By Avi Salzman

Prospectors learned more than a century ago that there were riches buried under Texas, in the form of abundant oil and gas supplies. It turns out there are riches to be had on the surface of the land too.

A new stock debuting Thursday called Eagle Rock allows investors to bet on the value of owning hundreds of thousands of surface acreage in the Permian Basin of West Texas and New Mexico.

Eagle Rock sold 17.3 million shares late on Wednesday at $18.50 apiece, raising $320 million and valuing the company at over $2 billion. It will start trading on the New York Stock Exchange sometime around midday on Thursday with the ticker EROK.

Eagle Rock doesn't extract the oil and gas under its land, but it makes money from the companies that drill for it, by charging them leasing and royalty fees. It makes much of its money on water that those companies need to use in their operations, and by recycling and disposing of that water. It may also eventually be able to make money from data centers.

Eagle Rock's executives say the company is different from the average Texas oil company because it won't be subject to nearly as much oil-price risk. And it will still be able to make money as American firms expand production to make up for the supply deficit being caused by the Iran War.

"I think the Iran conflict has only heightened the importance of the Permian as it relates to energy security and energy independence," said CEO Greg Pipkin in an interview with Barron's. "We sit at the intersection of that. We are providing the ability for industry to further develop the Permian and scale it into this fully integrated energy ecosystem."

Write to Avi Salzman at avi.salzman@barrons.com

This content was created by Barron's, which is operated by Dow Jones & Co. Barron's is published independently from Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal.

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May 14, 2026 11:52 ET (15:52 GMT)

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