Williams’ energy services business unit reported the closure of itspreviously announced acquisition of the natural gas liquids (NGL)portion of TransCanada’s midstream operations yesterday. The $540million deal was first announced on Aug. 3 (see Daily GPI, Aug. 4).

The deal includes TransCanada’s holdings in the Cochrane,Redwater, Empress II, Empress V and Younger natural gas liquids andextraction facilities, along with the West Stoddart natural gasprocessing plant. The asset package located in western Canadarepresents about 6 Bcf/d of gas processing capacity, approximately225,000 b/d of NGL production capacity, an NGL pipeline and morethan five million barrels of NGL storage capacity.

Steve Malcolm, CEO of Williams’ energy services business, said,”The completion of this agreement is a key milestone for Williams’midstream business. It vaults us into Canada for the first time ina prominent way and reinforces Williams’ role as a leading NGLproducer in North America. It also builds upon our acquisition ofMAPCO in 1998 when we added around 10,000 miles of NGL pipes to ourgathering and processing operations.”

Williams will become the operator of the Cochrane, Redwater andWest Stoddart sites, but the Empress plants and Younger facilitywill continue to be operated by third parties, the company said.

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