Marathon upstaged its own earnings report last week, announcing that it will acquire Western Oil Sands, a large Canadian producer, in a deal valued at $6.2 billion. Western Oil Sands has been among the Canadian companies that have looked at purchasing or creating joint ventures with U.S. northern tier refineries. If the deal goes through, Western's future crude oil output will be a Marathon asset, perhaps enabling the Ohio-based integrated oil company to further upgrade some of its mid-continent refineries. Marathon said that the deal should close before year's end, but MA experts believe that there may be some competing offers for Western within the next month.
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