New Height Energy strikes Midland deal to grow output to 5,000 boe/d
New Height Energy LLC, Houston, has acquired about 500 producing wells in the Midland basin to grow its production to about 5,000 boe/d. The 5-year-old company’s leaders also have raised some equity and finalized a $300 million revolving loan to fund the Permian basin operations and finance additional deals.
The recent acquisition from an undisclosed seller involved assets primarily in Howard and Martin counties in Texas and has grown New Height’s total well count to about 700 across the Central Basin Platform, Midland Basin, and Eastern Shelf. The newly bought operations produce about 4,000 boe/d and the executive team, led by Jon Benavides, is looking to build on the deal by picking up other assets, including from large operators aiming to streamline portfolios following the wave of large deals in recent years.
“We have a robust pipeline of potential target acquisitions that could increase our production significantly within the next 12 months,” Scott Trackwell, chief financial officer, said. “However, we are prudent buyer and will only do so if it is accretive and aligns with our strategy.”
New Height hasn’t drilled any of the wells it operates. Trackwell told Oil & Gas Journal that might change down the road but that leaders’ focus will continue to be on adding wells that are already producing or can be returned to production.
“It will likely be a combination of both large and small deals,” Trackwell said. “We are a nimble management team with great partners who want to scale the business.”
New Height was launched in 2021 with backing from the family offices of Stuart Spence, a former CFO of McDermott International, and Jeff Wilhelm, another oilfield services industry veteran. They, along with members of management, have been joined by new equity investors, including consortium of family offices led by United Beren Energy. New Height’s revolving loan facility is led by a unit of Texas Capital Bancshares Inc. and includes four other lenders. Both of those were facilitated by TenOaks Energy Advisors LLC.
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.