Rusty Hutson isn’t your typical gas producer. As the founder and CEO of Ala.-based Diversified Energy, he walks his own path—even one he didn’t expect to find again. The fourth generation of an oil and gas family dating back to the early 1900s, Hutson spent summers in his youth working alongside his father in the W.V., oil patch. But by his college years had other plans for his career. Hutson earned a degree in accounting, becoming the first in his lineage to pursue higher education, and set his sights on a banking future. But after 13 years, he made a sharp pivot that brought him back to the W.V., oil fields. This time, with an entirely different approach to the business—and one that sets Diversified apart from its fellow gas producers.

Reese Energy Consulting today is following the latest from Diversified Energy, the largest conventional gas producer across Appalachia which neither drills nor fracks. Instead, Diversified snaps up low-risk, low-cost, long-life gas wells that offer another 40-50 years of life. Acquisitions are key to replenishing its inventory, an ongoing strategy that’s given the company title of the nation’s largest owner of natural gas wells with more than 70,000. And what worked so successfully in the Marcellus/Utica over two decades is now playing out handsomely down South.

In less than three years after taking its playbook into the Haynesville, Cotton Valley, Barnett, Anadarko, and Eagle Ford, Diversified is kicking up some serious dust. The company so far in 2024 has closed $516 million in acquisitions, most recently with near back-to-back PDP purchases in East Texas. The first, a July $106 million Eagle Ford deal with Crescent Energy for 170,000 acres, 827 wells, and 38 MMCFD. The second, announced yesterday, in a $68 million East Texas pick up in a joint venture deal that includes 331 net PDP wells expected to add 21 MMCFED and 70 BCFE in reserves.