Halliburton Co.’s proposed $34.6 billion acquisition of Baker Hughes Inc. is going to take more time to complete the approval process with the U.S. Justice Department.

The world’s second- and third-largest oilfield service companies extended the date of the antitrust review to Nov. 25, or 90 days after both have certified “substantial compliance” with requests from the agency, according to a joint statement from Halliburton and Baker Hughes.

Given the longer approval time, the oilfield contractors set a target date for closing the deal of no later than Dec. 1. Previously the companies had said the closing would occur some time in the second half of the year, Emily Mir, a spokeswoman at Houston-based Halliburton, said in a phone interview.

To gain approval for the deal from antitrust authorities around the world, Halliburton has proposed a new plan to sell more business units than the ones they’d previously announced. Mir declined to say which additional businesses might be sold. The total transactions would still fall within the scope originally outlined by the companies, they said in the statement.

When the companies announced their agreement to combine Nov. 17, they said they’d be selling assets accounting for as much as $7.5 billion in revenue to gain regulatory approval.

With the merger, the two companies are looking to create a larger footprint with a broader technology portfolio to better compete against Schlumberger Ltd., which will still be about twice the size of the combined contractors

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