US upstream merger and acquisition (M&A) activity in 2025 was valued at just under two-thirds the deal-making level seen in 2024.
Enverus subsidiary Enverus Intelligence Research (EIR) pegged 2025’s full-year M&A activity in the US at $65 billion, compared to $105 billion in 2024. According to a 28 January announcement by the EIR, the fourth quarter of the year was responsible for $23.5 billion, or a little over a third, of overall 2025 activity.
Andrew Dittmar, principal analyst at EIR, told JPT the defining theme for 2025 upstream M&A activity in the US was diversification of deals, both in terms of geography and peer group. While 2023 and 2024 featured a focus on mega-mergers with big companies seeking out the highest-quality inventory they could get, primarily in the Permian Basin, 2025 represented a pullback from that, with a broader focus across different plays.
“We saw activity in the Anadarko Basin and the DJ Basin, and the Eagle Ford, Appalachia, Haynesville,” he said.
Deals were made by public, international, and private equity companies, as well as a new group of companies known as asset-backed securitization groups, he said. All of these groups were competing for scarce resources, and in the fourth quarter, the market picked up steam again after a mid-year slowdown.
The closing months of 2025 didn’t feature headline-making mega-mergers, according to Dittmar, but it did reach a faster pace of acquisitions and divestments, which he attributed to a mix of factors, including availability of fresh capital and a broader buyer mix.
International buyers accounted for roughly $6 billion of fourth-quarter 2025 acquisitions, bringing the full-year total for 2025 to $7.4 billion. That number represents a 7-year high for international acquisitions of US upstream assets, according to the EIR summary. The EIR noted that besides the Haynesville, these buyers also chased Gulf of Mexico and DJ Basin assets.
Already this year, however, Mitsubishi’s $7.5 billion purchase of Aethon Energy, with its core Haynesville acreage, has topped last year’s international activity.
For 2026, EIR sees fewer opportunities in the Haynesville, so buyers seeking gas exposure will likely look at other options, including Eagle Ford Shale and Anadarko Basin.
“People really want gas exposure, whether it's because of LNG or data center buildout. So probably steady activity there,” Dittmar said.
That means, he said, that companies will likely hunt for gas assets with Gulf Coast access, making Haynesville a primary target, as the “marquis” gas play on the coast.
“There's not much left to go buy in the Haynesville, so it's creativity, I think, in getting Gulf Coast gas exposure, whether that’s Eagle Ford gas assets, buying in the Anadarko Basin where you have a balanced liquids-gas commodity mix, and maybe even returning to some of the legacy gas plays that we haven't seen a lot of activity in. I wouldn't be shocked to see an international buyer look at the Barnett or even the Fayetteville,” Dittmar said.
What made up a smaller portion of the deal value for the fourth quarter of 2025 was the Permian Basin, which EIR attributed to the scarcity of top-tier packages available and limited willingness of pure-play E&P companies in the Permian to exit as they are likely waiting for a better crude price environment before selling. That said, EIR noted the biggest Permian splash of the fourth quarter came from SM Energy’s $12.8-billion merger with Civitas Resources, a multibasin deal that also included significant holdings in the DJ Basin.
Earlier in the year, Crescent Energy announced a $3.1 billion deal for Permian player Vital Energy.
Dittmar said these deals show corporate consolidation hasn’t gone away entirely, just that the pace has slowed and the scale is somewhat smaller.
“What we learned from those deals is that it's really challenging to put sensible combinations together in the current market” with the obvious strategic fit companies being largely tied up, he said. “So, you see companies having to pursue more multibasin deals or deals where they don't have obvious offsetting assets together.”
And such deals are harder sells with Wall Street than the logic that fuels the combination of two same-basin operators creating a larger, more efficient asset base, he said.
“One of the big headwinds for corporate consolidation moving forward is just finding the right combination that's going to be sensible and have operational synergies beyond just trying to sell some kind of scale for scale's sake,” he said.
Now, EIR said, the lack of attractive strategic combinations has likely put a damper on further consolidation, but more multibasin tie-ups remain a possibility. EIR believes public companies may look to match sales of non-core assets in the US with purchases of those in core regions to build operational synergies.
Dittmar said the “disaggregating” activities follow the aggregating market that characterized US deals from post-COVID through 2024.
He expects companies pruning their inventories to part with acreage outside the Permian Basin, which is where the best-quality inventory tends to exist.
Canada Consolidations
While the US may be disaggregating, upstream M&A activity in Canada is “a little behind US trends,” Dittmar said.
Conditions favor continued corporate consolidation in Canada, according to EIR. Canadian upstream M&A approached $20 billion in 2025, driven largely by Montney and Duvernay activity. While strong asset pricing can motivate deals in the US, Canada’s setup is more conducive to further scale-building as operators combine contiguous positions, he said.
He expects Canada to remain an active arena for strategic combinations if commodity prices stay range-bound, while he expects US deals to center around targeted asset trades and selective bolt-ons.
Technology Enables Deals
Dittmar said technology innovations can drive deals.
“We see companies willing to pay for maybe what would've been viewed as more marginal inventory because they can deploy longer laterals, have D&C (drilling and completions) savings and convert that to a higher-quality location. I expect that's a trend that's going to continue,” he said.
Technology focused around improving value in mature plays may help drive M&A activity, he said.
“Refracturing and redevelopments in mature plays are a big area, and I think we're going to see more M&A activity driven around that.”
2026 Projections
EIR expects M&A in the upstream sector to be active in 2026, likely focused on gas-weighted plays and non-core regional opportunities.
“We're in a commodity price-driven industry. That's always the bottom line for us. I think we can have an active deal market on a lot of different well prices, but we need stability and crude pricing to really keep that market humming,” he said.
On 2 February, Devon Energy and Coterra Energy announced an all-stock deal to merge, creating a company with exposure to the Anadarko as well as the Delaware Basin. In a research note, Dittmar called the Delaware asset the "real prize of the deal" from Devon’s perspective, forming the centerpiece of the combined company and vaulting Devon from third-largest to top producer in that basin.
"The combination of Devon and Coterra demonstrates that the wave of consolidation sweeping US shale isn’t finished yet and the march towards fewer, larger producers feels inevitable," he wrote.
