Viper Energy Closes $337M Riverbend Mineral Rights Deal
Viper Energy finalized its purchase of Riverbend Oil & Gas IX's mineral and royalty interests for cash and stock totaling roughly $337M plus shares.
Viper Energy (NASDAQ: VNOM), the Permian Basin royalty arm of Diamondback Energy (NASDAQ: FANG), just closed the book on a deal it had been working toward for a while. The Midland-based company officially completed its acquisition of Riverbend Oil & Gas IX, L.L.C., picking up a portfolio of mineral and royalty interests in the process.
So what did Viper actually pay? The total tab came to $337 million in cash plus roughly 3.7 million shares of Viper's Class A common stock — and both sides agreed the final numbers are still subject to the usual post-closing true-up adjustments that come standard with deals like this. Think of it as the financial equivalent of checking the receipt after the groceries are already bagged.
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On the cash side, Viper didn't just write one big check from a single pot of money. The company covered it through a mix of existing cash on hand and borrowings drawn from its credit facility. That's a pretty typical playbook for energy companies executing acquisitions of this size — spreading the funding across sources rather than draining any one bucket dry.
Mineral and royalty interests are a specific kind of asset in the oil patch. Unlike operators who drill wells and manage the messy day-to-day production work, royalty owners sit back and collect a percentage of revenue when someone else pulls hydrocarbons out of the ground beneath their land. For Viper, stacking up more of these passive income streams is core to its entire business model as Diamondback's dedicated royalty vehicle.
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