy Partners, which Cheniere controls, report overlapping revenue and aren't listed separately.

Energy is 84% of the revenue

Twenty-three of the 30, with $1.12 trillion between them, are in energy, chemicals or power: 83.5% of the list. Quanta Services builds and maintains electric grids and pipelines, and KBR does engineering and government services, so even the "outside energy" group leans toward it.

Big revenue, small headcounts

Revenue per employee shows how differently these companies are built. These are our calculations from the table:

Producers, refiners and pipeline companies sell commodities in huge volumes with small staffs, so a few thousand people control very large budgets. Service companies such as SLB, Quanta and Waste Management are the opposite: big field workforces, where anything priced per worker or per truck adds up fast.

Who isn't on the list, and why

The US arms of foreign energy groups, such as Shell Oil Company, which appeared on the City of Houston's principal employer lists through 2020, don't file 10-Ks, and private companies don't publish results.

Fortune 500 companies in Houston

The Greater Houston Partnership counts 27 Fortune 500 companies headquartered in the Houston metro on the June 2026 list, second only to New York's 62 and level with Chicago, and its Houston Facts 2026 report counts 43 Fortune 1000 headquarters. Fortune applies its own revenue definitions and fiscal-year cutoffs, so its ranks can differ from this table; use Fortune for ranks and this list for figures you can trace to a filing.

Selling to Houston's largest companies

Energy companies separate two kinds of buying. Anything that sends people or equipment onto a plant, rig or pipeline right-of-way goes through contractor safety prequalification, insurance requirements and a master service agreement before the first job. Office and digital purchases go through procurement and IT security like any large company. The 10-K tells you which operations matter most: segment and properties sections name the basins, plants and pipeline systems where the money is spent.

Illustrative example. The seller and its figures are fictional; the company figures are from the table.

Gulf Coast Aerial (gulfcoastaerial.example) inspects pipelines and storage terminals with drones and wants the five pipeline and LNG companies in the top 30.

• Enterprise Products, Plains All American, Cheniere, Targa and Kinder Morgan reported $150.8 billion of revenue with about 28,200 people between them.
• Each runs inspection programs across many assets, so Gulf Coast Aerial prices a regional contract at $250,000 a year; two contracts would be $500,000.
• It starts with the integrity management or asset integrity lead for one region, then expands once its data is in their systems.

Bebop can find the integrity management leaders at each of the five and draft outreach based on the assets each describes in its 10-K.

Subject: Faster inspection data for [system or region]

Hi [first name],

[Company]'s 10-K describes [number] miles of pipeline in [region]. On most systems that size, the slow part of an inspection program is getting crews out and the data back into your integrity software.

We fly drone inspections of pipelines and terminals along the Gulf Coast and deliver the results in your format within a week. Would a pilot on one segment be useful?

[Your name], Gulf Coast Aerial

Next step: prepare for accounts like these with enterprise account research.