New Report Details A $12 Billion Q3 For Oil And Gas Mergers

Mergers and acquisition (M&A) activity in the upstream segment of the US oil and gas industry slowed to a trickle during the third quarter of 2024, per a new report from Enverus Intelligence Research (EIR), a subsidiary of energy analytics firm Enverus. The aggregate value of the five largest M&A deals tracked by EIR came to just $12 billion, marking the slowest quarter in recent years.

“Upstream M&A was bound to drop after the unprecedented lift of corporate mergers and private equity exits since 2023. Those deals raised asset prices and cut the number of potential targets,” said Andrew Dittmar, principal analyst at EIR. “An additional factor could have been increased volatility in crude prices during the third quarter. Any time commodities get more volatile, oil and gas deals are harder to negotiate. However, that is a short-term turbulence until buyers and sellers feel more confident on the direction oil prices are moving.”

One of the factors cited by Dittmar for the low dollar value of Q3 deals is the lack of a single merger of two publicly-traded companies, a phenomenon not seen since the third quarter of 2022. It’s a trend Dittmar foresaw in July after the flurry of big public deals seen during 2023 and the first half of 2024, including the deal involving ExxonMobil and Pioneer Natural Resources and Chevron’s buyout of Hess Corp.