Exxon Buys Pioneer: 'We Used to Compete for Every Barrel. Now We Own the Basin.'
Darren Woods's $59.5 billion bet that Exxon should own the Permian Basin outright, and the FTC's unusual personal-politics condition that shadowed the deal.
"The Permian is the engine room of American oil. We looked at every option to grow, and the only honest answer was to buy the best acreage outright." In October 2023, ExxonMobil agreed to buy Pioneer Natural Resources for $59.5 billion, roughly doubling Exxon's holdings in the Permian Basin of West Texas. It was the largest acquisition Exxon had done in more than two decades, and it reshaped American shale. The deal also produced one of the strangest consent orders in merger history: a personal condition about Scott Sheffield's private messages about OPEC.
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- Darren Woods pitches the board
- Scott Sheffield's exit call
- The FTC's unusual condition