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The global freeze on oil- and gas-company mergers and acquisitions is beginning to thaw.

International oil companies such as ConocoPhillips (COP), Devon Energy Corp. (DVN) and Chevron Corp. (CVX) are putting billions of dollars of assets on the table--and there are plenty of prospective buyers, particularly among state-ownedoil companies from resource-hungry Asian countries, investment bankers and transaction lawyers say. One continent--Africa--is also emerging as a hot spot for rivalries between western and Asian oil companies competing for a toehold in one of the last remaining energy frontiers open to foreign investment.

Investment bankers are expecting transactions to heat up in the next year, underscoring the fact that giant energy companies are still betting on the medium-term growth of the world economy while smaller ones need to unload expensive assets that they can't develop.

"The market has been starved for supply for several years," said Adam Waterous, head of Scotia Waterous, the oil and gas merger & acquisitions division of Scotia Capital. Waterous, who is advising Devon on its sale of Gulf of Mexico assets, said that there are "several very well financed companies hungry to make acquisitions."

Several factors underpin this renaissance: Energy prices are less volatile than they were a year ago, when the unfolding recession made crude and natural gas markets plummet and buyers and sellers couldn't agree on the value of assets. "At the beginning of the year, everyone was waiting for the market to settle," said Robin Fredrickson, a partner specializing in oil and gas transactions at Vinson & Elkins, a Houston-based law firm. Now that energy prices seem firmer, "things can be bought and sold," she said.

At the same time, oil companies that drew upenormouscapital-expenditure budgets when energy prices boomed are now retrenching, focusing on projects they can easily develop at lower oil and gas prices.

Debt-ridden ConocoPhillips said in October it was selling $10 billion in assets in order to put its financial house in order. Devon Energy said last month that it aims to raise net proceeds of about $4.5 billion-$7.5 billion by selling all its U.S. Gulf of Mexico and international assets. Chevron, the second-largest U.S. oil major, is seeking partners for a multi-billion-dollar gas project in Indonesia, despite having one of the strongest balance sheets in the business.

The sellers are confident that they'll be able to find buyers for rare, capital-intensive assets, particularly among companies from China, India and South Korea. "We see that, in general, Asian buyers are continuing to be aggressive in their pursuit of natural resources," said Michael Hill, Managing Director and Co-Head of the Global Natural Resources Group at Deutsche Bank AG (DB), who is also advising Devon Energy on its asset sale.

The interest is evident in Africa, one of the world's more promising oil provinces. Anadarko Petroleum Corp. (APC) Chief Executive James Hackett, whose company has a large presence in West Africa, said in an interview that "most of the companies that you can name, either international companies or national oil companies, are interested."

Exxon Mobil Corp. (XOM) has agreed to buy a stake in Ghana's Jubilee oilfield for $4 billion but is facing competing interests from BP PLC (BP) and Chinese national oil company China National Offshore Oil Corp (Cnooc). Also, Exxon and Total SA (TOT) are in talks to buy acreage in Uganda from Dominion Petroleum (DPL.LN), people familiar with the matter told Dow Jones Newswires recently.

Cnooc has become much more aggressive in its hunt for resources. In 2005, the company dropped out of a bid to acquire Unocal, a U.S. company with major assets in the Gulf of Mexico that was eventually bought by Chevron. But last month Cnooc acquired a small U.S. Gulf stake from Statoil ASA (STO). Asian companies, once slowed down by bureaucracy, have also learned to jump on deals more quickly, said Waterous, of Scotia Waterous.

Brazil, with its recently discovered offshore oil and gas bounty, is also attractive to international companies--but a recent hydrocarbons law gives the national oil company, Petroleo Brasileiro S.A (PBR), the commanding role in future developments. That's why assets already in development could be attractive to prospective buyers; Anadarko's Hackett confirmed last Monday that the company would look at Devon's stake in the Itaipu prospect, where Anadarko already has a 33% interest.

-By Angel Gonzalez and Isabel Ordonez, Dow Jones Newswires;713-547-9214;angel.gonzalez@dowjones.com, isabel.ordonez@dowjones.com

(James Herron and Benoit Faucon contributed to this story)

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