El Paso Energy Partners LP has completed its $133 millionacquisition of South Texas fee-based natural gas liquidstransportation and fractionation assets from El Paso FieldServices. The Houston-based master limited partnership picked upmore than 600 miles of NGL gathering and transportation pipelinesand three fractionation plants in the deal.

The NGL system is comprised of 379 miles of y-grade pipelineused to gather and transport unfractionated NGLs from variousprocessing plants to the Shoup Plant in Corpus Christi, TX, thelargest of the three fractionators acquired. The system alsoincludes 177 miles of pipelines that deliver fractionated productssuch as ethane, propane and butane to refineries and petrochemicalend-users along the Texas Gulf Coast and to common carrier NGLpipelines.

The three fractionation facilities consist of nearly 96,000bbl/d of capacity that operated at more than 90% of capacity in2000. The plants receive deliveries of NGLs from El Paso FieldServices’ South Texas gathering and processing infrastructure,which includes seven processing plants with capacity of 1.3 Bcf/d.

“This acquisition completes the redeployment transactions thatwe announced in January,” said El Paso Field Services CEO Robert G.Phillips. “The addition of these transportation and fractionationassets further solidifies the partnership’s asset base while bothdiversifying and increasing its cash flow.” He said the partnershiphad set an “aggressive growth plan” for the next five years, andsaid it had already completed nearly 50% of its targeted $500million in growth capital investments for 2001.

The partnership owns and operates a diversified set of midstreamassets including five offshore natural gas and oil pipelines andfive production handling platforms in the Gulf of Mexico, a saltdome facility with 7.2 Bcf of capacity in Mississippi and a450-mile coalbed methane gathering system in Alabama.

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