Talos Energy goes public as it acquires Stone Energy of Louisiana

Houston offshore oil and gas producer Talos Energy is now a public company after closing its nearly $2 billion merger Thursday with Louisiana’s Stone Energy.

The deal creates a larger offshore player focused on the U.S. and Mexican sides of the Gulf of Mexico. Private-equity backed Talos went public by acquiring a controlling interest in Stone, which already was publicly traded, rather than filing for an initial public offering. Talos began trading on the New York Stock Exchange under the TALO ticker.

Talos CEO Tim Duncan called the deal a transformational combination. Talos’ backers own 63 percent of the combined company and Stone shareholders received 37 percent.

“Talos is very well positioned … in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico and offshore Mexico,” Duncan said in a statement.

Talos was founded six years ago to focus on developing oil and gas fields in Gulf with the backing of private equity firms Apollo Global Management and Riverstone Holdings. The idea was to take Talos public in 2014 or 2015, but the oil bust derailed those plans.

The company struck it big last summer with the so-called Zama discovery off Mexico after winning some of the first bids for offshore blocks after Mexico’s reforms that opened its energy sector to foreign investment and ended the 75-year monopoly of Petroleos Mexicanos. Zama is the first major discovery in the country’s deregulation process.