Energy-market risks abound. Israeli attacks on Iranian oil and gas infrastructure. The looming possibility of a global trade war. Up-and-down prices for WTI and Brent. Still, in the midst of all this doubt and instability, oil and gas producers continue to buy and sell major upstream assets in the U.S. — and gobble up entire companies — in ongoing efforts to grow their businesses, reshape their portfolios and/or reduce their debt. In today’s RBN blog, we continue our look at recent big-dollar deals in the U.S. oil and gas industry.
As we said in Part 1, 2024 was a record year for upstream M&A in the U.S. and may be hard to beat. But while the number and value of the E&P deals so far in 2025 may not match last year’s pace, there’s been a surprising amount of activity, the standout to date being EOG Resources’ planned $5.6 billion acquisition of Encino Acquisition Partners (EAP), the leading condensate producer in the Utica Shale, which we detailed in Might As Well Jump! Others — all discussed in Part 1 — include Viper Energy’s $4.1 billion purchase of Sitio Royalties, EQT Corp.’s $1.8 billion buyout of Olympus Energy, and Elk Range Royalties’ acquisition of Occidental Petroleum’s extensive mineral-rights and royalty-interest holdings in the Denver-Julesburg (DJ) Basin for $905 million.
Today, we continue our look at the most interesting and valuable upstream deals of 2025 with a review of a few other major transactions.
Validus Energy/89 Energy
We’ll start with privately held Validus Energy’s March acquisition of 89 Energy, another private E&P with extensive holdings in the Midcontinent, for $850 million. The purchase was Validus’s third big Midcon-focused deal in the past year and a half — more on that in a moment — and gave the Denver-based E&P an additional 73,000 net acres, 175 net operated wells, and 28 Mboe/d of production in the SCOOP/STACK play in Oklahoma.
Validus, which is backed by equity commitments from Elliott Management, Pontem Energy Capital and other investors, last year paid Continental Resources $450 million for a portion of its SCOOP/STACK assets and, in Validus’s biggest purchase yet, bought Citizen Energy and its extensive Midcon holdings for more than $2 billion. The Citizen deal alone gave Validus about 300,000 net acres, 585 net operated wells and 70 Mboe/d, most of it in SCOOP/STACK.
With the Continental Resources, Citizen Energy and 89 Energy deals, Validus Energy now has about 450,000 net acres, 1,205 net operated wells and 115 Mboe/d of production in the Midcon. The E&P has indicated that it continues to pursue opportunities to expand its portfolio in the region, which has been largely overlooked by many publicly owned E&Ps.
Validus Energy’s previous focus area had been the Eagle Ford. In September 2022, the company closed on the sale of its South Texas assets to Devon Energy for $1.8 billion in cash. As we discussed in Spread Your Wings, Validus acquired 42,000 net acres from Ovintiv in May 2021 for $880 million. Validus was producing 35 Mboe/d on that acreage when it reached the deal with Devon.
Shell/Selected ConocoPhillips Assets in the Gulf of Mexico
Shell said May 1 that it had closed on the purchase of additional ownership interests in key upstream and midstream assets in the Gulf of Mexico (GOM) from ConocoPhillips for $735 million. In doing so, Shell expanded its position in what the company views as one of its global focus areas and ConocoPhillips moved toward its broader goal of divesting about $2 billion in corporate assets.
Specifically, Shell acquired ConocoPhillips’s 15.96% stake in the Shell-operated Ursa Tension-Leg Platform (TLP; see photo below) and the associated Ursa Oil Pipeline Co., thereby increasing the company’s working interest in the Ursa platform to 61.35% and its stake in the platform-to-coast Ursa pipeline to 57.2%. The Ursa field, located in the GOM’s Mars Basin 130 miles southeast of New Orleans, produced an estimated 50 Mboe/d in 2024 and more than 800 MMboe since production there started in 1999. The other owners of the Ursa assets are units of BP (22.69%) and Esperanza Capital Partners (ECP; 15.96%).
The Shell-Operated Ursa TLP. Source: Shell
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