ExxonMobil Nears $60 Billion Acquisition of Shale Oil and NatGas Producer: Reports

Exxon Mobil Corp. is on the verge of a deal to buy Pioneer Natural Resources, a shale oil and natural gas producer, what could potentially be a $60 billion acquisition, multiple outlets reported Thursday.

Pioneer was formed in the late 1990s when Parker & Parsley Petroleum Company merged with MESA Inc., which was owned by the late, storied investor T. Boone Pickens.

The merger could be ExxonMobil’s biggest acquisition since Exxon bought Mobil for $81 billion in 1998, according to Reuters. The combined profit of the two companies at the time of the merger was about $11.8 billion, with $203.1 billion in revenue. In 2022, ExxonMobil alone brought in a record $55.7 billion in net income and almost $400 billion in revenue.

An agreement could be reached within the coming days, a source familiar with the matter told The Wall Street Journal, which first reported the possible deal. It’s also possible, however, that there won’t be a deal. 

ExxonMobil and Pioneer told The Messenger that they do not comment on "market rumors." 

Pioneer shares were up 11.4% to $239.40 in premarket trading Friday following news of the potential deal. ExxonMobil shares were down 1.72%.

The deal would have the power to reshape the U.S. oil industry, giving ExxonMobil a dominant position in the highly lucrative Permian Basin of West Texas and New Mexico, a region which has long been a source of interest for oil companies due to the low cost of extracting oil, according to Reuters. 

ExxonMobil produced a company record of 620,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day in the Permian basin in its second quarter, but Pioneer produced still more, averaging 711,000 barrels in the same period, Reuters reported.

This isn’t ExxonMobil’s first acquisition this year. In July, the oil giant announced that it had reached a deal to buy Denbury for nearly $5 billion, giving ExxonMobil access to Denbury’s extensive CO2 pipeline network — the largest in the country. The move came after criticism of ExxonMobil by climate activists, and marked what was believed to be a shift away from its traditional oil and gas business. However, its possible acquisition of Pioneer casts doubt on that.

ExxonMobil has a market capitalization of $434 billion and Pioneer has a market value of $50 billion as of Friday. 

Update 10:20 a.m. ET: This article was updated to include comment from ExxonMobil and Pioneer.