Devon Gets in Bed with Coterra For Massive $58B Merger

Wake up, babe… Big Oil just got bigger

Devon and Coterra are officially fusing into a $58B oil-and-gas unit in a straight all stock homie deal. Devon gets the keys. Coterra hops in the passenger seat. The new Franken-driller keeps the Devon name, moves HQ to Houston and tells Wall Street to start drinking the oil milkshake again. Bigly.

(Source: Giphy) 

If this feels inevitable, that’s because it was. Oil’s been mushy. 2025 was a deal desert. Inventory isn’t getting any younger. And U.S. shale has quietly entered its “we can’t all survive like this” era. So instead of competing, they’re doing what shale always does when margins get awkward: get bigger and promise efficiencies. Together, Devon + Coterra control roughly 750,000 net acres in the Delaware Basin, aka the only place investors still pretend has infinite runway. Add in Coterra’s Marcellus gas position and suddenly the portfolio looks… defensible. Over half the combined production and cash flow comes from one basin, which is exactly how hedge funds like it: simple, concentrated, easy to model, hard to explain at dinner.

(Source: Bloomberg) 

That said, management says production will clear 1.6 million BOE/day by the end of 2026, with 10+ years of sub-$40 breakeven inventory. But wait, there’s more buzzwords to be had here. The deal claims $1B a year in savings by 2027, $5B+ back to shareholders, all while being optimized so that fewer people do overlapping jobs. 

We’ve seen this movie before, but the difference here is that this one at least makes geographic sense instead of being two CEOs vibing. There’s also a quiet cleanup happening. Remember when Coterra was born from the extremely confusing Cimarex + Cabot marriage? Oil guy meets gas guy, analysts recoil, everyone shrugs? This deal finally resolves that weirdness. Gas stops being the side quest and starts being part of the actual plan… especially with LNG demand lurking in the background like a future plot twist.

(Source: Giphy) 

As for the market's reaction, Devon barely inched up, while Coterra took it on the chin (-2.79%). Of course, we’ll see how that turns out tomorrow. But the main point here is that shale isn’t dying… it’s consolidating into fewer, scarier entities that don’t need $90 oil to function. Which means, no, this probably won’t be the last one we see in 2026. Until next time, friends… 

At the time of publishing, Stocks.News does not hold positions in companies mentioned in the article.