June 26 (Reuters) - Tamboran Resources, a natural gas exploration and production company backed by billionaire Bryan Sheffield, said on Wednesday it had raised $75 million in its initial public offering (IPO) in the United States.

The IPO valued Tamboran at $421.3 million and the price at which the shares were sold was lower than the $24 to $27 range the Sydney-based company had marketed earlier, when it set a target of raising up to $175.5 million from the offering.

Tamboran is focused on extracting natural gas from the Beetaloo basin in Australia's Northern Territory, but it expects no material revenue until at least 2026.

BofA Securities, Citigroup and RBC Capital Markets were the underwriters for Tamboran's IPO.

Sheffield Holdings - an affiliate of Bryan Sheffield, the son of Texas oilman Scott Sheffield and founder of shale producer Parsley Energy - is the company's largest shareholder. Parsley was acquired by Pioneer Natural Resources in 2021.

Since it releases fewer pollutants, natural gas has been billed as a cleaner alternative to coal and oil. Some believe it can be a viable stand-in as the world gradually shifts towards renewable sources of energy.

But critics have questioned this narrative, arguing that the methane emissions tied to natural gas make it too harmful to be a so-called "transition fuel."

Companies listing in the U.S. can command a more favorable valuation due to the availability of a bigger capital pool. U.S. IPOs from Australian companies, however, have been rare.

Tamboran's share sale could be a barometer for other IPO-bound companies. Despite the listings of some big names such as Reddit, public markets have been wary of backing companies with limited financial history and are scrutinizing business models much more closely than during the pandemic-era boom.

Zeekr, a China-based player in the buzzy EV industry, was trading merely 1% above its IPO price as of Tuesday while SoftBank-backed Tempus AI's stock has lost a third of its value. (Reporting by Niket Nishant and Surbhi Misra in Bengaluru; Editing by Alan Barona)