Two Fracking Giants Lock Arms To Become America’s Biggest Gas Producer

A pair of fracking giants announced a deal Monday to combine into America’s largest natural gas producer as households pay more for the fuel.

EQT said it will acquire Range Resources by swapping stock, in a deal that would create a company worth more than $50 billion including debt, according to the companies’ joint release. Reuters valued the deal itself at about $13 billion and reported that the combined company would be the country’s top natural gas producer.

The deal would mean “very little” for natural gas prices and consumers’ gas and electric bills, Eli Rubin, a senior energy analyst at EBW Analytics Group, said in a statement to the Daily Caller News Foundation.

“Both EQT and Range already cut production during periods of exceptionally low prices, typically during autumn or spring when weather-driven demand is mild,” Rubin noted. “A regional behemoth would only strengthen the economic rationale for production curtailments and cutting supply during periods of weakness.”

“While economies of scale and synergies will occur, these returns are more likely to flow to investors than to lower wholesale natural gas prices,” he added.

“The combined company would not have enough scale to exercise meaningful pricing power, even if you look only at the Marcellus/Utica region,” Alex Stevens, manager of policy and communications at the Institute for Energy Research, said in a statement to the DCNF. “If it deliberately curtailed production, other producers — both in Appalachia and other basins — would readily fill the gap, and competitors would undercut any attempt to withhold supply.”

Stuart Turley, president and CEO of Sandstone Group, said consumers and regulators “should not be concerned” about the merger. “In the case of EQT and Range, it is a good thing for investors and consumers,” Turley said in a statement to the DCNF.

The merger “won’t make much difference for consumers’ utility bills in the near term,” energy analyst and writer David Blackmon said in a statement to the DCNF.

The Federal Trade Commission declined to comment to the DCNF and EQT and Range did not immediately respond to the DCNF’s requests for comment.