Devon Energy Corp. agreed to sell its drilling portfolio in the Eagle Ford shale basin of South Texas to Crescent Energy Co., an oil producer backed by KKR & Co., for about $4.2 billion. Crescent will pay cash for the assets, which include about 90,000 net acres in Karnes, De Witt, and Gonzales counties. Houston-based Devon, which has a $53 billion market capitalization, is under growing pressure from activist investors to speed up the timeline to sell assets outside its core Permian Basin holdings or sell itself entirely.
Devon shares rose as much as 2.8% before the start of regular trading in New York, while Crescent slumped 7% before paring some losses. Since closing on a deal for Coterra Energy Inc. in May for about $25 billion, Devon has been evaluating its entire portfolio, which also includes wells in the US Rockies, the Anadarko formation in Oklahoma and the Marcellus Shale in Pennsylvania. One of the activists pushing Devon to sell assets, Kimmeridge Energy Management Co., called the sale to Crescent.
Source: Bloomberg Markets · Summarized by HeadlinesBriefing