Expand executives see 2026 average output growing 5% on flat capex
Expand Energy Corp., Oklahoma City, expects to grow natural gas production by roughly 5% in 2026 while maintaining capital spending to this year’s levels.
Speaking after executives reported Expand’s third-quarter results on Oct. 29, president and chief executive officer Nick Dell’Osso and his team said the leaders also have shaved another $75 million from the 2025 capex forecast, which now stands at $2.85 billion. That figure includes about $250 million spent to prep for 2026 output growth and have Expand—which at the beginning of this month marked the 1-year anniversary of combining the former Chesapeake Energy and Southwestern Energy organizations—end 2025 with about 12 rigs.
Dell’Osso told analysts that Expand is on pace to average net production this year of 7.15 bcfd, which is a slight increase from the team’s previous forecast. For 2026, that average could grow to 7.5 bcfd—with the caveat that market conditions cooperate.
“The capital efficiency that our business is showcasing right now is tremendous,” Dell’Osso said on a conference call. “We’re beating our own expectations, beating the synergy goals we laid out at the onset of the merger and then, again, making faster progress towards reducing costs and increasing productivity […] Our 2026 setup looks even better. We had said at the beginning of this year that we wanted to set up our productive capacity for 2026 to be 7.5 bcf a day. That is what we are positioned to deliver.”
Expand produced roughly 7.33 bcfd (92% natural gas) during the third quarter, with the company’s Appalachia operations contributing about 4.1 bcfd from four rigs and its Haynesville teams producing about 3.2 bcfd from seven rigs. That output translated into net profits of $547 million on total revenues of nearly $3 billion.
Executives said weak pricing dynamics led them to voluntarily curtail some Appalachia production but added that volumes should increase during the current quarter. The executives have set up Expand to begin work on growth projects via two land acquisitions during the third quarter.
The first, for $57 million, adds about 7,500 acres of undeveloped core Marcellus land. That, chief operating officer Josh Viets said on the conference call, delivers Expand acreage that is “highly synergistic” with the company’s existing operations and will let it nearly double its laterals in the area.
The second acquisition comprises more than 75,000 net acres in the Western Haynesville area of Texas, for which Expand has so far spent about $178 million. Viets said Expand teams have been studying the property, which has the potential to yield more than 200 wells, for several years and see it as having “tremendous upside in an area where we see growing demand.”
Shares of Expand (Ticker: EXE) were down slightly to about $100 in afternoon trading on Oct. 29. Over the past 6 months, they have given up about 7% of their value, which has trimmed the company’s market capitalization to about $24 billion.
About the Author
Geert De Lombaerde
Senior Editor
A native of Belgium, Geert De Lombaerde has more than two decades of business journalism experience and writes about markets and economic trends for Endeavor Business Media publications Healthcare Innovation, IndustryWeek, FleetOwner, Oil & Gas Journal and T&D World. With a degree in journalism from the University of Missouri, he began his reporting career at the Business Courier in Cincinnati and later was managing editor and editor of the Nashville Business Journal. Most recently, he oversaw the online and print products of the Nashville Post and reported primarily on Middle Tennessee’s finance sector as well as many of its publicly traded companies.