Chevron and Exxon’s latest buys could usher in a new era of oil megamergers
Marathon Petroleum’s oil refinery in Anacortes, Washington.
David Ryder | Reuters
Energy heavyweights Chevron and Exxon Mobil announced shiny new acquisitions this month — and some industry watchers say it could be the start of more multibillion megadeals to come.
Chevron on Monday said it’s buying Hess for $53 billion in stock, allowing Chevron to take a 30% stake in Guyana’s Stabroek Block — estimated to hold some 11 billion barrels of oil.
The announcement comes just weeks after Exxon Mobil announced its purchase of shale rival Pioneer Natural Resources for $59.5 billion in an all-stock deal. While this marks Exxon’s largest deal since its acquisition of Mobil, the merger would also double the oil giant’s production volume in the largest U.S. oilfield, the Permian Basin.
“The big-money acquisition of Hess by Chevron accelerates the trend of consolidation and big-money deals,” energy consultancy Rystad Energy said in a note.
Although Chevron’s acquisition is the continuation of a story started by the Exxon-Pioneer deal, its motivation and impact is slightly different, the note stated.
Exxon is zoning in on its core operations in the Permian basin, while Chevron has decided to expand into where it does not yet have existing assets: Guyana and the Bakken shale.
These megadeals are just a prelude to this large investment wave I expect in coming years.
Bob McNally
President of Rapidan Energy Group
Kpler’s economist Reid I’Anson said the Exxon-Pioneer deal is “likely a bit less risky” compared to the Chevron-Hess deal.
Exxon will see more immediate returns and Pioneer alone would add 711,000 barrels per day, he said comparing it to just 386,000 barrels per day from Hess.
“However, the Chevron acquisition likely has more upside given the future production growth potential out of Guyana,” he noted.
That said, both Exxon and Chevron’s megadeals are indicative of a larger, overarching ambition.
The two oil giants plan to continue pumping investments into fossil fuels as demand for crude remains strong, especially amid tightening global supplies fueled by years of chronic underinvestment.
Consolidation has been a focus in the North American shale space in the past year, especially in the Permian basin where larger exploration and production (E&Ps) have “swallowed up” smaller operations in the bid to bolster drilling inventories and boost free cash flow, Rystad’s senior shale analyst Matthew Bernstein told CNBC.
Silhouette of Permian Basin pumpjacks taken at dusk, north of Midland, Texas, U.S. in late 2019.
Richard Eden | via Getty Images
The upstream segment of the oil and gas industry refers to the exploration for oil or gas deposits, as well as extraction and production of those materials.
The Permian basin is a shale patch that sits between Texas and Mexico, which saw a slew of deals this year.
“These megadeals are just a prelude to this large investment wave I expect in coming years,” Bob McNally, president of Rapidan Energy Group, told CNBC via email. With Exxon deepening its presence in the U.S. shale sector, and Chevron’s eyes on Guyana, the two deals will instill more confidence in the wider oil industry to overcome any hesitation and invest in oil and gas, McNally continued.
“These deals signify the shift from a multi-year bust phase in oil that began in 2014 to a multi-year boom phase that should last well through this decade,” he forecasts.
No peak demand for oil just yet?
The deals by the two largest publicly traded major oil companies appear to confirm that crude oil demand will remain strong over the long term, said Andrew Woods, Mintec’s industrial analyst.
Dan Pickering, founder of Pickering Energy Partners, echoed similar sentiments, saying that both energy behemoths believe oil demand has not yet peaked.
On Tuesday, the International Energy Agency reported that demand for oil, coal and natural gas is set to peak before the end of the decade, on the back of rising clean energy technologies.
Oil prices year-to-date
A peak in oil demand refers to the point in time when the highest level of global crude demand is reached, in which a permanent decline would then follow. This would theoretically decrease the need for investments in crude oil projects as other energy sources take precedence.
“We are clearly entering into a period of consolidation,” Pickering said, adding it is not just megadeals that the oil industry will be seeing, but also many “merger-of-equals” amongst small or mid-sized companies with market capitalizations between $3 billion to $30 billion.
Pickering said investors currently do not want volume growth, but prefer capital discipline — a shift from focusing on production volume to a focus on financial value.
“Instead of drilling to grow production or cash flow, companies are now combining to gain scale, lower costs and grow earnings and cash flow without meaningful incremental volumes,” he said.
If you’ve ever wondered what happens when you combine a fruit cart, a cargo bike, and a Piaggio Ape all in one vehicle, now you’ve got your answer. I submit, for your approval, this week’s feature for the Awesomely Weird Alibaba Electric Vehicle of the Week column – and it’s a beautiful doozie.
Feast your eyes on this salad slinging, coleslaw cruising, tuber taxiing produce chariot!
I think this electric vegetable trike might finally scratch the itch long felt by many of my readers. It seems every time I cover an electric trike, even the really cool ones, I always get commenters poo-poo-ing it for having two wheels in the rear instead of two wheels in the front. Well, here you go, folks!
