The story
Founded by Bob R. Simpson in 1985.1
Early history
XTO Energy was founded in 1986, and was initially called Cross Timbers Oil Company. The company was started by Bob R. Simpson, Steve Palko and Jon Brumley with US$35 million raised by former Goldman Sachs co-chairman Robert Rubin. Initially, the company purchased and developed long-lived oil and gas production properties. The company went public in 1993.
In 1996, Bob R. Simpson, one of the company's founders, became chairman and chief executive officer. Simpson received his undergraduate and master's degrees in finance from Baylor University. After Simpson took over, the company changed its strategy, from an even split of oil production and natural gas to focusing more heavily on natural gas. In June 2001, the company changed its name from Cross Timbers Oil Company to XTO Energy Inc., to reflect the company's new focus on natural gas rather than oil. "XTO" was chosen as it was the company's stock ticker symbol. The company continued to grow through the acquisition and development of oil and natural gas properties, and in 2002 XTO Energy was ranked 5th on Fortune's "100 Fastest Growing Companies" list.
ExxonMobil purchase
On December 14, 2009, ExxonMobil agreed to acquire XTO Energy Inc. through a merger. ExxonMobil acquired XTO Energy in a deal valued at $36 billion, involving the issuance of 416 million shares of stock and assuming the company's $11 billion in debt. The deal increased ExxonMobil's U.S. natural gas production to 3.68 billion cubic feet per day, making it the largest producer in the U.S. The purchase by ExxonMobil was the largest by the company since the deal that created ExxonMobil in 1999. The acquisition was finalized in June 2010.
2011 - present
In June 2011, ExxonMobil acquired two natural gas companies in Pennsylvania—Phillips Resources Inc. and TWP Inc.—for $1.69 billion. After the acquisition, both companies were managed by XTO Energy. The acquisition added about 317,000 acres in Marcellus Shale to ExxonMobil's portfolio. In August of the same year, ExxonMobil leveraged XTO Energy's expertise in a trade with Russian oil company Rosneft in a deal worth $3.2 billion, giving ExxonMobil access to oil and gas opportunities in the Russian Arctic.
In September 2012, ExxonMobil and XTO Energy signed a land exchange agreement with Denbury Onshore LLC, acquiring 196,000 acres in the Bakken Shale in North Dakota and Montana. In exchange for the acreage, Denbury Onshore received $1.6 billion in cash and operating interests in the Hartzog Draw Field in Wyoming and the Webster Field in Texas.
During 2013, XTO Energy expanded its production in the Appalachian region of the U.S. by nearly 30%.
In February 2014, XTO Energy agreed to let American Energy–Utica LLC buy into 30,000 acres of its holdings in the Utica Shale located in the Harrison, Jefferson and Belmont counties of Ohio.
As of 2014, the size of XTO Energy's resource portfolio had tripled since it was acquired by ExxonMobil in 2010.
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In August 2015, Exxon Mobil Corporation signed two agreements to drill on 48,000 acres in the core of the Midland Basin to be operated by XTO Energy. XTO operates 11 horizontal and four vertical rigs across 1.5 million net acres in Texas' Permian Basin.
From Wikipedia’s article on XTO Energy, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.4