The Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday that Shell is holding early-stage talks to acquire bp, citing people familiar with the matter. However, Shell has denied this, and bp has not commented.
Talks between company representatives are active, with bp carefully considering the proposal, the newspaper said.
Although it has declined about 14% over the past year, Shell’s stock performance puts the energy giant in a position of strength due to its market capitalization of $197 billion being more than twice that of bp’s, Bloomberg noted in its first report on the matter.
A Shell spokesperson told CSP Wednesday, “This is further market speculation. No talks are taking place. As we have said many times before we are sharply focused on capturing the value in Shell through continuing to focus on performance, discipline and simplification.”
bp has not replied to CSP’s request for comment as of press time Thursday morning.
- bp is No. 5 on CSP’s 2025 Top 202 ranking of U.S. convenience-store chains by store count. Shell is No. 39.
Regarding potential acquisitions, Shell CFO Sinead Gorman told investors during the company’s first-quarter earnings call in May that “we have that option to be able to go there,” according to a transcript from financial services site AlphaSense. “We’ve positioned the balance sheet such that we have more than $35 billion of cash.”
Shell reported adjusted earnings for the first quarter of $5.6 billion, up 52% from the quarter before.
bp’s first-quarter profits dropped nearly 50% from a year ago, to $1.4 billion.
bp is also facing mounting pressure to turn the business around, with activist firm Elliott Investment Management announcing a 5% stake in the company.
If the deal between the two London-based oil companies succeeds, it would be one of the oil industry’s largest takeovers and further evidence of how these two former rivals have seen much different performance in recent years.
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