Mayer Brown, Vinson & Elkins Lead on $1.7 Billion Sinochem Texas Shale Investment

China’s Sinochem Group has announced a $1.7 billion investment in a Texas shale oil and gas project held by Dallas-based Pioneer Natural Resources Co., with Mayer Brown and Vinson & Elkins serving as advisors on the deal. 

 

State-owned Sinochem, the country’s biggest chemical company, will purchase a 40 percent stake in Pioneer’s 207,000 leasehold acres of oil and natural gas fields in Western Texas for $500 million. The acreage is a part of the larger oil-and-gas-rich Permian Basin stretching across Western Texas and into New Mexico.
 

Sinochem also has agreed to fund another $1.2 billion in drilling and completion costs as part of Pioneer’s plan to further develop the project. The deal, which is subject to regulatory approvals, is expected to close in the second quarter.
 

Mayer Brown is acting for the buyer, with team a consisting of partners Kevin Shaw, William Moss, and Pablo Ferrante in Houston; Timothy Keeler in Washington, D.C., Irene Lau in Hong Kong; and Henry Wang in Beijing.
 

Houston-based Vinson & Elkins is representing Pioneer Natural Resources, using a team of partners that comprised four offices: David Cohen in New York; Shay Kuperman and Marcia Backus in Houston; Christopher Dawe, Thomas Crichton and Todd Way in Dallas; and William Vigdor in Washington, D.C.