The Haynesville Just Outspent the Permian. Here Is What It Means for Your Check.

By Stephen Clayman, career landman · November 7, 2026

For most of the last decade, if you wanted to know where the money in American oil and gas was going, you looked at West Texas. This year the answer is north Louisiana. Through mid-October, mergers and acquisitions in the Haynesville reached $7.8 billion, more than the $7.4 billion spent in the Permian over the same stretch, according to a J.P. Morgan analyst quoted in The Advocate on October 16. A gas basin outspending the Permian is not something that happens by accident, and if you own minerals under DeSoto, Caddo, Red River, Bossier, Sabine, or Natchitoches, the reasons are about to show up on your check.

Why is so much money moving into the Haynesville?

LNG. The export terminals on the Gulf Coast are the closest big demand in the country to the closest big gas basin, and the rigs have followed. Baker Hughes counted 57 Haynesville rigs for the week ending October 9, 2026, up 16 from a year earlier, the largest gain of any basin alongside the Permian. Louisiana as a state was running 38 rigs, and the national count hit 603, over 600 for the first time since May 2024.

The deals, and who is actually on the other side of your check

Three transactions explain most of the $7.8 billion.

Centalion bought Silver Hills Energy Partners for roughly $1.5 billion, upstream and midstream together, which gives Centalion a $2 billion position in the play. Centalion already holds long-term contracts to export U.S. LNG, so this is a buyer that wants the molecules, not a trade.

Williams closed its $5.5 billion acquisition of Momentum Midstream in September. Williams is a Tulsa company, and Momentum ran a large share of the gathering and processing that Haynesville gas moves through on its way south.

Expand Energy keeps consolidating the core. Expand, the Chesapeake and Southwestern combination, produced 3,187 MMcf/d from the Haynesville in the second quarter of 2026, its largest producing area, and added about 33,000 net acres in a Natchitoches Parish extension. Its 2026 plan is 48 legacy Haynesville wells on 5 rigs and 22 Western Haynesville wells on 4 rigs. Comstock, meanwhile, deployed its first 10,000-psi rig in the Western Haynesville in Texas in October.

None of these is the Aethon-to-Adamas transaction we wrote up in September, but they rhyme with it, and the lesson is the same.

What does consolidation do to a royalty owner?

Three things, and only one of them is good.

The payor name changes, and paperwork breaks. When an operator sells, the new company issues new division orders and often new direct deposit forms. Your lease and your decimal do not change. Owners throw away mail from unfamiliar names, checks stop, and money goes to suspense. Our running list of who bought your operator exists because this happens every month.

Midstream deals can change your deductions. Gathering, compression, treating, and transportation are the lines on your stub that move when the pipe changes hands. A Williams gathering system replacing a Momentum one may be priced differently, and whether those costs come out of your royalty depends on your lease language. In Louisiana an unleased owner in a compulsory unit cannot be charged post-production costs after Self v. BPX; a leased owner is governed by the lease. Pull up your stub from six months ago and compare the deduction lines. If they grew and the volumes did not, ask why in writing.

The good part: well-capitalized operators drill. Centalion wants gas for its export contracts. Expand controls the core inventory. Rigs at a multi-year high mean more units, more wells turning to sales, and more Haynesville acreage that was quiet for a decade coming back into play.

Why 2027 may be a lumpy year for checks

Expand said roughly 10 fewer Haynesville turn-in-lines than planned would happen this year, pushed into 2027. That is one operator, but it is the biggest one, and it describes a pattern: wells are being drilled on the current rig count and held, rather than turned to sales into a market Expand itself calls modestly oversupplied through at least the first half of 2027, with about 3.5 Bcf/d of new Permian egress arriving. For an owner that means a flat 2026 can be followed by a jump when a pad of deferred wells turns on at once, and the first check after that jump is the one to read carefully, because a new well on your unit changes your decimal and the deduction structure in the same month.

What to verify now

1. Compare your latest stub to one from early 2026, line by line: decimal, volumes, price, and each deduction. Our Haynesville royalty calculator will tell you what the check should be for your decimal and the current price, severance tax included.
2. If the payor name changed, confirm your address and your direct deposit with the new owner relations department before the next check cycle.
3. If you are leased, read the deduction clause. If you are unleased, ask for the report an unleased owner is owed under La. R.S. 30:103.1.
4. If your family's minerals are the old kind, severed in the 1940s and inherited twice since, the ten year servitude rule decides whether the interest still exists before any of the above matters. New drilling on your unit keeps a servitude alive; a decade of silence does not.

The full picture of the play, the operators, and the parishes is on our Louisiana Haynesville page.

What this does to the value of your minerals

Producing Haynesville royalties are being priced against a stronger gas forward curve and a better-capitalized set of operators than a year ago. Non-producing acreage inside active units is getting leased and drilled rather than held. If you have an offer in hand that predates this run, it was priced against a different Haynesville, and if you want a current number with the arithmetic shown, that is the job we do free. Run it through the free valuation form, or text a photo of your latest check stub to 918-984-1645 and you will have a written preliminary number within two business days. Call or text, and you reach Stephen.