Locator: 50007B.
Headlines: I was interested in the headlines at 6:00 a.m. but now? No interest. Biking weather perfect.
Focus on dividends: effective immediately -- WMT raises dividend 5.3%; payable April 6, 2026; shareholders of record on March 20, 2026.
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Back to the Bakken
WTI: $66.32.
New wells reporting:
- Friday, February 20, 2026: 39 for the month, 92 for the quarter, 92 for the year,
- 41241, conf, Hunt, Clearwater 157-90-13-12H-2,
- 41153, conf, Oasis, Sedge Federal 5202 24-17 5B,
- 41152, conf, Oasis, Sedge Federal 5202 24-17 4B,
- Thursday, February 19, 2026: 36 for the month, 89 for the quarter, 89 for the year,
- 41876, conf, State 159-92-36C-24-1H,
- 41818, conf, BR, Rolla 6D,
- 41499, conf, Enerplus, MHA Phoenix 4894 41-34 2BU,
- 41498, conf, Enerplus, MHA Helena 4894 41-34 1BU,
- 41459, conf, Phoenix Operating, Daniel Ferrari 3-10-15-22 1H ,
- 41458, conf, Phoenix Operating, Daniel Ferrari 3-10-15-22-2H,
- 41371, conf, Hess, EN-Hanson A-155-94-0607H-8,
- 40807, conf, Hess, BW-Hagen-149-100-1522H-5,
RBN Energy: rising northeast Texas gas supply and the race to the Gulf Coast. Link here. Archived.
Northeast Texas is increasingly a key conduit for natural gas supply pushing toward rising Gulf Coast LNG demand. The region’s supply is poised to surge over the next decade, driven by new inflows from the Permian and rising local production, led by the Texas Haynesville — the emerging Western Haynesville play is also gaining momentum. The area’s strategic importance was underscored by Mitsubishi Corp.’s recently announced $7.5-billion acquisition of Aethon Energy Management, one of the largest private operators in both the Haynesville and Western Haynesville. In today’s RBN blog, we look at the supply-demand dynamics shaping the region and what they mean for pipeline flows along the key corridors moving gas into and out of Northeast Texas.
In Part 1 of this series, we detailed the latest developments in the Western Haynesville (formerly called the Ridge Formation by some). The non-core, far-west part of the Haynesville/Bossier Shale is known for its large, untapped gas reserves but also for its extreme depths, high temperatures and some of the toughest drilling economics in the Lower 48. Early attempts to crack this part of the basin were largely abandoned due to high costs, challenging geology and uneven results. Today, however, a combination of technological advances and a structurally stronger demand backdrop is drawing new interest to this high-stakes frontier. And, as it lies beneath parts of the Austin Chalk, which had been previously tested, the area is home to some legacy infrastructure.
Activity in the Western Haynesville — namely the hot spots in East Texas’s Robertson, Leon, Freestone and Limestone counties — has picked up meaningfully over the past couple of years. Rig counts are at their highest level in roughly a decade, production is on the rise off a low base, and operators are clearly testing how much scalable supply the region can deliver over time. While risks remain — namely, wells that are very deep, expensive and slower to cycle than in many other gas plays — efficiency gains are gradually improving economics.
The leading players in the area, Comstock Resources and Aethon, have been vocal about the challenges but also the improving economics in the Western Haynesville, including shortened drilling times, high initial production (IP) rates and improved well performance, making the play more viable than it was a decade ago. At the same time, the Gulf Coast gas market has entered a prolonged demand expansion, driven primarily by LNG exports but also power demand tied to data centers and industrial growth in Texas (see Won’t Get Fooled Again). Against that backdrop, a small but growing group of producers, including Mitsui and Expand Energy, has begun building a production footprint in the Western Haynesville.
That renewed interest was validated a few weeks ago by news that Mitsubishi Corp. is acquiring Aethon’s shale-gas assets in Texas and Louisiana. The deal, which is Mitsubishi’s largest-ever acquisition and includes an equity investment of $5.2 billion and the assumption of $2.33 billion in debt, gives the Japanese giant a portfolio that is heavily weighted toward the Haynesville. Mitsubishi, which holds liquefaction capacity rights at Cameron LNG in southwestern Louisiana, explicitly framed the deal around long-term gas demand growth tied to LNG exports, data centers and power generation, and noted that some of the gas could ultimately be exported as LNG.
As we said earlier, Aethon is one of the largest private operators in the Haynesville, with 380,000 acres, roughly split between Louisiana and East Texas. It’s also the second-most-active operator in the Western Haynesville, after Comstock. Its total acreage produces 2.1 Bcf/d of natural gas, including 164 MMcf/d from the Western Haynesville. As of early February, Aethon had one active rig in Leon County and 18 wells — nine producing and another nine in earlier stages of development, almost all in Robertson County.
While the deal spans Aethon’s broader Haynesville position, it underscores that global capital is increasingly viewing Northeast Texas gas supply as strategically important in a market where LNG demand continues to reset the U.S. supply stack. For the emerging Western Haynesville, the transaction serves as timely validation that capital is flowing toward high-quality, Gulf Coast-oriented gas resources, even when they sit outside the traditional core, signaling upside for the non-core play.
The momentum continued last week, with Comstock detailing plans to continue aggressive development in the Western Haynesville. It said it plans to turn 24 wells to sales in 2026, up from 12 in 2025, while maintaining four out of its total nine Haynesville rigs in the area, including one that is being upgraded to a higher pressure rating to handle the notoriously extreme geology of the play. The producer also indicated it may move one of the five rigs operating in its legacy acreage to the Western Haynesville this year. Comstock also said it expects to commercialize a data center power generation project in 2026 that’s being developed in partnership with NextEra Energy.
In Part 1, we looked at our production outlook for the Greater Western Haynesville region — comprising 14 counties. Assuming the rig count stays flat at six rigs in the play’s four core counties, production from this region would grow from 1 Bcf/d today to 1.6 Bcf/d by 2035 in our mid-case scenario. That may not seem like much in the context of the wider Texas and Louisiana Gulf Coast region, or even the broader Haynesville, but the Western Haynesville isn’t the only supply growth in Northeast Texas. Which brings us to the central question of today’s blog: If production from the Western Haynesville continues to grow — alongside rising output from the Texas Haynesville and increasing inflows from the Permian — what does it mean for outflows from Northeast Texas and producers’ ability to access downstream demand?
To answer that, we turn to our long-term forecast from the RBN Arrow Model, a proprietary analytic model that carves up Texas and Louisiana into 11 regions and provides a detailed view of how supply-demand balances, takeaway capacity and flows in and out of each region could evolve over the next decade. Note that we’re continually improving our models and incorporating the latest actualization data, and the estimates are updated each month.
We start with the supply side of the equation, particularly the forecast for production growth for the total Northeast Texas region (salmon-shaded area in map to right in Figure 1 below). Overall, Northeast TX production is expected to jump from 7.7 Bcf/d in 2025 to 11.3 Bcf/d in 2035, with the bulk of the gains happening in the next four years (dashed yellow line at the top of the stacked layers in graph to left). In our high case, local production rises to 13.1 Bcf/d by 2035 (dashed blue line), while our low case shows production almost flat at 8.1 Bcf/d (dashed red line).
