Northern Border Partners, LP, announced it has completed itspreviously announced acquisition of gas gathering facilities in thePowder River and Wind River Basins in Wyoming for $200 million fromEnron North America Corp. The purchase includes ownership positionsin Bighorn Gas Gathering and Fort Union Gas Gathering in the PowderRiver Basin and Lost Creek Gathering in the Wind River Basin. Inconjunction with the acquisition, NBP and ENA have agreed toprovide complementary services in the Basins. NBP will own andoperate physical assets and will provide gathering andtransportation services. ENA will continue to provide gas purchaseand sales, finance, risk management and producer outsourcingservices. The partnership also declared an increase in cashdistribution yesterday to $0.70 from $0.65 per unit. The indicatedannual rate is now $2.80 per unit. The increase becomes effectivewith the third quarter distribution payable on Nov. 14. It is thepartnership’s fourth increase in the last three years. NorthernBorder Partners, LP owns a 70% general partner interest in NorthernBorder Pipeline Co., which owns a 1,214-mile interstate pipelinesystem that transports approximately 23 percent of all Canadiannatural gas imports into the United States.

Nicor Gas reported that a total of 248,000 homes will be inspectedfor possible mercury contamination from mishandled gas regulators. Thecompany announced plans last month to voluntarily inspect the homesand then came under state and federal regulatory investigation. Itcame under court order to inspect the homes earlier this month (seeDaily GPI, Sept. 6; Sept. 14). To date, nearly 27,000 homeshave been visited. Nicor’s plan calls for an initial visit to all ofthe homes by mid-November. The company’s field inspectors areconducting several thousand residential visits per day. As more peopleare trained and certified, the number of inspections willincrease. Nicor Gas has contacted all 15,000 customers thatpotentially had old style mercury regulators removed between 1995 and2000. This is the company’s first phase of its work plan submitted tothe Office of the Illinois Attorney General. Nicor Gas has sentletters to all customers in the second phase of its plan. Thisincludes all residences that have had mercury regulators removedbetween 1990 and 1994. This is the primary focus of field visitsbeginning Sept. 25.

BP is funding a 10-year, $20 million research grant to study howto catalytically convert methane, sharing the grant equally betweenthe California Institute of Technology and the University ofCalifornia, Berkeley. The grants from BP will study how to convertthe large reserves of natural gas found in methane into usefulproducts. The funding will support faculty, research staff,graduate students and fellows at the two universities, andinformation will also be shared. UC Berkeley will focus onheterogeneous catalytic approaches for producing liquid fuels andchemicals. The Caltech team will develop homogeneous catalyticapproaches. BP set up a similar program at England’s CambridgeUniversity. Sir John Browne, group chief executive of BP, said thatthe “next breakthrough” in natural gas to liquids research “willcome from catalysis combined with process engineering,” toward thenext generation of cleaner burning fuels.

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