Centalion buys Silver Hill gas fields in $1.5 billion Haynesville deal

Acquisition is Centalion’s first deal under new private-equity-style approach

Centalion, the Geneva-based commodities trader that rebranded from Gunvor last week, has bought natural-gas assets in the Haynesville basin from Silver Hill Energy Partners in a deal valued at around $1.5 billion, according to people familiar with the matter. The deal, expected to be announced as soon as Monday, covers 72,000 acres across the prolific gas field straddling Texas and Louisiana.

The purchase is a bet that demand for U.S. natural gas will keep growing at home and abroad, fueled by supply disruptions in the Middle East and the growing power needs of data centers. It will make Centalion a major player in Haynesville and signals a new approach for the trading house after a failed attempt last fall to acquire the international operations of Russia’s Lukoil.

The deal covers producing wells, undeveloped fields and gas-gathering infrastructure, with the 72,000 acres currently producing 300 million cubic feet of gas a day, according to the people familiar. Some of the wells have co-owners, as is often the case. Western Natural Resources, an Oklahoma-based company that Centalion joined with earlier this year, will operate the fields on behalf of the trading house, the people said. The $1.5 billion valuation includes debt.

Centalion plans to expand production at the acreage to more than 700 million cubic feet per day over the next few years, said Shahb Richyal, the firm’s global head of investments. “Haynesville is well-positioned to send gas either into the domestic market or to foreign buyers via liquefaction terminals on the Gulf Coast,” Richyal said.

Centalion is among the handful of trading houses that dominate the business of moving commodities around the world. It is owned by employees who bought out co-founder Torbjörn Törnqvist after the U.S. Treasury Department accused the firm of being “the Kremlin’s puppet” and blocked a deal last fall for Lukoil’s international operations. Gunvor, which announced the rebrand to Centalion last week, disputed the claim at the time.

Under Törnqvist, Gunvor had a reputation for swooping in on deals that had the potential to help its traders earn more profit. That opportunistic approach had some success but did not work out in the Lukoil case. Gary Pedersen now leads the firm as chief executive.

Centalion is now tweaking its model to buy assets that fit into a few defined themes, the first of which is Gulf Coast natural gas, Richyal said. “We want to act like more of a private-equity shop,” he said. The firm could seek capital from other investors to back its growing U.S. gas business and would remain flexible in how long it owns the assets, Richyal added.

The trading house already has a major business exporting liquefied natural gas from the United States. It bought some other Haynesville wells from private-equity firm Post Oak Energy Capital earlier this year.

Silver Hill, a Dallas-based oil-and-gas company, bought the fields from late 2021 to mid-2023 when gas prices were rising. At the time, demand was roaring back after the pandemic, while Russian supplies were disrupted by the Ukraine war. The company retains fields in North Dakota and Texas.

Analysts expect U.S. gas demand to rise in the coming years. Wood Mackenzie, an energy consultant firm, recently said that gas consumption by U.S. power stations could increase by 50% over the next decade, driven in part by data centers. Gas importers in Asia have meanwhile turned to the United States since the Iran war stymied LNG shipments from Qatar.

Reuters earlier reported that Centalion was in talks to buy the assets from Silver Hill.