NorthAmOil: ConocoPhillips to sell certain Permian assets to Maverick

US-based ConocoPhillips has agreed to sell certain assets in the Permian Basin to privately owned Maverick Natural Resources for $440mn.
The producing assets are located in the Permian’s Central Basin Platform and Northwest Shelf areas, spanning roughly 144,500 net acres (585 square km) across Texas’ Andrews and Ector counties and New Mexico’s Eddy and Lea counties. The properties are largely operated and held by production (HBP) and are reported to have yielded over 11,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day (boepd) during September 2021, with crude accounting for around 50% of output.
Maverick said in a January 28 statement that the acquisition would be funded by a fully committed $500mn reserve-based loan (RBL) provided by JPMorgan Chase Bank, Royal Bank of Canada, Citizens Bank, KeyBank National Association and KeyBanc Capital Markets. Maverick and ConocoPhillips expect the transaction to close in the second quarter of 2022.
For Maverick, the acquisition is in line with its increased focus on Texas and Oklahoma, with the company having recently sold off assets in California and Michigan. For ConocoPhillips, it forms part of an ongoing effort to hone its portfolio following the acquisition of Permian assets from Royal Dutch Shell for $9.5bn in December.
When the Shell acquisition was first announced in September, ConocoPhillips said it would seek to sell $4-5bn worth of non-core assets by 2023. Indeed, energy data firm Enverus noted this week that ConocoPhillips had been marketing conventional assets on the Central Basin Platform and Northwest Shelf with investment bank RBC Capital Markets in the wake of the Shell deal.