Devon Energy Corporation is an American company engaged in hydrocarbon exploration. It is organized in Delaware with headquarters in Houston, Texas. Its operations are in the Delaware Basin, Eagle Ford Group, and the Rocky Mountains (Williston Basin and Powder River Basin).

The company was ranked 259th on the Fortune 500 in 2026, while Coterra Energy, newly acquired that May, was ranked 496th. It is also ranked 607th on the Forbes Global 2000.

As of December 31, 2025, the company had proved reserves of , of which 40% was petroleum, 30% was natural gas liquids, and 30% was natural gas.

History Devon was founded in 1971 by John Nichols (1914-2008) and his son, J. Larry Nichols. In 1988, the company became a public company via an initial public offering.

In October 2012, the company completed construction of its current headquarters, the 50-story Devon Energy Center in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma and closed its office in the Allen Center in Downtown Houston.

In February 2016, Devon announced plans to lay off 1,000 employees, including 700 in Oklahoma City, and cut its quarterly dividend to $0.06 per share due to low prices of its products. In 2021, it instituted a fixed plus variable dividend structure that resulted in a record high dividend.

In November 2019, a blowout at a Devon natural gas well prompted authorities to seal off thousands of acres of land near the Eagle Ford Shale towns of Yorktown, Texas and Nordheim, Texas until the well was capped. It took 35 hours to get the issue under control. The company paid $48,750 in fines for the incident.

In September 2021, the company agreed to pay $6.15 million to resolve allegations that it violated the False Claims Act of 1863 by underpaying and underreporting royalties for natural gas from federal lands in Wyoming and New Mexico.

Met with pressure to enhance performance and consider asset sales by Kimmeridge Energy Management, which had gained a stake in late 2025; in 2026, a second activist investor, Toms Capital Investment ‌Management, acquired a significant stake in the company, while advocating for faster asset sales.

Acquisitions # Year Company Price Description of Assets Ref(s). 1 Hondo Oil and Gas $122 million Oil and gas reserves and seven natural gas processing plants 2 Kerr-McGee $250 million North American onshore oil and gas properties; 370,000 net acres of undeveloped drilling rights 3 Northstar Energy $750 million Oil and gas properties in Canada 4 PennzEnergy $2.2 billion Oil and gas properties in the Gulf of Mexico 5 Santa Fe Snyder $3.35 billion Oil and gas properties in the Permian Basin, Rocky Mountains, and the Gulf of Mexico 6 Anderson Exploration $4.6 billion Oil and gas properties in Canada 7 Mitchell Energy $3.1 billion Oil and gas properties in the Barnett Shale of Texas 8 Ocean Energy $5.3 billion Deepwater sites in the Gulf of Mexico 9 Chief Oil & Gas $2.2 billion Barnett Shale leaseholds 10 GeoSouthern Energy $6.1 billion Eagle Ford assets 11 Crosstex Energy Merger of midstream assets to form EnLink Midstream, LLC 12 Felix Energy $2.5 billion Oil and gas properties in the Powder River Basin and Anadarko Basin 13 WPX Energy $2.56 billion Oil and gas properties in the Williston Basin and the Permian Basin 14 RimRock Oil and Gas $865 million Williston Basin assets 15 Validus Energy $1.8 billion Eagle Ford assets 16 Grayson Mill Energy $5 billion Williston Basin assets 17 Coterra $26 billion in stock Assets in the Permian Basin, Marcellus Shale, and the Anadarko Basin

Divestitures # Year Buyer Price Description of Assets Ref(s). 1 BP $7 billion Assets in Brazil, Azerbaijan, and the Gulf of Mexico 2 Canadian Natural Resources C$3.125 billion Conventional assets in Canada 3 Linn Energy $2.3 billion 900,000 net acres in the Rockies, Mid-Continent, east Texas, north Louisiana, and south Texas 4 Penn Virginia $340 million Lavaca County assets in the Eagle Ford 5 Canadian Natural Resources C$3.8 billion Assets in Canada 6 Banpu Kalnin Ventures (BKV) $770 million Assets in the Barnett Shale

CEOs J. Larry Nichols (1980-2010) John Richels (2010-2015) Dave Hager (2015-2021) Rick Muncrief (2021-2025) Clay Gaspar (2025-)

Political activity

Devon has contributed millions of dollars to politicians and political organizations, almost entirely to organizations and individuals affiliated with the Republican Party.

After agreeing with the Obama administration to install systems to control the illegal emission of hazardous chemicals, Devon backed out of such agreements during the first presidency of Donald Trump due to rollbacks of environmental regulations.

In 2014, an investigation by The New York Times uncovered that a three-page letter signed by Scott Pruitt, then the Attorney General of Oklahoma, to the United States Environmental Protection Agency advocating for a relaxing of laws related to hydraulic fracturing was actually written by lobbyists for Devon Energy and not by Pruitt.

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