2025 A&D Year in Review: Deals That Defined the Year
The 2024 M&A supercycle — anchored by ExxonMobil's $60 billion Pioneer acquisition and ConocoPhillips' $22.5 billion Marathon Oil deal — left the 2025 A&D market with a high watermark to match. It did not. But the year was far from quiet, and the deals that did close reshaped individual basins in meaningful ways.
The Year in Context
Total upstream A&D transaction value in 2025 came in at approximately $40–$45 billion, roughly half the 2024 total. That is not a sign of distress — it reflects a market where the obvious consolidation targets were already gone. ExxonMobil owns Pioneer. Chevron closed its Hess acquisition. ConocoPhillips absorbed Marathon. The tier-one targets were taken.
What remained was a second tier of opportunities: private equity-backed operators looking for exits, bolt-on packages from operators rationalizing their portfolios, and a handful of mid-cap public company combinations. Deal volume was healthy even if headline dollars were lower. Bank of America's energy M&A team estimated more than 90 discrete upstream transactions closed in 2025, with the median deal size around $400 million.
The Deals That Mattered
Diamondback Energy / Double Eagle IV — The Midland Basin deal of the year. Diamondback acquired Double Eagle Energy's fourth partnership vehicle for approximately $4.1 billion, adding roughly 40,000 net acres in the core of the Midland Basin and locking up inventory that CEO Travis Stice had been watching for years. Double Eagle, run by Cody Campbell and John Sellers, had built another high-quality package after selling prior iterations to Parsley Energy and Pioneer. The deal closed in Q2 and added approximately 35,000 Boe/d of production with a breakeven well below $40 WTI.
Devon Energy / Grayson Mill Energy — Devon's $5.0 billion acquisition of Grayson Mill's Williston Basin assets was the headline Bakken deal of the year. The package added approximately 300 MMBoe of proved reserves and 60,000 net acres in core Williams and Mountrail counties. Devon entered the Bakken in one transaction, acquiring a position that Grayson Mill had spent several years assembling through its own private roll-up. This is precisely the kind of PE-to-public transition that defined 2025 A&D.
APA Corporation / Permian bolt-ons — APA spent much of 2025 quietly adding to its legacy Permian position through smaller package deals, none of which garnered much headline attention but collectively added scale in the Delaware Basin. Management had telegraphed its intent to reinvest in domestic assets after the Callon acquisition digestion period ended.
Coterra Energy / Permian tuck-ins — Coterra, the combined Cabot/Cimarex entity, continued building its Permian position with several bolt-on deals in the Delaware Basin. CEO Tom Jorden has been consistent: Coterra wants to grow its Permian allocation and view its Appalachian position as a cash-flow engine rather than a growth vehicle.
Private Equity: The Great Exit Continues
The PE-to-public transfer accelerated again in 2025. Warburg Pincus, Quantum Energy Partners, KKR, and Kayne Anderson collectively exited or partially exited multiple upstream platforms. The Double Eagle / Diamondback deal was the marquee example, but it was not isolated. Across the Permian, DJ Basin, and Appalachia, private operators with 2020–2022 vintage assets found willing buyers in well-capitalized public companies.
The PE exit dynamic has been healthy for the industry. Private operators built aggressively when public companies were constrained by investor skepticism. They drilled the inventory, derisked the geology, and sold to operators who could run the assets efficiently at scale. The cycle is functioning as designed.
What 2026 Looks Like
The remaining M&A targets are smaller, more complex, or more contentious. Callon is absorbed. Oasis merged with Whiting to form Chord. The obvious combinations have happened. What remains are operators in transition — companies like Ovintiv, which has been rationalizing its portfolio toward the Permian and Anadarko — and private platforms that are still in build mode.
The A&D market in 2026 will likely look similar to 2025: active but not frenetic, deal sizes in the $500 million to $5 billion range, and a continued shift of private assets onto public balance sheets. The big strategic combinations that defined 2023–2024 are done. The cleanup work continues.
Crude Intelligence Report is an independent upstream oil and gas intelligence publication. Content is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice, financial advice, or a recommendation to buy or sell any security. Always conduct your own due diligence before making investment decisions. The author and publisher hold no positions in any companies mentioned in this article. © 2026 Crude Intelligence Report. All rights reserved.
