Exxon agreed to buy XTO Energy in an all-stock deal at a 25 percent premium, showing how eagerly a company that is among the most conservative in a conservative industry is jumping into the market for natural gas.
As negotiators haggled in Copenhagen over a global plan to curb carbon emissions, the deal suggested Exxon sees change coming for an energy source best known now for heating homes.
The deal announced Monday was also the largest for the U.S. energy sector in at least four years and Exxons biggest acquisition since it bought Mobil Corp. for $75 billion in 1999.
The technology to - - - - >

Rex Tillerson was a drummer for the band in the 1970s. On the trumpet was Jack Randall, a fellow engineering major. Three decades later on the advice of Randall, an oil and gas investment banker and a member of XTOs board of directors, Tillerson, Exxons chief executive officer, invited XTO Chairman Bob Simpson to hunt quail on Exxon Mobils ranch in South Texas, said a person with knowledge of the events.
With some encouragement from Randall, Tillerson and Simpson started merger talks this past summer, said another - - - - >

Exxon Mobils U.S. refineries lost about $2.3 million a day last quarter as gasoline and diesel prices fell. Shell, whose refining earnings declined 47 percent, said the plunge in demand will keep profit margins narrow in “the short and medium term” and a quick recovery in energy usage and prices is unlikely.
Oil companies around the world are slashing costs, cutting jobs and holding back on some new investment to halt the slide in earnings, even as they seek to fund renewable energy projects. Exxon Mobil - - - - >