ExxonMobil → Pioneer Natural Resources
ExxonMobil's $59.5bn all-share purchase of Pioneer Natural Resources, the largest acreage holder in the Permian Basin's Spraberry Trend, bought an undeveloped shale inventory next to Exxon's own and was cleared only after the FTC barred Pioneer's founder from Exxon's board — an order it later reversed.
The largest US energy deal since Exxon and Mobil themselves merged, doubling Exxon's Permian Basin position.
- Value
- $59.5B
- Announced
- October 2023
- Completed
- May 2024
- Sector
- Energy
- Deal type
- acquisition
- Acquirer
- ExxonMobil (United States)
- Target
- Pioneer Natural Resources (United States)
Why it mattered
Chevron agreed to buy Hess in the same month. Pioneer, based in Irving, Texas, produced 649,000 barrels of oil equivalent a day in 2022 and held more than 850,000 net acres in the Midland Basin, next to ExxonMobil's 570,000 acres in the Delaware and Midland basins. Contiguous land mattered: it would let Exxon drill horizontal wells up to four miles long, and so fewer of them.
The terms, announced on 11 October 2023, gave Pioneer holders 2.3234 Exxon shares each, worth $253 a share on 5 October — an 18% premium to the undisturbed price — and an enterprise value of about $64.5bn including net debt. Exxon expected its Permian output to more than double to 1.3 million barrels of oil equivalent a day, rising to about 2 million in 2027, and brought forward Pioneer's net-zero goal for its Permian operations from 2050 to 2035. The Federal Trade Commission, by a 3–2 vote in May 2024, accepted a consent order barring Scott Sheffield, Pioneer's founder and former chief executive, from Exxon's board or any advisory role, alleging that he had tried to coordinate output with OPEC and OPEC+. Pioneer disputed the account. The deal closed on 3 May 2024.
What it left behind
The production case has largely held. ExxonMobil's Permian output reached an annual record of 1.6 million barrels of oil equivalent a day in 2025 and exceeded 1.8 million in the second quarter of 2026, short of, but approaching, the 2027 goal. The Sheffield order did not last: after a change of leadership at the FTC, where one of the two 2024 dissenters, Andrew Ferguson, became chairman, the commission reopened and set it aside on 17 July 2025, the same month Chevron completed its Hess purchase. Conditions aimed at individuals rather than assets depend on the enforcement philosophy of the agency that imposes them, and can be undone once that philosophy changes.