"Either Occidental needs to get bigger and beef up the oil in the tank, or they're probably going to have to be part of a larger oil and gas company," Smead said."

I don't think that OXY will be able to find an attractive acquisition. In fact, they are the attractive acquisition right now. The value of an oil company lies primarily in its proven reserves. Here are the proven reserves and enterprise values of OXY, XOM and CVX at present:

company, proven reserves in barrel of oil equivalent (boe), enterprise value (EV), EV/boe

XOM, 17,700 million boe, $605,180 million, $34/boe
CVX, 10,600 million boe, $380,780 million, $36/boe
OXY, 4,600 million boe, $70,810 million, $15/boe

Vicki Hollub succeeded in her goal of concentrating reserves in the US Permian Basin, where OXY already had infrastructure. The problem was that she paid too much for Anadarko in 2019, $38.70/boe, which everyone said was too high, and she had to borrow money at 8% interest to pay for it. I think paying down debt is the right approach now for OXY, unless someone wants to offer $35+/boe for OXY.