Three Eldridge Place has lain vacant for close to two years as a tough economic environment took its toll on the city’s commercial property market, but deals have now been struck on all its available office space, according to Houston-based Chron.com.
Kristen Rabel from CBRE, the building’s leasing agency, told the website her company was keen to find the right deal with a large-scale corporate operator, and BP eventually fit the bill.
“We didn’t want to discount it and give it away,” she said.
Texas is among the world’s leading office-space destinations for energy companies, including BP, with Houston and Dallas the region’s leading cities, but even some of the world’s biggest oil and energy companies put their expansion plans on hold as economic prospects grew increasingly uncertain in recent months.
BP reportedly committed to occupying half the available office space at Three Eldridge Place in Houston earlier this year but later decided a deal for the entire property was the right way forward.
BP is best known as an oil production giant, but its new offices in Houston are set to house some of its renewable energy experts currently based in offices either in Chicago or San Francisco.
Rabel from CBRE suggested that the prospects for office space in Houston’s Energy Corridor are picking up and that expansion plans are being re-initiated in the city’s well-known sub-market.
Editor’s notes: As of July 2023, BP’s Houston address was 501 Westlake Park Boulevard. Also known as Westlake One, the property also acted as the company’s US headquarters.
As part of the fit-out, which was managed by architect Gensler, BP also retained WeWork to design two of the floors of the building to incorporate a coworking feel into the space.
As of July 2023, oil company Exxon Mobil occupied the 385-acre campus in Houston.
At the time, BP was the 8th largest oil and gas company in the world, with a market capitalisation of $105.92 billion. Exxon Mobil is the 2nd largest with a market cap of $422.65 billion, and Saudi Aramco is the largest with a market capitalisation of $2.077 trillion.
In September 2026, BP’s North American headquarters remained at 501 Westlake Park Boulevard in Houston.
In March 2026, it had been reported that BP was moving its London headquarters to a 192,000-square-foot building called Timber Square in Bankside.
In August 2026, it was confirmed that BP was moving out of its St James’s office, where it had based its London headquarters since 2002.
BP had sold 1 St James’s Square for £250m in a sale-and-leaseback deal in 2020 to Hong Kong-based retail operator Lifestyle International Holdings.
Czech developer KKCG Real Estate then acquired 1 St James’s Square £291 million in August with plans to refurbish once the oil giant vacated in April 2028 creating circa 120,000 square feet of prime office space with EPC ‘A’, BREEAM ‘Outstanding’, NABERS 5.5* and WELL Platinum credentials.
In September 2026, the largest publicly traded oil and gas company in the world was Saudi Arabia’s Saudi Aramco, with a market capitalisation of $1.68 trillion.
BP was the 12th-largest oil and gas company with a market capitalisation of $114.81 billion.
At the same time, the largest publicly traded company in the world was California-based Nvidia, a developer of graphics processors and chipsets for personal computers and game consoles, with a market capitalisation of $5.55 trillion.