Chevron Buys Anadarko for $33 Billion

American oil supermajor Chevron is buying competitor Anadarko, the largest operator of floating offshore facilities in the Gulf of Mexico, for $33 billion dollars - $50 billion if including debt. It is the largest oil and gas acquisition deal since Shell bought BG Group in 2015.

Anadarko is one of the largest leaseholders in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico, with 10 operated facilities, including two large spar platforms installed in 2015 and 2016. It has a long history in the U.S. GOM: it was the first company to drill out of sight of land on the Gulf Coast. Its current development activities are focused on tiebacks to existing infrastructure, leveraging existing capex to avoid the expense of new platforms. 

Chevron operates six deepwater production platforms, and the Anadarko facilities will more than double its portfolio. It also gains access to significant possibilities for more tiebacks: some of its undeveloped lease blocks are within striking distance of an Anadarko platform, and some of Anadarko's lease blocks are close to a Chevron platform. 

On shore, Chevron also has its eye on Anadarko's Permian Basin shale activities. Anadarko has about 240,000 acres of oil rights in Loving and Reeves Counties, which sit above the heart of the Permian, and these premium lease areas are bordered on all sides by Chevron holdings. The acquisition of a continuous swath of development rights will give Chevron significant economies of scale to deploy the latest, most efficient horizontal drilling techniques.