Marathon Oil Completes $3B Eagle Ford Assets Purchase

Marathon Oil Corporation has closed the purchase of the Eagle Ford assets from Ensign Natural Resources valued at $3 billion. The acquisition was closed soon after it was unveiled at the start of November 2022.

“We are pleased to announce the close of our acquisition of Ensign’s high-quality assets in the core of the Eagle Ford Shale,” said chairman, president, and CEO Lee Tillman. “This acquisition satisfies every element of our disciplined acquisition criteria. It’s immediately accretive to our key financial metrics, it will drive higher shareholder distributions consistent with our operating cash flow driven Return of Capital framework, it’s accretive to our inventory life with attractive locations that immediately compete for capital, and it offers truly compelling industrial logic given our existing Eagle Ford footprint and our track record of execution excellence in the play.”

The assets acquired from Ensign Natural Resources (99 percent operated, 97 percent working interest) span Live Oak, Bee, Karnes, and Dewitt Counties across the condensate, wet gas, and dry gas phase windows of the Eagle Ford. Marathon Oil believes it can deliver maintenance level production from the acquired asset of 67,000 net boepd (22,000 net bopd of oil) with approximately 1 rig and 35 to 40 wells to sales per year.

The company’s valuation of the asset was based off this maintenance level program and does not include any synergy credits or upside redevelopment opportunity. Acquired tangible assets are eligible for full expensing for the purpose of income tax optimization, including potential deferral of AMT.

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