OKLAHOMA CITY-An NBA basketball team. An Olympic rowing facility. The state's tallest skyscraper. All were lavished on this mid-American city by two oil-and-gas companies and their leaders over decades of investment to lure top talent.

Now, the partnership has run into a Texas-shaped wall. Devon Energy and Expand Energy-the successor of Chesapeake Energy-said in back-to-back announcements this year that they were moving headquarters to a more desirable location: Houston.

Just like that, Oklahoma City is losing its two largest public oil-and-gas companies, with market values of about $52 billion and $20 billion, respectively.

The abrupt exits have frazzled some of the city's elder statesmen, chagrined politicians-and prompted some chief executives to make not-so-subtle digs at their former neighbors.

The companies have said they would maintain a large presence in Oklahoma City, but some officials fear that will dwindle over time.

"We should be asking why Oklahoma keeps building energy companies only to watch so many of them eventually move south," said state Sen. Dusty Deevers.

The corporate migration carries extra sting because the companies were by far the top corporate boosters in Oklahoma City. They erected sprawling campuses and upscale strip malls-and even helped turn a moribund river into an Olympic water-sports venue. The drive from the airport to the city center is studded with signs celebrating the Oklahoma City Thunder, which won its first NBA championship two seasons ago.

The departures are the latest sign that a frenzy of oil-and-gas mergers is consolidating the energy industry in Houston. Devon announced its departure after inking a deal to merge with Houston-based Coterra Energy. Chesapeake merged with Southwestern Energy, which was based in north Houston, two years ago and changed its name to Expand.

Oil giants ExxonMobil and Chevron both based in the Houston region, have acquired rivals once based in New York, Denver and Irving, Texas and centralized corporate functions in Houston.

"People don't understand that locating in Houston is like moving a film company to Hollywood," said Oklahoma City Mayor David Holt.

Devon has said moving its top executives to Texas will create more opportunities for the company. A spokeswoman said its commitment to and presence in Oklahoma City hadn't changed, and the city remained a major operations center.

Expand has said relocating will allow it to be closer to other energy companies and customers. The size of its Oklahoma City workforce remains largely unchanged, and its operations team remains there.

Some business leaders note that Oklahoma City's reliance on the oil-and-gas industry as a growth engine has waned. The sector counts about 10,000 jobs in the region, down more than half from 2018, stemming in part from pandemic-era layoffs as oil prices crashed and natural-gas prices sagged.

Long gone are the days when fortune seekers plopped drilling rigs behind the State Capitol. The aerospace and healthcare industries are among the region's largest employers, with companies such as Boeing employing thousands of people.

But the oil-and-gas industry still accounts for about 13% of the region's gross product, according to the Greater Oklahoma City Chamber. Devon has about 1,000 employees in Oklahoma City and Expand about 500. With the companies moving, Oklahoma is losing two Fortune 500 companies. The remaining three are pipeline companies Oneok and Williams, both based in Tulsa, and oil-and-gas producer Continental Resources, in Oklahoma City.

John Nichols, a former accountant, and his son Larry, a former law clerk to Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren, founded Devon in 1971. They built the middling family business into a producer active in New Mexico, Texas and Oklahoma. In 2002, Devon bought Texas operator Mitchell Energy, which mastered the technique of fracking shale rock to squeeze out fossil fuel. Devon combined the innovation with horizontal drilling-and helped unleash the shale revolution that turned the U.S. into the world's top producer of oil and natural gas.

The company saw itself as an enduring presence in Oklahoma City. In 2012, it cut the ribbon on a $750 million, 50-story skyscraper to house employees. For the six-story glass rotunda that serves as the entrance, architects picked wood from the Republic of Congo and white granite from India's Kashmir. Devon lent the city $95 million to revamp the public streets, parks and sidewalks of downtown, paid back with its own tax dollars.

As that company reshaped the city's skyline, Chesapeake took on ambitious projects of its own. Founded in 1989 by Aubrey McClendon and Tom Ward, Chesapeake became proficient at fracking for natural gas and in the 2000s grew at breakneck speed. It employed more than 11,000 in 2011, with roughly one-third in Oklahoma City, and McClendon said it received about 500 résumés a day.

Chesapeake built a 50-acre, Georgian-style corporate complex modeled after a college campus that it went on to expand, complete with four gourmet restaurants, a 72,000-square-foot gym and a vegetable garden. McClendon, a flamboyant billionaire, persuaded Whole Foods to set up shop, developed an upscale shopping center across from the campus, and helped fund several restaurants. Among them was Pops, a soda-and-burger joint on Route 66 that today sells more than 700 flavors of soda.

Earnings calls became an opportunity to promote the flashy amenities to prospective talent. "We pay very well, have excellent benefits, have a beautiful campus," McClendon said in a 2008 call.

That year, he and other owners of Seattle's NBA basketball team, the SuperSonics, moved it to Oklahoma City and rebranded it as the Oklahoma City Thunder. Rambunctious fans soon earned the team's arena the nickname "Loud City." In 2025, the team defeated the Indiana Pacers to win its first NBA championship since relocating.

Chesapeake was the primary funder of the first boathouse on a seven-mile stretch of river on the outskirts of downtown, and it supported developing a sports program to foster a rowing-and-paddling community. Today, the so-called Boathouse District is an Olympic training site that attracts Ivy League rowers. The canoe and kayak slalom paddle events for the 2028 Los Angeles Summer Olympics will take place at a white-water venue at the river complex.

McClendon died in a car crash a decade ago, but Mike Knopp, founder of Riversport Foundation, the nonprofit that operates the site, credits him with planting the seeds of the Olympic project.

"He went along with that ride," Knopp said. "He believed in the big idea."

Oklahoma City has treated McClendon and Larry Nichols as something like patron saints. Larry Nichols stepped down as Devon's CEO in 2010 after 30 years in the role but has remained involved in the city's planning organizations.

The oilman used to tell people that "if you ever see that Devon Energy is moving to Houston in the paper, turn the pages to the obituaries, and there you will find me," said Holt, the mayor. Devon's departure has saddened and disappointed Larry Nichols, people close to him said.

Coterra made it a condition of the merger with Devon that the combined entity be based in Houston, according to people familiar with the matter.

Expand's change of address has created some drama of its own: Then-CEO Domenic Dell'Osso opposed the relocation, which contributed to his decision to step down. He has since become CEO of Gulfport Energy, a roughly $3 billion company based in Oklahoma City.

"We are proud to call Oklahoma City our home and are confident that it will remain a vital part of the American energy landscape for years to come," Dell'Osso said in a statement.

Other companies have pledged to stay put, including Continental, founded by billionaire Harold Hamm.

"I made up my mind that I was born and raised in Oklahoma, I am an Oklahoman, and I'm going to continue to be an Oklahoman," Hamm told a local newspaper in February.

Hamm said of Devon CEO Clay Gaspar: "He's a Texas A&M grad, a Texan, so I guess he felt like they needed to be in Houston."

Some state lawmakers are concerned Oklahoma isn't doing enough to retain companies.

Deevers, a Republican, has introduced legislation to eliminate individual and corporate income taxes, saying taxes affect where executives, capital and companies choose to locate. Texas doesn't levy corporate income or personal income taxes.

Senate Democratic leader Julia Kirt said Oklahoma offered oil-and-gas companies plenty of corporate incentives, but they chose to leave anyway. She said the state should instead focus on improving its public-education system.

Most agree that Devon and Expand won't be easily replaced.

"We won't have the CEOs sitting at the table," Kirt said.