It’s been a busy few years for big-money M&A in the oil and gas industry. Now, having acquired their targeted assets — often running up debt in the process — several E&Ps have been selling off non-core holdings and, with those deals, zeroing in on the shale basins they see as the keys to their success in the years ahead. In today’s RBN blog, we’ll discuss a couple of the more noteworthy divestitures announced in the past few months as well as recent comments by upstream executives that suggest more asset sales are on the way.
We’ve been examining the related topics of upstream M&A, asset purchases and sales, and debt reduction from just about every angle imaginable over the past few years. We’ve blogged about single, massive acquisitions, such as ExxonMobil’s $64.5 billion purchase of Pioneer Natural Resources; groups of big M&A deals — and groups of agreements to buy and sell specific production assets. While the Permian has, of course, been a focus of many transactions, we also have written about acquisitions in the Marcellus/Utica, the offshore Gulf, and Canada. And we’ve eyeballed a recent set of natural gas/LNG-related acquisitions by foreign companies involved in the LNG trade and, from a big-picture, purely financial perspective, we probed the impact of the E&P buying spree on upstreamers’ debt metrics.
This time, we’re riffing on last summer’s We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together, where we discussed a handful of post-M&A divestitures that E&Ps have been making to trim non-core assets — and their debt.
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We’ll start with Ovintiv and its February 17 announcement that the E&P had entered into a definitive agreement to sell its Anadarko Basin assets — all of them in Oklahoma — to an undisclosed buyer for $3 billion in cash. The transaction, which is expected to close early in Q2 2026, involves about 360,000 net acres and (as of last month) 90 Mboe/d of production, including 27 Mb/d of oil and condensate, 240 MMcf/d of natural gas, and 23 Mb/d of NGLs.
Two weeks before the deal was unveiled, Ovintiv closed on the $2.7 billion, cash-and-stock acquisition of NuVista Energy, a major producer of natural gas and condensate in Western Canada’s prolific Montney shale basin. The NuVista deal, which we discussed in Till There Was You back in November, was the latest in a series of strategic steps Ovintiv has taken since the company, previously called Encana and based in Calgary, AB, rebranded itself in 2019 and moved its headquarters to Denver.
Most important, Ovintiv made several major transactions in the Permian, including the 2023 purchase of three Encap Investments-backed E&Ps (Black Swan Oil & Gas, PetroLegacy Energy and Piedra Resources) for more than $4.2 billion, the sale of its Bakken Shale assets the same year, the sale of its Uinta Basin holdings in January 2025, and the acquisition of certain Montney assets of Paramount Resources the same month. As a group, these transactions — and now, the recently announced sale of its Anadarko assets — give Ovintiv the Permian-plus-Montney focus that has been management’s goal for some time now.
During Ovintiv’s February 24 earnings call, President and CEO Brendan McCracken said the NuVista acquisition and impending Anadarko sale “means our portfolio transformation is complete,” adding that proceeds from the divestiture will go to the balance sheet, marking the achievement of our debt target and right sizing our capital structure. ... Our sequencing between inventory additions and debt reduction was carefully managed. We recognized the importance of reducing debt, and we balanced that objective with timely transactions that our team generated to put our shareholders into premium inventory for the right price.”
Recent and Upcoming Changes in Ovintiv’s Debt Level
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About the song
“It’s So Hard to Say Goodbye to Yesterday” was written by Freddie Perren and Christine Yarian. It appears as the fifth song on Boyz II Men’s debut studio album, Cooleyhighharmony. The song was originally recorded and released by C.C. Cameron as a single from the soundtrack album to the 1975 film Cooley High. His version went to #38 on the Billboard R&B Singles chart that year. Boyz II Men recorded their a cappella version and released it as the second single from their debut album in August 1991. It went to #1 on the Billboard Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart and #2 on the Billboard Hot 100 Singles chart. It has been certified Platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). The song was used in the 1992 hit action film Lethal Weapon 3. Personnel on the record were: Nathan Morris (baritone vocals), Wanya Morris (tenor vocals), Shawn Stockman (tenor vocals) and Michael McCary (bass vocals).
Cooleyhighharmony was recorded in 1991 at Studio 4 in Philadelphia, Soundworks in New York City, and Doppler in Atlanta. The album title refers to Cooley Vocational High School in Chicago. Produced by Dallas Austin and the Characters, the album was released in April 1991 and went to #1 on the Billboard Top R&B/ Hip-Hop Albums chart and #3 on the Billboard 200 Albums chart. It has been certified 9X Platinum by the RIAA. Six singles were released from the LP.
Boyz II Men is an American vocal harmony group formed in 1995 in Philadelphia. The group’s a capella singing style harkens back to the classic street corner doo-wop groups of the 1950s. Their style has been dubbed “hip-hop doo-wop.” They have released 15 studio albums, nine compilation albums and 36 singles and have sold over 60 million records worldwide. The group has won nine American Music Awards, three Billboard Music Awards, and four Grammy Awards and has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. They still record and tour, and will be appearing at various venues in the U.S. beginning in March.
As a side note: your Managing Director of Musicality was a runner for casting agencies in the San Fernando Valley in April 1991 as a side hustle to my rock and roll career. One day, I pulled into the NBC studios in Burbank and came across a quartet of four young guys singing a capella in the parking lot. My audience of one watched them finish the song. I told them they were fantastic and asked them who they were. They told me they were Boyz II Men and they were making their debut on The Tonight Show that night. I wished them good luck and told them they would crush it. I tuned in later that night and watched the premiere of one of the most successful vocal groups in America. That I had watched by myself just a few hours earlier. Singing in a parking lot. I love showbiz.
"About the Song" -- written by Mickey McMahan , RBN Director of Musicology
