M&A Pulse

Big oil's view of independent E&P.

A live count of qualifying SEC 8-K filings from the 15-name majors basket. We track two distinct categories — completions (true M&A closings) and material agreements (which may include announcements, but also covers credit facilities and supplier contracts).

M&A completions · 90d

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8-K Item 2.01 — completed acquisitions or asset dispositions. The unambiguous M&A signal.

Other material agreements · 90d

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8-K Item 1.01 only (with earnings/debt 8-Ks filtered out). Could include M&A announcements, but also covers credit facilities, supplier contracts, etc.

Most recent

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No filings yet

Recent filings

Each filing is tagged. M&A Completion means the filing contains Item 2.01 (Completion of Acquisition or Disposition of Assets) — a corporate action has actually closed. Material Agreement means Item 1.01 (Entry into Material Definitive Agreement) without indicators of debt issuance or earnings — could be M&A in announcement phase, but could also be a contract that has nothing to do with M&A.

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How we classify

SEC 8-K filings list "items" — the specific events being reported. The same 8-K can contain multiple items. v1.0 of this site counted any filing with Item 1.01 or 2.01, which created false positives: refiners file routine 8-Ks combining a 1.01 with an earnings release (2.02) or new credit facility (2.03) that have nothing to do with M&A. v1.2 fixes this:

Item 2.01 present: classified as M&A Completion. Counts toward the headline number.
Item 1.01 only, no noise items: classified as Material Agreement. Counted separately.
1.01 alongside earnings (2.02), debt (2.03), triggering events (2.04), exit costs (2.05), or impairments (2.06): classified as noise, not displayed.

This gives an honest read. If "M&A Completions: 0" in any 90-day window, that's information — the consolidation wave is between chapters.

The recent wave

Historical reference, manually maintained. Live filings are above.

For context, the major energy M&A transactions in 2024–2025:

ExxonMobil ↔ Pioneer Natural Resources — closed May 2024, ~$60B all-stock. PXD delisted; XOM became the largest Permian operator.
ConocoPhillips ↔ Marathon Oil — closed November 2024, ~$22.5B. MRO delisted.
Diamondback Energy ↔ Endeavor Energy Resources — closed September 2024, ~$26B. Largest private-to-public Permian deal.
Chesapeake ↔ Southwestern → Expand Energy — closed October 2024. Created the largest US gas pure-play, ticker EXE.
Chevron ↔ Hess — closed July 2025, ~$53B, after a 21-month Guyana arbitration with ExxonMobil. HES delisted.

The pattern: integrated majors absorbing the highest-quality independent E&P names. The thesis is scale — bigger reserves, lower per-barrel finding cost, more robust shareholder returns through cycles.

What's not here yet

Even with v1.2's better classification, we still don't parse the 8-K body for:

Aggregate deal value across the period
Median premium paid over target's pre-announcement price
Days since last "megadeal" ($10B+)
Target name (Item 2.01 entries currently show acquirer + filing date only)

The 8-K body parser is the v1.4 backlog item. Until shipped, this page shows what's verifiably true (filing exists with the right item code, here's the link to read it) without fabricating numbers.