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US NEWS 
By David Carnevali, Ryan Gould, and David Wethe
Magnolia Oil & Gas Corp. has emerged as the front-runner to acquire closely held WildFire Energy for more than $4 billion in what would rank as its largest-ever acquisition, according to people familiar with the matter.
The Houston-based shale producer is poised to win the auction for the driller backed by private equity firms Warburg Pincus and Kayne Anderson, the people said. A deal could be announced in weeks, said the people, asking not to be identified because the details aren’t public.
Deliberations are still fluid and a different bidder could still emerge, the people said. The company’s owners could also decide to retain the asset, they added.
Magnolia fell 1.5% to $26.78 at in New York trading Friday, giving the company a market value of about $5.1 billion.
Representatives for Magnolia didn’t immediately reply to a request for comment. Representatives for Warburg Pincus and Kayne Anderson declined to comment.
A deal for WildFire would boost Magnolia’s presence in the Eagle Ford Shale basin of south Texas.
Private equity firms are shopping several closely held oil and gas companies worth tens of billions of dollars after the Iran war pushed crude prices higher. Publicly traded companies in the US shale patch have embarked on consolidation over the past few years to gain scale and lower costs as some of the top well sites get drilled up.
WildFire operates more than 2,000 wells with the equivalent output of more than 50,000 net barrels of oil per day, according to its website. The company is run by a management team that previously operated WildHorse Resource Development Corp. before selling to shale-gas pioneer Chesapeake Energy Corp. in 2019 for $1.9 billion.
(Updates trading and comment line.)
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