Roar – EQT’s Range Resources Deal to Supercharge Inventory and Boost Midstream Opportunities

During an October 26 conference call about the deal, EQT President and CEO Toby Rice and other top brass said that a primary driver of the transaction was Range Resources’ massive gas inventory in southwestern Pennsylvania. EQT is already the top producer in that part of the Marcellus/Utica — it boosted its position there in July 2025 with the purchase of Olympus Energy, and became an even bigger player in northern West Virginia a couple of years before that with the acquisition of Tug Hill’s gas production assets and XcL Midstream’s pipeline and processing assets.

We will leave a detailed analysis of EQT’s and Range’s gas production and inventories to our partners at Novi Labs — RBN’s corporate parent — who will be releasing their preliminary assessment later today and a detailed analysis next week. Instead, we’ll focus on what the planned merger is likely to mean for pro forma EQT’s efforts to secure long-term gas-supply deals with power generators and other large gas users — and for the buildout of the company’s growing gas transmission network.

For at least a couple of years now, EQT has been highlighting the development of new gas-fired power plants within and near its Appalachia production area, some of them tied to AI-related data centers. For example, in July 2025 the company announced two 20-year gas supply deals, one to provide up to 800 MMcf/d to a power-and-data-center complex in Shippingport, PA, and other to provide up to 665 MMcf/d to a similar facility in Homer City, PA. More recently, EQT said in July that it had entered into a 10-year agreement to supply up to 325 MMcf/d to Competitive Power Ventures’ (CPV) planned 2,100-megawatt (MW) Shay Energy Center in Doddridge County, WV.

Many more deals like these are likely, not just in Pennsylvania and West Virginia but especially in Ohio, which has emerged as an epicenter of new data centers and related gas-fired power projects. In fact, EQT just increased its estimate for Appalachian gas demand growth through 2035 — most of it from power generators — to 25 Bcf/d from the old 20 Bcf/d. As shown in Figure 2 below, most of that growth is expected to occur in the 2029-31 period, when a tsunami of new data centers is expected to come online. Note that only about 5 Bcf/d of those incremental gas needs have been secured so far (dashed red line), suggesting that EQT and other gas producers in the Marcellus/Utica will be scrambling to reach long-term deals with gas plant owners/operators.

Projected Appalachian Natural Gas Demand Growth (in Bcf/d)

To deliver all that incremental gas, existing gas pipelines throughout the region will need to be expanded and entirely new pipelines built — and EQT plans to be in on that action too.

First, a reminder that in July 2024 EQT “re-acquired” Equitrans, a midstream company that EQT had spun off in 2018 so it could focus on production. Equitrans was the lead developer of the 303-mile MVP we mentioned earlier — under EQT, that pipeline’s capacity is being expanded to 2.6 Bcf/d (from the current 2 Bcf/d). With Equitrans now fully owned by EQT, the company once again owns its gathering systems and other, smaller interstate pipelines near its Marcellus/Utica production.

During EQT’s October 26 call, company executives said that another important rationale for acquiring Range Resources is that a good bit of the E&P’s best inventory is in southwestern Pennsylvania, close by the gas hub in Clarington, OH, that is fast-becoming a central point for shuttling Marcellus/Utica gas west and south to power generators, local distribution utilities (LDUs) and other large gas customers in Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky and points beyond.

As we discussed a few months ago in Movin’ Out, EQT has been developing the Clarington Connector (dashed yellow line in Figure 3 below), a 20-mile, 400-MMcf/d pipeline that will run from the producer’s system in northern West Virginia’s Marshall County to Clarington in Ohio’s Monroe County.

More recently, EQT has been pursuing the development of a much larger pipeline: the proposed Pennsylvania Ohio West Virginia Energy Reliability Pipeline — POWER Pipeline for short — which would run from an as-yet-unspecified location in southwestern Pennsylvania and/or West Virginia to the Clarington Hub. In a non-binding open season that ran from August 26 to October 26, EQT sought expression of interest for firm capacity on a pipeline with capacity of up to 1 Bcf/d that would come online by 2030.

Once more gas can get to Clarington, it could move along several existing and planned pipes that connect (or will connect) to the hub there, including Enbridge’s Texas Eastern Transmission (TETCO), Tallgrass Energy’s Rockies Express (REX), Energy Transfer’s Rover Pipeline, and Boardwalk Pipeline Partners’ planned Borealis Pipeline.

To sum up, as EQT sees it, the company’s pending acquisition of Range Resources isn’t about getting bigger, it’s about adding Range’s deep inventory of well-site natural gas to EQT’s own impressive stockpile, thereby putting the combined company in an even better position to secure the long-term, large-volume gas-supply deals with power generators. And, as a bonus of sorts, these supply deals will provide EQT with an expanded opportunity to develop new gas pipelines to connect its supply either directly to new power plants or to takeaway pipelines at the Clarington Hub.