I think from a few articles I read is that the new Devon CEO is the WPX CEO right? If so, I can see why they are holding their commitment to finishing this project how it was proposed. It did seem to be that the WPX people took this project more personal than you see a lot of big companies and they seemed to be very thoughtful on site, connection, design, etc.
I could see BOK or someone taking over the building. I did notice a while back that all of BOK's space in the black Williams I & II buildings which was in the 50-100k sq. ft. range. They had moved there from City Hall several years back and Magellan took part of their old space in City Hall.
BOK had renderings drawn up for a new HQ on the two lots they own along Archer and don't think it really ever went further than just some basic design/site planning.
If WPX's leadership is running Devon now - I wonder why they are so intent on consolidating in OKC. Why not put space in the Devon HQ on the market and turn it into what Williams/BOK Tower is now (multi-tenant). Devon does have some huge lease commitments on that other building that was built (BOK Park Tower something next door) where they are trying to sublease the rest of that building still. So, there is a glut of Class A space in downtown there, far more than Tulsa.
Anyone have any info on how much of WPX's leadership is staying versus Devon's?
I believe the senior leadership of the new Devon is pretty evenly split between former WPX leaders and "old Devon" leaders, with slightly more Devon people.
New Board of Directors is 7 from Devon and 5 from WPX
New Chairman: Devon
New President/CEO: WPX
New EVP/CFO: Devon
New EVP/COO: WPX
New EVP/Chief Development: Devon
New EVP/General Counsel: WPX
New Sr VP-HR: Devon
I suspect the choice of HQ had to do with several factors. Probably the most important is that Devon was the larger entity and, in reality, this was Devon purchasing WPX. Additionally, as you mentioned, Devon owns a huge building with tons of excess space.
Their commitment to complete the under-construction building in Tulsa probably just makes better economic sense than stopping construction. They've already committed the money for it. Halting construction would just leave them with a worthless property (actually worse than worthless; they would still incur ongoing expenses), plus likely costs to cancel the construction contracts.
FWIW, per CBRE, as of mid-2020, downtown Tulsa had more than 1.6 million square feet of vacant office space. Downtown OKC had more than 1.4 million (of course downtown OKC's office market covered by CBRE's report is smaller than Tulsa's, so OKC's number is relatively worse).