ONEOK to buy Magellan for $18.8 Billion

[formerly405Tulsan]

woah. While I am glad the jobs are staying in Tulsa, I am curious how it will impact the city. Both companies are very generous in the community, so combining the two may impact that area. Plus, will any jobs be cut due to redundancies?

"pipeline operator ONEOK moves into oil, products with $18.8 billion Magellan deal"

https://www.reuters.com/markets/deal...on-2023-05-14/

[UrbanistPoke]

There will be some job cuts but not as many as some mergers just because this is somewhat of a diversification merger versus a competitor buying each other. It will make OneOk massive between 4,000-5,000 employees - probably closest to 3,500-4,000-ish once redundancies/some layoffs happen. American Airlines employees around 5,000 in Tulsa just for scale.

Williams has about 4,500-5,000 employees (with pretty substantial operations in Houston), OneGas has 3,500 employees which was the spin off from OneOk not too long ago. Can't find super accurate info on Devon but I think they have between 1,800-2,000 employees and Chesapeake has about 1,600 ish.

I'm not super up on the in's and out's of oil & gas as much as I used too but it seems like the MLP companies are all slowing being absorbed and done away with so it's better that a Tulsa company bought Magellan than someone in Dallas/Houston that would have just closed the offices here and laid people off... this should keep as much in Tulsa as possible out of an acquisition of Magellan. Magellan has been a great company and OneOk is pretty solid too so this long-term will be a good thing.

[shavethewhales]

It doesn't feel good to "lose" a major company HQ, but this is the best possible outcome considering the economic landscape. It was pointed out to me that both companies were seen as buyout targets prior to this, but now the combined company will be large enough to stand on its own in the current market. It's much better that a Tulsa company is doubling in size versus losing another company to out of state, obviously.

Now we just need to generate a few more energy start ups... Many spinoff companies that Tulsa has generated have gone on to become pretty large. Sure miss WPX being around here.

[gopokes88]

Creates a behemoth of a midstream company. Like top 5, overall.

[Swake]

It doesn't feel good to "lose" a major company HQ, but this is the best possible outcome considering the economic landscape. It was pointed out to me that both companies were seen as buyout targets prior to this, but now the combined company will be large enough to stand on its own in the current market. It's much better that a Tulsa company is doubling in size versus losing another company to out of state, obviously.

Now we just need to generate a few more energy start ups... Many spinoff companies that Tulsa has generated have gone on to become pretty large. Sure miss WPX being around here.

Both Magellan and WPX were spun off from Williams, not start-ups.

[ComeOnBenjals!]

There will be some job cuts but not as many as some mergers just because this is somewhat of a diversification merger versus a competitor buying each other. It will make OneOk massive between 4,000-5,000 employees - probably closest to 3,500-4,000-ish once redundancies/some layoffs happen. American Airlines employees around 5,000 in Tulsa just for scale.

Williams has about 4,500-5,000 employees (with pretty substantial operations in Houston), OneGas has 3,500 employees which was the spin off from OneOk not too long ago. Can't find super accurate info on Devon but I think they have between 1,800-2,000 employees and Chesapeake has about 1,600 ish.

I'm not super up on the in's and out's of oil & gas as much as I used too but it seems like the MLP companies are all slowing being absorbed and done away with so it's better that a Tulsa company bought Magellan than someone in Dallas/Houston that would have just closed the offices here and laid people off... this should keep as much in Tulsa as possible out of an acquisition of Magellan. Magellan has been a great company and OneOk is pretty solid too so this long-term will be a good thing.

Glad to see the jobs (most of them), staying in Tulsa. I wouldn't expect there to be too many layoffs, ONEOK will need to scale up a lot of functions to support the new company.

Long term, this is a win for Tulsa. Would've been really disappointing to see Magellan bought by a TX company, and devastating if ONEOK had been purchased.

Williams has had quite a few smaller acquisitions lately, they're actually up to about 6000 employees nationwide. I'd guess about 1250-1500 are in Tulsa headquarters, 1000 in HOU, and the rest dispersed out.

[BG918]

Both companies are downtown. Do they want/need to combine their ops into one location or keep separate offices? Not familiar enough with how pipeline companies do their business in a hybrid work environment. They are about 4 blocks apart

[UrbanistPoke]

Both companies are downtown. Do they want/need to combine their ops into one location or keep separate offices? Not familiar enough with how pipeline companies do their business in a hybrid work environment. They are about 4 blocks apart

Wouldn't surprise me if they eventually did, Magellan is spread out between City Hall (One Tech) and the Williams/BOK Tower. Magellan was one of the faster growing office users downtown for many years. They take up at least 250,000 sq ft and I thought they would buy the WPX building to consolidate but makes sense why they probably didn't now.

Would be interesting to see if OneOk's building could add another 10-15 floors. The foundations and elevators were built to accommodate 80 floors I believe and were capped off after the bust in the 80s. The problem would likely be finding the stone/exterior to match any additional floors added because it's a pretty unique color but could be interesting to see a modern extension to the building - never know what an architect can come up with and lots of examples of how to blend different styles into one building.

The OneOk building does have 1-2 floors that are occupied by other tenants but that's definitely not enough space to accommodate Magellan employees into one building even if they kicked them out. One of the big 4 audits that works with OneOk/One Gas occupies a floor and there's a few others on another floor that are just random tenants.

[BG918]

^ ONEOK has a massive garage across from its tower on 6th St. If they needed to consolidate they could likely build up there easier than adding to the tower

[shavethewhales]

https://gtrnews.com/oneok-plaza-hous...tory-and-look/

According to this article, ONEOK tower was originally supposed to be 54 stories, and the foundations and elevator core both reflect this, but it was decided to lop it down to 37 stories in construction, which then got halted at the 17th floor during the 80's bust. I've heard people mention over the years that this tower could be heightened some day... I wonder if they are looking into it now?

That parking garage across the street is a gross behemoth. Wish they could retrofit some retail or something if they are going to expand its use.

[PhiAlpha]

Becuase Oneok owns their building an expansion might be possible if they want to get everyone under one roof that badly but there’s so much office space available in and around downtown right now that I have a rough time envisioning anyone adding more for awhile.

[gopokes88]

Becuase Oneok owns their building an expansion might be possible if they want to get everyone under one roof that badly but there’s so much office space available in and around downtown right now that I have a rough time envisioning anyone adding more for awhile.

They're also stretching to financially to get the deal done, doubt they turn around and start building their office taller. Optics wouldn't be great

[UrbanistPoke]

^ ONEOK has a massive garage across from its tower on 6th St. If they needed to consolidate they could likely build up there easier than adding to the tower

Ah yes, didn't even think about that. That would be a lot easier to just knock down that garage and redo that block with a mixed-use garage/office building/etc. if they wanted to consolidate everything eventually. I think Magellan still has at least 5+ years on most of their leased spaces so it would be a while before they probably start thinking about any of that.