Privately held Kinder Morgan Inc. will go public Feb. 11, raising as much as $2.3 billion by selling 80 million shares of common stock, the company said Thursday. In connection with the initial public offering (IPO), parent Kinder Morgan Holdco LLC will be converted from a Delaware limited liability company to a Delaware corporation.

Kinder Morgan said in November that it planned to launch an IPO and rejoin the New York Stock Exchange (see Daily GPI, Nov. 24, 2010). The Houston-based company plans to list under its former symbol “KMI.”

In 2007 Kinder Morgan went private in an estimated $15 billion buyout (see Daily GPI, May 31, 2007). Today the company has about 37,000 miles of pipelines and 180 terminals across North America that transport, store and handle natural gas, refined petroleum products, crude oil, ethanol, coal and carbon dioxide.

All of the stock for the IPO is to be sold by existing investors, including Goldman, Sachs & Co., Highstar Capital LP, The Carlyle Group and Riverstone Holdings LLC. No members of Kinder Morgan management are selling in the offering, the company said.

It will be the largest oil and gas company IPO in the United States since Statoil ASA in 2001, according to Bloomberg news.

Kinder Morgan owns the general partner and about 11% of the limited partner interests in Kinder Morgan Energy Partners (KMP), one of the largest publicly traded U.S. pipeline master limited partnerships, which has an enterprise value of more than $30 billion. KMP recently reported 4Q2010 net income of $413 million, a 29% jump over the $320 million recorded for 4Q2009 (see Daily GPI, Jan. 21). KMP said it expects to declare cash distributions of $4.60/unit for 2011, a 4.5% increase over the $4.40/unit for 2010.

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