Chevron to Split Its U.S.A. Subsidiary : Reorganization: Production and products units will be formed. The president will retire at year’s end.

Chevron Corp. announced Wednesday that it will split up its main subsidiary, Chevron U.S.A., and said the head of the unit is retiring after 38 years with the company.

For San Francisco-based Chevron, the nation’s No. 4 oil concern, it was the latest in a series of reorganization efforts made over the past three years.

W. J. (Will) Price, 60, named president of Chevron U.S.A. four years ago, will retire at the end of this year. As the parent company’s No. 4 executive, he serves on its executive committee.

A Chevron spokesman said Price is leaving to pursue personal interests.

The massive subsidiary Price headed will be divided into two companies: Chevron U.S.A. Production Co., a production and exploration unit, and Chevron U.S.A. Products Co., which will handle oil refining and marketing.

Raymond E. Galvin, 59, will become president of Chevron U.S.A. Production, and David R. Hoyer, 60, was chosen for the corresponding job at Chevron U.S.A. Products. Both now are senior vice presidents of Chevron U.S.A.

A spokesman said no jobs would be cut as a result of the corporate overhaul. Chevron U.S.A. employs 22,800 of the parent company’s 42,000 workers in the United States. Worldwide, Chevron employs 52,000 people.

“This reorganization is consistent with many of the other changes we’ve made at Chevron in recent years,” Kenneth T. Derr, Chevron’s chairman and chief executive, said in a statement. “We have been decentralizing our operations and establishing strategic business units, delegating authority to lower levels, eliminating layers of management and increasing our customer focus throughout our organization.”

Eugene Nowak, an oil industry analyst with Dean Witter Reynolds, said the reorganization would be “very constructive in creating more of a focus on production and marketing.”

He said he didn’t expect the announcement to have an immediate effect on the company’s stock value, however.

Chevron made its announcement after stock markets closed. In trading on the New York Stock Exchange, Chevron finished at $72.875, off 50 cents.

As in much of the energy industry, Chevron’s profits have declined lately. Over the first six months of 1991 its earnings fell 16% from a year earlier, to $941 million on revenues of $20.5 billion.

The company has been hurt by weak natural gas prices and, on the West Coast, softening demand for gasoline.

Nowak predicted that oil industry earnings would be off about 35% in the third quarter, but that Chevron’s decline might be slightly less.