Matador Resources is focused on developing its acreage in the Delaware Basin—a footprint now spread across some 200,000 net acres.
But as the company increasingly focuses on exploration and development, it’s also preparing for the worst. In April, it announced the divestiture of its assets in the Eagle Ford Shale and a robust hedging program, saying it was preparing for “turbulent times.”
The company has also adjusted its drilling activity for the rest of the year with plans to downshift to eight rigs from nine by midyear.
Despite a plunge in oil prices, CEO Joe Foran said Matador has an appetite for more Delaware M&A after closing its acquisition of private Delaware E&P Ameredev II. The $1.8 billion deal was the largest in Matador’s history.
The Ameredev deal added 371 undeveloped drilling locations, more than 25,000 boe/d in production and 33,500 net acres spanning the New Mexico-Texas border.
Foran said he’s interested in acquiring more, but not necessarily proved developed producing assets.
It’s becoming “increasingly important to not … buy producing properties but to buy undeveloped properties,” he said. “Then we have an active exploration program going. I don’t know when the next opportunity may come up, but we want to be ready.”
Despite a macro environment beset by tariffs and increased OPEC+ production, Foran made it clear it will take more than a $10 drop in the price of crude to ruffle him.
Foran started his first oil company in the early 1980s with friends and family providing the financing. Foran Oil became Matador Petroleum in 1988, which sold for $388 million in 2003. The week after that sale, Foran founded Matador Resources, which went public in 2012. The company’s market cap now exceeds $5 billion.
Foran survived the latter part of the decade as oil crashed to below $10/bbl and sent the Texas economy into a tailspin, wiping out oil companies and the banks that financed them.
“People say, ‘oh, gosh, that must have been really bad for you,’” Foran said at Hart Energy’s SUPER DUG 2025 Conference & Expo in Fort Worth. “It ended up working to our benefit because Mr. Pickens was shifting the business plan of his company away from operations to more of a financial firm.”
“Mr. Pickens” is T. Boone Pickens, legendary founder of Mesa Petroleum and BP Capital Management. Pickens and Foran were both from Amarillo, Texas, and Pickens’ decision to move into finance created an opportunity for Foran.
“He retired his senior people at Mesa, so there were his three EVPs, and I knew them,” he said. “I met with them and said, ‘Look, I can’t pay you anything, I’m just getting started, but if you’ll join our board, we’ll split profits.”
The added credibility of the new board members helped Matador go on to make plenty of profits to split—and gave Foran a lesson that applies today, with oil near $60/bbl after trading in the $70s early in the year.
“When these things happen, you haven’t really lost opportunities, you have a different set of opportunities,” he said. “There’s still plenty of ways to grow and to take advantage of the conditions.”
It’s been 40 years since Foran started Foran Oil. Drilling rigs use artificial intelligence now and equipment is better, but the business is still the business.
“Oil and gas is a wonderful business, one of the few that’s really win-win,” he said. “A treasure hunt but when it’s done right, everybody wins.”