Looking to beef up its East Texas acreage position in order to roll out a multi-rig drilling program, Energy & Exploration Partners Inc. (ENXP) reported Monday that it is acquiring 18,300 net acres in Houston and Madison counties from TreadStone Energy Partners LLC for approximately $715 million.

The acquisition includes net production of 8,430 boe/d (82% oil), 30 square miles of 3-D seismic data and a three-well saltwater disposal system. The effective date of the deal was April 1 and is expected to close before the end of July.

Fort Worth, TX-based ENXP was pretty busy on Monday as the company withdrew plans for an initial public offering (IPO). According to Renaissance Capital, a global IPO investment adviser, the company originally set terms to raise $236 million in November 2012, postponed its IPO and eventually refiled in May 2013. No reason was given on Monday for the withdrawal.

ENXP said the TreadStone acquisition complements the company’s current East Texas portfolio. The independent exploration and production (E&P) company has recently completed the Sundance #1, a vertical Buda-Rose completion in Madison County and is encouraged by the volume of oil and gas currently flowing up tubing. The TreadStone acreage lies on trend and just east of the ENXP position and has been predominately developing vertically in the Lower Cretaceous Buda-Rose via multizone completions. ENXP is acquiring 36 net producing wellbores, 136 proved undeveloped drilling locations based on 80-acre spacing and up to 250 Buda-Rose drilling locations based on 40-acre spacing.

The assets acquired are 100% operated with an average working interest of 89.6% and an average royalty burden of 16.6%. The assets currently have 32.8 million boe of proved reserves based on third-party engineering.

Once the deal is completed, ENXP would have approximately 72,000 net acres in East Texas. The company said it plans to balance its drilling program on its legacy acreage while continuing to aggressively exploit the stacked-pay zones of the acquired assets.

“Combining the TreadStone Fort Trinidad asset with ours merges a top tier producing asset with an outstanding seasoned technical team,” said ENXP CEO Hunt Pettit. “With the combined assets, ENXP will have over 10,000 boe of net daily production and 72,000 net acres most of which is covered by 3-D seismic data in the prolific East Texas Basin with its 5,000-foot thick hydrocarbon column of stacked pay. We expect to expand production significantly as we deploy a multi-rig drilling program across the entire asset to develop all prospective horizons and fully exploit our entire position.”

TreadStone is a private E&P company formed in 2011 by Frank McCorkle, Key Sanford and Gene Roberts with a capital commitment from Kayne Anderson Energy Funds.