EQT agrees to buy Range Resources, the Fort Worth gas producer, in an all-stock deal valued at $13 billion

Range Resources Corp., the natural gas producer that has kept its headquarters in Fort Worth while drilling mostly in Pennsylvania, has agreed to be acquired by EQT Corp. in an all-stock transaction valued at $13 billion, the Fort Worth Report reported Monday.

EQT, whose operations center on the Appalachian Basin, described the merged company in its announcement as the nation's largest natural gas producer and the only one that is vertically integrated. It put the combined enterprise value at $50 billion. The two companies' combined output is estimated at over 9 billion cubic feet of natural gas equivalent a day.

What shareholders get

Under the terms reported by the Fort Worth Report, each Range share will be exchanged for 0.987 of an EQT share. That works out to about $54.91 a share, a 20.6% premium over Range's closing price on Friday, Oct. 23. When the deal is done, EQT's existing shareholders will hold about 73% of the company and former Range shareholders about 27%.

The companies expect to complete the deal between January and March 2027.

Where the company will be run from

The combined business will be based in Canonsburg, Pennsylvania, and EQT's executive team will manage it. Range chairman and CEO Dennis Degner and one other Range representative will join the EQT board.

About 500 people work for Range, some at the Fort Worth head office and the rest in the Appalachian region. The company had recently announced plans to relocate its local offices from Two City Place, in the northwest part of downtown, into 94,500 square feet at the 777 Main building.

Company officials did not say how the merger would affect that move or the size of its Fort Worth workforce, according to the Report.

"This merger is a major milestone in the Range Resources story," Degner said on a conference call after the announcement, describing how the company turned the Marcellus Shale discovery of two decades ago into a drilling inventory he said is measured in decades.

A Fort Worth company with roots elsewhere

The company began in 1976 as Lomak Petroleum and adopted its current name in 1998. It drilled its first Pennsylvania wells in 1992, and in 2004 the Renz No. 1 well it drilled in southwestern Pennsylvania helped show what the Marcellus formation could produce.

In 2011 Range sold many of its Texas holdings, including its Barnett Shale assets around Fort Worth, to concentrate on the Marcellus.

The Report said growing demand for natural gas, driven by liquefied natural gas exports and by power plants serving data centers, has been pushing up interest in gas producers.

Sources

fortworthreport.org