Antero strikes $315M worth of Marcellus deals
Antero Resources Corp., Denver, has this month spent $315 million on acquisitions in its core Marcellus basin that have added 15 net drilling locations at a nice price.
Michael Kennedy, president and chief executive officer, and his team say the West Virginia additions are producing 125 MMcfed and also span 3,500 net undeveloped acres. The deals came about five months after the Antero team closed on its $2.8 billion acquisition of HG Energy II LLC, which grew Antero’s footprint by about 385,000 net acres, and the acreage is near the route of the East Side Express, the first dry gas regional pipeline Antero is building.
Kennedy told investors that both HG’s operations and the new acquisitions will help Antero further lower its operating costs. Antero teams also spent $29 million during the second quarter on about 5,000 net acres that represent 20 net drilling locations. As part of publishing its second-quarter results, the management team lowered its 2026 cash production expense forecast by 5 cents per Mcfe to $2.20-2.30 per Mcfe.
The longer-term goal is to cut those costs by 25% from 2025 levels by end-2028 as Antero broadens its offerings beyond liquids and sells outside of its production basin.
“This shift in strategy that increases our exposure to dry gas and in-basin sales is supported by the surge in new regional demand,” Kennedy said on a July 30 conference call. “As we shift from the producer-push era to the demand-pull era, we are uniquely positioned to review each flow path and choose the highest-margin sales point and supply contract for our natural gas and NGLs.”
Antero placed 26 wells to sales in the second quarter, which include one measuring 24,000 ft, the longest lateral in the company’s history. Total production during the period topped 4.1 bcfed, which helped produce nearly $279 million in net income on total revenues of $1.56 billion, numbers boosted by the HG deal.
Shares of Antero (Ticker: AR) rose slightly to $35.30 on July 30 and are up about 2% year to date. The company now has a market value of about $11 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.