Exxon Mobil
is close to announcing a deal to buy
Pioneer Natural Resources
for about $60 billion, The Wall Street Journal reported.
A deal could be announced in the next few days, the Journal said, citing people familiar with the matter. With a current market value of about $50 billion, Exxon’s purchase would be its biggest since its merger with Mobil in 1999. It would also be bigger than
Occidental Petroleum’s
(ticker: OXY) purchase of Anadarko in 2019 for $38 billion, the most recent megadeal in the oil industry.
Exxon (XOM) slipped 2% in premarket trading to $106.83. Pioneer (PXD) rose 11% to $237.71.
Acquiring Pioneer would make Exxon the dominant player in the U.S. Permian in Texas and New Mexico. Pioneer’s acreage in the Midland Basin, the eastern part of the Permian, has some of the largest untapped fields left in the U.S.
It comes after oil prices started to perk up again after mostly falling this year. Last year’s oil price spike in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine led to record profits for Exxon and the rest of Big Oil. The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and Russia have announced reductions in output to keep prices from falling back too much now.
With energy prices higher, Exxon now has the capacity to explore and produce fuel within the U.S., avoiding geopolitical tensions. The Pioneer deal also shows Exxon shareholders that the company is still focused on fossil fuels, even though it has also gotten into the lithium business and low-carbon initiatives.
Global energy markets have revived recently as oil prices picked up over the past few months, at least before dropping this week. On Friday, Russia lifted a ban on diesel exports. Separately,
Shell
(SHEL) announced that natural gas trading increased in the past quarter over the previous one.
Write to Brian Swint at [email protected]
Read the full article here
