ConocoPhillips Sells Marathon Oil's Anadarko Basin Assets to Stone Ridge Energy for $1.3 Billion

ConocoPhillips exceeds divestiture target, and Stone Ridge adds gas supply to power bitcoin mining and AI.

ConocoPhillips has announced one of the year’s most significant asset transactions, finalizing the sale of its Anadarko Basin assets for $1.3 billion to Flywheel Energy, backed by Stone Ridge Energy. The asset package encompasses approximately 300,000 net acres across the Anadarko Basin, generating current production of 54,000 boe/d from actively producing wells with ConocoPhillips as the reconciled TGS Operator as seen in TGS Well Data Analytics. The acreage benefits from large areas of existing 3D seismic coverage, providing valuable subsurface data for future development. This production is primarily natural gas, with average GOR hovering around 20 mcf/stb, which will complement Stone Ridge’s Digital Flare Mitigation (DFM) technology, which captures gas that would be flared or vented and uses it to power portable data centers to mine bitcoin. Expected to close in the fourth quarter, this transaction exceeds ConocoPhillips’ $2 billion divestiture goal, prompting them to set an even higher $5 billion asset sale goal.

Figure 1. ConocoPhillips’ producing Anadarko assets and 3D seismic surveys

ConocoPhillips Strategy

With ConocoPhillips assuming $5.4 billion in debt as part of their acquisition of Marathon Oil for $22.5 billion in November, they set a goal of $2 billion in asset sales within 2 years to optimize and focus their portfolio. After selling non-core Permian and Ursa assets, they have reached $2.5 billion in divestitures with this Anadarko sale, with ConocoPhillips CEO Ryan Lance commenting “We're getting plenty of North American natural gas production from our assets in North America. It just wasn't going to compete for capital as we integrated that asset into the company, and we were pretty pleased with the price that we got.” Visualizing ConocoPhillips production portfolio in Figure 2 shows that the Anadarko Basin wasn’t performing as well as the rest of their assets. ConocoPhillips has announced a new target of $5 billion in divestitures by year end 2026, so an additional $2.5 billion of asset divestitures will be coming soon.

Figure 2. ConocoPhillips Basin Type Curves and Production

Stone Ridge’s Unique Solution

Since launching in 2021, Stone Ridge has now accumulated $9 billion in upstream investments and built over 11 gigawatts of natural gas energy supply capacity, with this $1.3 billion gas-rich Anadarko asset purchase marking its latest expansion. The gas-rich play synergizes well with affiliate company NYDIG’s DFM technology, acquired from Crusoe, which generates a competitive advantage by capturing otherwise lost energy to power datacenters to mine bitcoin or power AI. This DFM technology has already been deployed on over 20 sites across seven states and in a joint venture in Argentina.  NYDIG plans to expand the DFM footprint across the country and globally.

This sale achieves core strategic goals for both ConocoPhillps, by meeting their divestiture target, and Stone Ridge, by achieving more natural gas supply to support datacenters for bitcoin and AI. With ConocoPhillips more than doubling their divestiture target, more sales and acquisitions are sure to soon follow. 

For more information about TGS Well Data Analytics or to schedule a demo, please contact us at WDPSales@tgs.com.