HOUSTON, May 3 (Reuters) - Exxon Mobil ( XOM ) will take

18 to 24 months to achieve its desired production synergies from

its $60 billion purchase of U.S. shale oil producer Pioneer

Natural Resources ( PXD ), the company's top shale executive said on

Friday.

Exxon this week closed all-stock acquisition after agreeing

to an antitrust consent order that barred the former Pioneer CEO

from joining its board and is moving in coming weeks to combine

operations that will form the largest oil producer in the

Permian basin.

The purchase more than doubles Exxon's output in the

Permian, the top U.S. shale field, to about 1.3 million barrels

per day of oil and gas. An additional 700,000 barrels is

predicted by 2027.

"We're going to take a best-of-both approach to putting the

organization together and that includes how we approach

development," said Bart Cahir, Exxon's senior vice president of

shale.

He declined to say whether the combined firm's Permian

drilling rigs and hydraulic fracking fleets will increase or

decrease this year.

With Pioneer's acreage, Exxon controls 1.4 million acres

(566,560 hectares) of prime areas that will allow it to drill

longer and more closely-spaced wells in cube format, he said.

Deploying the new techniques will take 18 to 24 months to

achieve the desired goals, he said. Exxon aims to provide

"better recoveries and better productivity. And over time that

enables you to grow production. And that's the key element

here," Cahir said.

Exxon has proprietary technologies that allow it to be

"very, very prescriptive and targeted in our designs. That's

something that enables us to do more with less," he said.

The company expects to offer positions to the "overwhelming

majority" of Pioneer employees in the next two months, he said,

declining to specify any cuts to Pioneer's roughly 2,200

workers.

Integration teams from both companies have been working for

six months to smooth the transition process. They "have really

clicked well. We're a lot more similar than we are different,"

Cahir said.

Cahir said Pioneer's crude oil trading team fits well into

Exxon's global trading organization, created more than a year

ago.

Exxon also will move Pioneer's oil into Exxon's pipeline and

logistics, connecting the volumes to U.S. Gulf Coast plants that

produce fuels and plastics, he said.