The planned merger of Houston-based Conoco Inc., and Phillips Petroleum Co. of Bartlesville, Okla.-valued at $35 billion-extends the past few years' trend of consolidation and megamergers.
The table below offers a glimpse of most of the major US upstream mergers and acquisitions to occur since M&A activity began to heat up in 1997. They are not all multibillion dollar deals, but they have combined to result in the consolidation that has shrunk the OGJ200 list (OGJ, Oct. 1, 2001, p. 76) and concentrated the vast majority of publicly held assets among the top few companies.
Houston-based Randall & Dewey Inc., in its latest quarterly acquisitions review, reported that merger, acquisition, and divestiture transaction announcements in the third quarter of this year totaled $7.6 billion in 46 transactions. For the first 9 months of 2001, a total of 176 transactions were announced for a combined value of $18.7 billion.
