Stone Energy Corp. is being acquired by Houston-based Talos Energy.
The combined company will have initial equity market capitalization estimated at $1.9 billion. It will be owned 63 percent by current Talos stakeholders and 37 percent by Stone shareholders.
Talos and Stone will become subsidiaries of a new holding company, Talos Energy Inc., with its headquarters in Houston and additional offices in Lafayette and New Orleans.
The merger is targeted for completion in second-quarter 2018.
Both companies recently have reported discoveries in the deepwater Gulf of Mexico. Deepwater work by Talos includes the completion last month of an exploratory well drilled into a fault block adjacent to the company’s 2016 Tornado discovery in the Green Canyon area of the Gulf of Mexico. And in September, Stone Energy reported a discovery of gas and liquids in the well operated by Deep Gulf Energy III in deep water on Mississippi Canyon Block 116.
And Talos this year reported an oil strike in shallow water off Mexico in its Zama 1 exploratory well.
