(Reuters) – Diamondback Energy, an oil and gas company, said on Tuesday that it would buy certain units of the Texas Double Eagle energy producer in a cash and stock agreement for around $ 4.08 billion.
Diamondback added that it would sell at least $ 1.5 billion in non-essential assets to reduce pro-forma debt. The shale producer plans to reduce net debt to $ 10 billion and, in the long term, to maintain a lever effect of $ 6 billion to $ 8 billion.
Last year, Reuters reported that Double Eagle explored a sale of its producer based on the Permian basin in an agreement that could be worth more than $ 6.5 billion, including debt.
Double Eagle, based in Fort Worth, has more than 95,000 net acres in the Midland basin and represents one of the last large assets in the Permian basin, the most extensive oil field in the United States.
(Report by Pooja Menon and Vallari Srivastava in Bengaluru; edition by Maju Samuel)
