ConocoPhillips Sells $600MM in Noncore Permian Basin Assets

Following its $22.5 billion deal to buy Marathon Oil, ConocoPhillips is targeting $2 billion in asset sales— a goal a company executive said would largely be achieved this year.

Darren

Barbee

Oil and Gas Investor

Thu, 02/06/2025 - 05:30 PM

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ConocoPhillips Sells $600MM in Noncore Permian Basin Assets

Following its $22.5 billion deal to buy Marathon Oil, ConocoPhillips is targeting $2 billion in asset sales— a goal a company executive said would largely be achieved this year. (Source: Shutterstock)

Editor's note: This article has been updated with additional details regarding the production and location of ConocoPhillips' divestitures.

ConocoPhillips Co., looking to shed debt after its $22.5 billion acquisition of Marathon Oil Corp.—a deal that included assuming $5.4 billion in debt—has signed purchase and sale agreements for $600 million of noncore assets in the Lower 48, the company said during a Feb. 6 earnings call.

CEO Ryan Lance said the company is making solid progress on its pre-acquisition target of $2 billion in asset sales.

“We’re on track to dispose of about $2 billion of noncore assets, which gives us a lot of flexibility as we go into 2025,” Lance said.

Conoco gave few details about the noncore divestitures. Andy O’Brien, senior vice president of strategy, commercial, sustainability and technology, said during the earnings call that divestitures involved “noncore Permian assets, and we’ll expect those to close in the first half of the year.”

O’Brien added that production from the assets averaged 15,000 bbl/d in 2024.

“The assets are essentially noncore Southern Delaware. So that pretty much gives you sort of the typical mix of what they are,” he said.

The buyer or buyers of the assets weren’t discussed on the call and weren’t included in the company’s fourth-quarter earnings report or presentation.

O’Brien added that the company is progressing well on “other fronts, so we’d actually expect the majority of the $2 billion to be achieved in 2025. So, we’re really pleased with the progress we’re making there.”

Conoco beat fourth-quarter production targets by 2% and cash flow from operations by 8%, according to TD Cowen. The company’s 2025 guidance implies “synergies progressing well given ~$11B opex and ~$12.9B capex that moves our EBITDAX est +1%,” David Deckelbaum, managing director at Cowen, wrote in a Feb. 6 report.

ConocoPhillips guided production to approximately 2.36 MMboe/d, which was just below Cowen’s model, but includes “turnarounds and likely impacts from non-core divestitures.”

“COP will start the year with a $10B ROC [return of capital] target, implying about $6.1B in buybacks vs our prior $7B estimate,” Deckelbaum said.

The company generated more than $5.4 billion of [cash from operations], excluding working capital, compared to Cowen’s prior estimate of $5 billion.

“Working capital resulted in a $960MM headwind driving pre-dividend FCF of $2.1B, 5% below consensus,” Deckelbaum said. “COP was still able to support $2B of share buybacks and over $900MM in ordinary dividends in 4Q that in aggregate represented ~66% of [cash from operations].

“ROC was supplemented by $1.2B of net proceeds from strategic debt transactions.”

The company is aiming to spend 15% less on its Lower 48 assets while ramping up spending for its Willow LNG project in Alaska and LNG projects with Qatar, among others, Reuters reported.

“We’re looking at how we can build out offtake for 10 million tonnes per annum to 15 million tonnes per annum,” executives said on the conference call.

The company is also looking to continue exploring west of the Willow project on President Donald Trump’s call to reverse the Biden administration’s limitation on oil and gas development in Alaska, Reuters reported.

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