Centalion Acquires Silver Hill's Haynesville Assets

Centalion, Fresh From Rebrand, Does Deal for U.S. Gas Fields

Trading firm, formerly known as Gunvor, to become major player in the Haynesville basin with $1.5 billion deal

By Joe Wallace Oct. 5, 2026  wsj.com

Centalion, the commodities trader formerly known as Gunvor, has bought a collection of natural-gas assets from Silver Hill Energy Partners in a deal valued at around $1.5 billion, according to people familiar with the matter.

The deal is a bet that demand for U.S. gas will keep growing at home and abroad, fueled by supply disruptions in the Middle East and the growing power needs of data centers. It will make Centalion a major player in the Haynesville basin, a prolific gas patch straddling Texas and Louisiana.

The trading firm has done a series of U.S. gas deals under Chief Executive Gary Pedersen, who replaced co-founder Torbjörn Törnqvist after an ill-fated attempt last fall to acquire the international operations of Russia’s Lukoil.

Details

Centalion is expected to announce the deal as soon as Monday. The purchase covers producing wells, undeveloped fields and gas-gathering infrastructure. The interest in the fields being acquired amounts to 72,000 acres producing 300 million cubic feet of gas a day. Some of the wells have co-owners, as is often the case.

Western Natural Resources, an Oklahoma-based company that Centalion joined with earlier this year, will operate the fields on behalf of the Geneva-based trading house.

Haynesville is well-positioned to send gas either into the domestic market or to foreign buyers via liquefaction terminals on the Gulf Coast, said Shahb Richyal, Centalion’s global head of investments. The firm plans to boost output to more than 700 million cubic feet in a few years, he said.

Silver Hill bought the fields from late 2021 to mid-2023 when gas prices were rising. At the time, demand was roaring back after the pandemic, while Russian supplies were disrupted by the Ukraine war. The Dallas-based oil-and-gas company retains fields in North Dakota and Texas.

The deal’s $1.5 billion valuation includes debt, the people said.

The context

Centalion is among the handful of trading houses that dominate the business of moving commodities around the world. It is owned by employees who bought out Törnqvist after the U.S. Treasury Department accused the firm of being “the Kremlin’s puppet” and blocked the Lukoil deal. Gunvor, which announced the rebrand to Centalion last week, disputed the claim.

Trading firms have long bought oil-and-gas fields, refiners and power stations to complement their trading activities. Under Törnqvist, Gunvor had a reputation for swooping in on deals that had the potential to help its traders earn more profit. His opportunistic approach to M&A had some success, but didn’t work out in the case of Lukoil.

Centalion is tweaking its model to buy assets that fit into a few defined themes, the first of which is Gulf Coast natural gas, said Richyal. “We want to act like more of a private-equity shop,” he said. The firm could seek capital from other investors to back its growing U.S. gas business and would remain flexible in how long it owns the assets, Richyal added.

The trading house already has a major business exporting liquefied natural gas from the U.S. It bought some other Haynesville wells from private-equity firm Post Oak Energy Capital earlier this year.

Analysts expect gas demand to rise in the coming years. Wood Mackenzie, an energy consultant firm, recently said that gas consumption by U.S. power stations could increase by 50% over the next decade driven by data centers. Gas importers in Asia, meanwhile, have turned to the U.S. since the Iran war has stymied shipments from Qatar.

Reuters earlier reported that Centalion was in talks to buy the assets from Silver Hill.