Newly public Infinity Natural Resources says it is focusing its attention on “lower level” M&A in Ohio’s Utica Shale, at least for now.
Rumors have been swirling of an upcoming change of control for Utica operators, including Ascent Resources telling investors in March that it is considering an IPO. A number of publics, including Gulfport Energy, EOG Resources and Expand Energy, have been the subject of M&A chatter in recent months.
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While waiting for large-scale M&A to take shape in Appalachia, CEO Zack Arnold said the company is looking to gain some scale.
And, Infinity continues to hold out on commodity price swings with drill-ready projects to allow for real-time decisions on where Infinity plans to deploy its capital.
Arnold shares his company’s strategic approach in the Utica with Hart Energy’s Nissa Darbonne in this exclusive interview at the 2025 SUPER DUG Conference and Expo.
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Nissa Darbonne, executive editor-at-large, Hart Energy: Hi, thank you for joining us. I'm Nissa Darbonne, executive editor-at-large for Hart Energy. We're visiting at SUPER DUG 2025 with Zack Arnold. Zack is a founder and he's president and CEO of newly-public Infinity Natural Resources, which focuses on the Ohio Utica oil play. Zack, thank you so much for joining us here.
ZA: Thanks for having me.
ND: We had a really good visit on stage just now, and we opened with the direction of potential M&A in the Utica oil play. Company names that have been floating out there to maybe exit an M&A or IPO include Ascent, and maybe Gulfport wouldn't necessarily be exiting, but somehow be involved in some sort of pile up. Encino is there, y'all are there. And then EOG is out there. Also too, by virtue of the Southwestern merger, Chesapeake, now Expand, is actually back in the Utica. This has all just kind of come about quite suddenly in the past few months. What do you see happening and where may it go?
ZA: Yeah, we're very excited to watch how things unfold. For us we think large M&A is interesting, and you mentioned several companies, that it makes sense for them to think about ways to come together. We think there's also a lot of M&A to be done at a lower level, and that's where we're going to start focusing in the short term, is looking for different assets that we can acquire to help us gain some scale while we're watching the larger scale M&A take whatever shape that it does, because Appalachia M&A is always challenging. I think Ohio has had its own unique sets of things that prevent what seemed like logical combinations of coming together. But we're really excited. We think this is going to be a good year for a few different operators to figure out what the future holds for them.
ND: And also too, Infinity also has Marcellus gas properties over in Pennsylvania, so you have both commodities. You could be flexible in your capex allocation, redirecting from one to another. Tell us about the benefits of this flexibility and are you flexing right now because oil's a little down and gas is doing very well?
ZA: Yeah, historically, our company has been its best when we are diverse in how we develop the assets, developing oil assets, and also developing gas assets. So we've always appreciated that balance. We have a tremendous amount of flexibility. Our land and operations teams are continuing to have drill ready projects in both windows so that we can make very real time decisions as to where we want to deploy our capital. And when we deploy that capital, the capital looks very similar in both the oil window and the gas window. The casing that we run is the same. The drilling rig we use is the same. The frac crew that we run is the same. There might be some variations in some of the frac design, but largely we can swap one project out for another and not really experience any delay or any change in our capital structure.
And so as a result of that, we have looked at ways this year where we can pull forward a couple of gas projects. We're completing a project now that we expect it to develop later this year or early next year. And we're building a pad now that we thought we would do in 2026. So we're pulling these projects forward because even though our oil returns are still really solid and we are happy with those, we're going to continue to do oil projects. The gas returns are too good to ignore right now. So we’re trying to pull some of those projects forward and execute them.
ND: And you still have incredible amounts of inventory in Ohio for straight laterals, but is there potential in Ohio for needing, having to deploy U-turn laterals for where there may be stranded acreage, maybe even acreage stranded by other operators’ unitizations?
ZA: Yeah, so that's a great question. And I think the Utica lends itself well for U-turn wells when we choose to do those. And for us right now, we're developing the conventional geometry. We're going to drill those wells first. But the nature of the position we've put together, we have some units that were formed from legacy operators that might have some limitations in what you can do around them because of other operators’ activities. So I do think there will be some natural opportunities to look at U-turns inside of the units that exist. And I think the way geologically, the Utica is a very calm, easy to drill formation. I think it's well set up for those units to be exploited and recover those reserves that right now it's not economic to drill 4,000-foot laterals inside of that existing unit.
ND: And I'm glad that you pointed out that the Utica is a very quiet formation. It's deposition is fairly uniform and there's pretty much no surprises there.
ZA: Yeah, it's been very easy to develop for us and allows us to drill 19-, 20-, 21-, 22,000-foot laterals and do them parallel to each other. And we don't have torque and drag problems or geosteering problems that they provide technical limits. Usually it's a land limit as to how far we want to drill.
ND: Super. Thank you, Zack.
ZA: Yeah, thanks for having us.
ND: And thank you for joining us. Stay tuned here for more actionable energy intelligence.