Chevron agreed to buy Noble Energy for about $5 billion in shares as the oil giant looks to beef up amid the wreckage of the worst-ever crude crash. The takeover is the industry’s first major deal since the coronavirus triggered a severe slump and the largest since Occidental Petroleum outbid Chevron to acquire Anadarko Petroleum for $37 billion last year.
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The deal will grow Chevron’s shale presence in both the Permian Basin, once the main driver of the US shale boom but now experiencing a sharp reduction in drilling, and the Denver-Julesburg Basin in Colorado. It will increase the company’s proved reserves by about 18 per cent compared with what it reported at the end of 2019.
Buying Noble also enlarges Chevron’s footprint in the Eastern Mediterranean by adding the Leviathan gas field off the coast of Israel.