Fort Worth-based Range Resources Corp. is being acquired in a $13 billion all-stock deal by EQT Corp., an energy company with operations focused on the Appalachian Basin.
The merger creates what EQT said in a news release is “America’s largest and only vertically integrated natural gas producer” with a combined enterprise value of $50 billion. Together, EQT and Range are estimated to produce more than 9 billion cubic feet of natural gas equivalent, or NGE, a day. NGE measures the energy from natural gas as compared to the energy in one barrel of crude oil, which is equal to approximately 6,000 cubic feet of natural gas.
Though headquartered in Fort Worth and energy-rich Texas, Range Resources has become known as an early entrant in drilling and production in the Marcellus Shale. That’s the geologic formation underneath Pennsylvania and other areas of Appalachia believed to hold trillions of cubic feet of natural gas…