Sixth Street goes on US shale shopping spree

Investment firm Sixth Street is continuing its streak of acquisitions centred on US shale plays. This week, Comstock Resources announced that it had sold a minority stake in its midstream subsidiary, Pinnacle Gas Services, to funds managed by Sixth Street for $600mn.

This comes days after Hart Energy reported, citing “multiple” sources familiar with the matter, that Sixth Street was acquiring San Juan Basin producer Logos Energy for around $1bn. While Sixth Street has not confirmed the Hart report, the moves signal that the investment firm is pursuing opportunities across several shale regions, in both the upstream and midstream sectors. Indeed, at the end of last year, funds managed by Sixth Street closed a $1.5bn deal to buy non-controlling interests in midstream assets operated by a BP subsidiary, BPX Energy, in the Permian Basin and Eagle Ford shale.

The Comstock deal announced this week entails Sixth Street taking a 27% non-controlling stake in Pinnacle, which owns and operates the Pinnacle gathering and treating system. The system serves Comstock’s Western Haynesville shale gas operations in East Texas.

Comstock noted that the transaction gives Pinnacle a $2.2bn enterprise value. Comstock retains a 73% controlling interest in Pinnacle, which it said was valued at roughly $1.6bn, and continues to operate the unit.

Comstock’s CEO, Jay Allison, said the Western Haynesville represented one of the largest undeveloped natural gas resources with access to the growing demand along the Gulf Coast. He added that it would also serve the recently announced Texas Power Generation Hub in the state’s Anderson County.

“The transaction highlights Sixth Street's focus on providing large-scale, flexible capital solutions to support the development of critical energy infrastructure needed to meet the rapid growth in energy demand from data centres, hyper scalers, global LNG and the secular electrification trends underway in the economy more broadly,” added a Sixth Street partner, Zack Winegrad, who is also the company’s co-head of energy and co-head of global infrastructure.

Meanwhile, little is known about Sixth Street’s reported move to acquire Logos, which has been owned and operated by private equity firm North Hudson Resource Partners since 2022. However, North Hudson says on its website that via its ownership of Logos, it had built a “leading position” in the San Juan Basin’s Mancos play, tripling production “before successfully exiting the investment in June 2026”. The last statement serves to confirm that Logos has been sold.

The San Juan Basin has been overshadowed by more prolific shale regions including the Permian Basin and the Haynesville. However, in a post on LinkedIn, Hart noted in brief that the acquisition by Sixth Street signals “renewed investor confidence” in the Mancos play.