The State Oil Company of Azerbaijan, SOCAR, has signed a definitive purchase and sale agreement to acquire minority stakes in Comstock Resources’ Haynesville shale gas assets for 1.65 billion dollars in cash. The deal, signed on November 4, covers a 20 percent interest in Comstock’s Legacy Haynesville upstream assets, a 15 percent interest in its Western Haynesville upstream assets, and 15 percent of Comstock’s 73 percent interest in Pinnacle Gas Services, its gas infrastructure subsidiary.
The interests are non operating, so Comstock keeps control of operations, and the transaction has an effective date of July 1, 2026. It remains subject to customary purchase price adjustments and government approvals, with closing expected by the end of 2026. SOCAR’s Western Haynesville interest is scheduled to step down to 7.5 percent five years after closing once a 15 percent return is achieved, under terms set out when the framework agreement was signed in September.
The Haynesville, in north Louisiana and east Texas, is the US gas basin closest to the Gulf Coast LNG export terminals, and the partnership gives SOCAR both production exposure and a route to market Haynesville gas into international LNG trade. For Comstock, the framework terms pointed to pro forma net debt falling from 3.1 billion dollars to about 1.5 billion dollars on completion.
The timing cuts two ways. The deal was struck on expectations of extended growth in US gas demand, much of it from data centre power consumption, and the Democratic sweep in this week’s midterm elections has raised questions about how fast that buildout proceeds after campaigns that promised to rein in data centre proliferation. Gas demand for power and LNG exports does not depend on that one customer class, but the price SOCAR is paying was set in a market that assumed it.