Moody's reviews Vintage Petroleum for upgrade

Moody's Investors Service said it placed the ratings of Vintage Petroleum, Inc. under review for possible upgrade. Ratings placed under review include Vintage Petroleum's Ba2 corporate family rating, Ba3 senior unsecured and B1 senior subordinated debt.

These actions were taken following Occidental Petroleum Corp.'s announcement that it had entered into an agreement to acquire Vintage for about $3.8 billion.

Under the terms of the agreement, Occidental will pay $20 cash per Vintage share ($1.4 billion) and issue 0.42 Occidental shares for each Vintage share (28.7 million Occidental shares). Occidental also will assume $550 million of existing Vintage debt, Moody's said.

Occidental's acquisition of Vintage provides increased scale, geographic diversification and exploitation opportunities for production growth, Moody's said.

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