© 2014 The Texas Lawbook.
By Mark Curriden, JD
Senior Writer for The Texas Lawbook
(May 8) – Less than 24 hours after divesting $3.1 billion in assets in the Eagle Ford Shale, Freeport-McMoRan announced Thursday it is buying interests in a Deepwater Gulf of Mexico production for $1.4 billion.
Freeport-McMoRan Oil & Gas is acquiring Houston-based Apache Corporation’s interests in the Lucius and Heidelberg oil production development projects and 11 exploration leases.
The purchase is being funded with proceeds from Freeport-McMoRan’s sale Wednesday of Eagle Ford Shale assets to a Canadian firm for $3.1 billion.
Latham & Watkins is advising Freeport-McMoRan in both of its billion-dollar-plus transactions.
“The interesting part of this has been doing two deals in one,” says Muñoz. “It required us to push along the two deals at the same time and to keep them both on track.”
In 2012, Muñoz represented Plains Exploration in its $5.5 billion purchase of Gulf properties owned by BP. Later that same year, Latham advised Plains when it was acquired by Freeport-McMoRan.
Other Latham lawyers working on the Apache acquisition are associates Stephen Szalkowski, Chris Bennett, David Yellow Robe and James Robertson. Houston tax law partner Tim Fenn, tax law associate James Cole and environmental law partner Joel Mack of Houston also worked on this transaction.
Other Bracewell attorneys who worked on the deal include partners Elizabeth L. McGinley, D. Kirk Morgan II, Michael De Voe Piazza, and Tim Wilkins and associates Christopher J. Miller and Vivian Y. Ouyang.
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