Energy & Environment

A mega oil and gas industry deal has significant Oklahoma ties

KOSU | By Graycen Wheeler

Published May 30, 2024 at 5:30 AM CDT

An American flag flies over an Oklahoma flag on an oil rig.

ConocoPhillips announced it’s buying Marathon Oil in what Forbes calls one of the 10 largest corporate deals of the year. Both companies have ties to Oklahoma.

Phillips Petroleum Company was founded in Bartlesville in 1917. It was Oklahoma’s largest oil company before it merged with Ponca City-based Conoco in 2002. The newly minted ConocoPhillips headed down to Houston that same year. In 2022, the company got rid of its Oklahoma oil fields as it worked on “optimizing its portfolio.”

But now ConocoPhillips is buying Marathon Oil, another fossil fuels company, for $17 billion and taking on $5.4 billion of Monarch’s existing debt. The deal means some of ConocoPhillips’s petroleum production is coming home to Oklahoma.

According to the company's filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, about one-eighth of Marathon’s overall oil and natural gas sales came from Oklahoma last year. The company says it’s been drilling in Oklahoma for more than a century.