Locator: 52000MUSIC.
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A Musical Interlude
Rod Steward, "Sailing" -- link here.
The Blackhawk JV continued until April 2025, when Devon and BPX went their separate ways, with each company taking operatorship and control over separate pieces of the acreage. (Devon took control of about 46,000 net acres.) Devon has made other changes to its Eagle Ford footprint over the years. It sold some non-core acreage to Penn Virginia for $198 million in 2017 but largely developed the acquired GeoSouthern acreage. It grew its Eagle Ford position again in 2022 with the $1.7 billion acquisition of Validus Energy, which expanded its presence in nearby Karnes County.
The biggest development was its multibillion-dollar merger with Coterra, which was announced in February. The deal combined complementary assets in the Permian's Delaware Basin and the Anadarko Basin, with an expected $1 billion in synergy-related savings by the end of next year. The deal, valued at about $21.4 billion, closed in May; the combined company, Devon Energy, is headquartered in Houston and is estimated to produce more than 1.6 MMboe/d in 2026. With an enterprise value of $58 billion, the company ranks fourth among U.S.-based E&Ps.
Bloomberg reported in July that Devon was considering selling its Eagle Ford and Powder River assets for more than $4 billion as it streamlined its portfolio after the merger. Devon’s sale of its Eagle Ford acreage to Crescent was part of that process.
“This sale is a direct outcome of our portfolio review, and it sharpens our focus on the highest-return, longest-duration assets,” Devon President and Chief Executive Officer Clay Gaspar said in a statement. “Selling a relatively mature asset into a strong commodity price environment improves our go-forward capital efficiency and allows us to accelerate share buybacks, strengthen our balance sheet and increase long-term value for shareholders.”
The sale of the 90,000 acres to Crescent Energy for $4.2 billion in cash marks Devon’s exit in the basin that it entered more than a decade ago through the GeoSouthern acquisition, but it also serves as a doubling down for Crescent, a seasoned player in the Eagle Ford. Since June 2023, it has announced nine Eagle Ford acquisitions totaling more than $8.5 billion, realized more than $200 million in annual synergies, and shown it can lower well costs, drill longer laterals and improve completion efficiency. The map below shows this growth, starting with Crescent's existing Eagle Ford footprint in 2022 (yellow-shaded areas in Figure 1 below).