Designed with two front wheels for maximum stability, this trike keeps your cucumbers in check through every corner. Because trust me, you don’t want to hit a pothole and suddenly be juggling peaches like you’re in Cirque du Soleil: Farmers Market Edition.
To avoid the extra cost of designing a linked steering system for a pair of front wheels, the engineers who brought this salad shuttle to life simply side-stepped that complexity altogether by steering the entire fixed front end. I’ve got articulating electric tractors that steer like this, and so if it works for a several-ton work machine, it should work for a couple hundred pounds of cargo bike.
Featuring a giant cargo bed up front with four cascading fruit baskets set up for roadside sales, this cargo bike is something of a blank slate. Sure, you could monetize grandma’s vegetable garden, or you could fill it with your own ideas and concoctions. Our exceedingly talented graphics wizard sees it as the perfect coffee and pastry e-bike for my new startup, The Handlebarista, and I’m not one to argue. Basically, the sky is the limit with a blank slate bike like this!
Sure, the quality doesn’t quite match something like a fancy Tern cargo bike. The rim brakes aren’t exactly confidence-inspiring, but at least there are three of them. And if they should all give out, or just not quite slow you down enough to avoid that quickly approaching brick wall, then at least you’ve got a couple hundred pounds of tomatoes as a tasty crumple zone.
The electrical system does seem a bit underpowered. With a 36V battery and a 250W motor, I don’t know if one-third of a horsepower is enough to haul a full load to the local farmer’s market. But I guess if the weight is a bit much for the little motor, you could always do some snacking along the way. On the other hand, all the pictures seem to show a non-electric version. So if this cart is presumably mobile on pedal power alone, then that extra motor assist, however small, is going to feel like a very welcome guest.
The $950 price is presumably for the electric version, since that’s what’s in the title of the listing, though I wouldn’t get too excited just yet. I’ve bought a LOT of stuff on Alibaba, including many electric vehicles, and the too-good-to-be-true price is always exactly that. In my experience, you can multiply the Alibaba price by 3-4x to get the actual landed price for things like these. Even so, $3,000-$4,000 wouldn’t be a terrible price, considering a lot of electric trikes stateside already cost that much and don’t even come with a quad-set of vegetable baskets on board!
I should also put my normal caveat in here about not actually buying one of these. Please, please don’t try to buy one of these awesome cargo e-trikes. This is a silly, tongue-in-cheek weekend column where I scour the ever-entertaining underbelly of China’s massive e-commerce site Alibaba in search of fun, quirky, and just plain awesomely weird electric vehicles. While I’ve successfully bought several fun things on the platform, I’ve also gotten scammed more than once, so this is not for the timid or the tight-budgeted among us.
That isn’t to say that some of my more stubborn readers haven’t followed in my footsteps before, ignoring my advice and setting out on their own wild journey. But please don’t be the one who risks it all and gets nothing in return. Don’t say I didn’t warn you; this is the warning.
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Environment
Podcast: Trump/GOP go after EV/solar, Tesla, Ford, GM EV sales, Electrek Formula Sun, and more
In the Electrek Podcast, we discuss the most popular news in the world of sustainable transport and energy. In this week’s episode, we discuss Trump’s Big Beautiful bill becoming law and going after EVs and solar, Tesla, Ford, and GM EV sales, Electrek Formula Sun, and more
Today’s episode is brought to you by Bosch Mobility Aftermarket—A global leader and trusted provider of automotive aftermarket parts. To celebrate Amazon Prime Day July 8th through 11th, Bosch Mobility is offering exclusive savings on must-have auto parts and tools. Learn more here.
The show is live every Friday at 4 p.m. ET on Electrek’s YouTube channel.
As a reminder, we’ll have an accompanying post, like this one, on the site with an embedded link to the live stream. Head to the YouTube channel to get your questions and comments in.
After the show ends at around 5 p.m. ET, the video will be archived on YouTube and the audio on all your favorite podcast apps:
We now have a Patreon if you want to help us avoid more ads and invest more in our content. We have some awesome gifts for our Patreons and more coming.
Here are a few of the articles that we will discuss during the podcast:
- Electrek FSGP 2025: New teams, new cars, same solar spirit
- Congress votes to send 2 million US jobs to China, increase deficit, energy costs
- Tesla (TSLA) confirms 384,000 deliveries in Q2 2025, right on expectations
- Tesla prototype sparks speculation: a Model Y, maybe slightly smaller
- Tesla launches Oasis Supercharger with solar farm and off-grid batteries
- Tesla unveils its LFP battery factory, claims it’s almost ready
- Here’s why Ford’s electric vehicle sales crashed by nearly a third in Q2
- The Chevy Equinox EV is GM’s breakout star, but that’s not the only surprise
- Xpeng launches G7, a new Tesla Model Y competitor for just $27,000
Here’s the live stream for today’s episode starting at 4:00 p.m. ET (or the video after 5 p.m. ET:
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