A top Canadian agricultural concern, Cargill Ltd., reported last Wednesday that it closed a deal to buy Mirant Corp.’s Canadian natural gas aggregator services contracts and a major slice of its gas transportation and storage contracts. Terms of the sale, which was first announced in May, were not disclosed.

Cargill picked up 380 MMcf/d of gas transportation contracts and approximately 1.3 Bcf of gas storage, as well as Mirant’s “netback pool,” said the Winnipeg, MB-based company. The netback pool is responsible for marketing the aggregate supply of gas from more than 500 Canadian gas producers associated with the former TransCanada pool business, it noted.

Cargill Ltd., a subsidiary of Cargill Inc. in Minneapolis, MN, also will assume management services agreements to operate the aggregator businesses of Pan-Alberta Gas Ltd., Northeast Pacific Energy Marketing Inc. and CanWest Gas Supply Inc.

The acquisition of these assets will “strengthen relationships with Canadian natural gas producers and…provide a broader range of risk-management solutions to producers and consumers in the North American natural gas market,” said David Gabriel, president of Cargill Power & Gas Markets.

For Mirant, the deal was part of its ongoing program to shed assets and improve its balance sheet. This “is the latest of several [moves] that are expected to allow Mirant to reduce its collateral obligations by more than $200 million over time,” said Rick Pershing, Mirant’s executive vice president. “With this transaction, we move closer to achieving our goal of reducing collateral obligations to $500 million by the end of the year.”

Cargill Ltd. is considered one of the largest agricultural merchandisers and processors in Canada.

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