ConocoPhillips to acquire Marathon Oil in $22.5-billion deal

May 29, 2024

ConocoPhillips has agreed to acquire Marathon Oil Corp. in an all-stock transaction with an enterprise value of $22.5 billion, inclusive of $5.4 billion of net debt.

OGJ editors

Some thoughts (I will use just very rough numbers) about today's headline:

Marothon produces about 400.000 bbloe/d. Together with the downstream business this has a value of about 20 billion $.

Total plans to produce the "little" Venus (Block) with 2 or more FPSOs, which could produce together about 400.000 bbl/d.

Saturn could be 5-8 times(?) bigger than Venus.

Or we compare Saturn with the world wide biggest offshore field Safaniya. The 40 billion OOIP could be comparable of the Safaniya oilfield and Saturn prospect. This Safaniya oilfield was producing 1.5 million bbl/d!!
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safaniya_Oil_Field#:~:text=The%20Safaniya%20Field%20is%20the,long%20and%2015%20km%20wide.

or another example: ExxonMobil plans to produce 1 million bbl/d in Guyana. And here you could compare the 53 billion $ Hess Chevron deal. Hess produces about 400.000 bbl/d , roughly the same amount as Marathon. The reason Chevrons pays a more than 2 times higher price (compared to the Conoco Marathon deal): Hess owns 40% (I think) of the Guyana block.

I think ConocoPhillips realized that they are too small to buy 40 billion bbl or 1.5 million bbl/d. Or even for 50% of Saturn (if Saturn is full of oil) LOL