Chevron sealed its takeover of a smaller rival, Hess, after prevailing over Exxon Mobil in a high-stakes legal dispute Friday. The deal gave Chevron a stake in one of the world’s most valuable oil developments.

The $53 billion deal had been tied up for nearly two years by a contract dispute argued before the Paris-based International Chamber of Commerce.

Getting the green light to finally buy Hess was a major win for Chevron, America’s second-largest oil company, which is based in Houston and had been facing growing investor concerns about its future should the deal be blocked.

In Hess, Chevron acquired a piece of a lucrative oil project off the shores of Guyana, in South America. It also gained an array of other assets, from North Dakota to Southeast Asia, that extend the company’s runway of drilling opportunities and give it the ability to better compete with the likes of Exxon, its larger U.S. rival.

Chevron wasted little time closing the acquisition. News of the legal decision came just after 5 a.m. Eastern on Friday, said Mike Wirth, Chevron’s CEO. By 8:30 a.m., the companies had merged.

“The outcome’s not only good for Chevron, it’s also good for the entire industry,” Wirth said in an interview with The New York Times.

Exxon and Chevron have been fighting over Hess’ stake in Guyana for more than a year, at great cost to Chevron. The battle left the smaller oil major in limbo, unable to complete its deal for Hess — and also unable to move on.

Chevron’s stock price had suffered, falling around 9% from when the company announced the Hess deal in October 2023 through Thursday. For Exxon, whose share price rose less than 1% in that time, there was comparatively little to lose.

Chevron’s stock price closed down around 1% Friday. Exxon’s stock fell 3.5%.

Their dispute was rooted in the fine print of a contract that has never been made public.

The Guyana development is a partnership among three companies. Exxon operates the project and holds the largest stake, followed by Hess and CNOOC, a Chinese state-owned oil company. Their project is considered one of the most promising in the world and is expected to single-handedly produce around 1% of the world’s oil within a few years, according to the International Energy Agency.

Exxon said Hess couldn’t sell itself without first giving Exxon the opportunity to buy its stake in the development. Chevron and Hess maintained that Exxon was not interpreting the terms of the partnership in Guyana correctly.

With the companies unable to come to an agreement, the fate of the deal ended up in the hands of a panel of arbitrators who heard the case behind closed doors in late May. The case involved the three partners in the project, which meant that Chevron was technically not a party to the proceeding.

Wirth described the arbitrators’ decision as affirming “a long-standing practice and understanding that asset-level rights of first refusal do not apply in parent company merger and acquisition transactions.”

CNOOC said it was disappointed in the arbitration panel’s decision, and Exxon said it disagreed with it.

“We welcome Chevron to the venture and look forward to continued industry-leading performance and value creation in Guyana for all parties involved,” an Exxon spokesperson said in a statement.

On Wall Street, analysts expressed relief that this long-running dispute between America’s largest oil companies was over.

“I guess now we know and can move on past this soap opera,” RBC Capital Markets analysts wrote in a note to investors.

Chevron is in the middle of a cost-cutting effort that is expected to shrink its workforce by 15% to 20%. That does not include the employees it will gain from Hess.

Wirth said Friday that Chevron would soon provide more specific guidance on how many employees the combined company would maintain. “Typically in a transaction like this there are overlaps,” he said.

Taking over Hess gives Chevron momentum during a tricky time for oil and gas producers.

The Trump administration is catering to fossil fuel companies by stripping away regulations, giving them more tax breaks and making it more expensive to develop alternatives like wind and solar power. But President Donald Trump has been very clear that he prefers oil to be cheap, and he is pursuing a trade war that has helped make it so.

Oil prices have fallen on concerns that higher trade barriers would slow economic growth, meaning fewer people flying, driving to work and shipping materials around the world. Inexpensive energy is good for consumers but bad for oil companies’ bottom lines.

The main U.S. oil price settled around $67 a barrel Friday afternoon, about $10 lower than just before Trump took office.