El Paso Corp. continued its asset sales program Tuesday with its Florida petroleum terminals and tug and barge operations. The Florida assets, which were acquired in the Coastal Corp. merger in 2001, were sold to TransMontaigne Inc. for $155 million, including an estimated $35 million of product inventory value at closing.

The Florida petroleum terminals provide bunker fuel, residual fuel, diesel and gasoline at Jacksonville, Cape Canaveral, Port Manatee/Tampa, Port Everglades and Fisher Island, with aggregate storage capacity of five million barrels. Denver-based TransMontaigne anticipates integrating its existing Port Everglades, Tampa and Pensacola terminals, with an aggregate 1.2 million barrels of storage capacity, with these new assets.

“We are excited about adding the bunker fuel supply and distribution business to our existing gasoline and distillate marketing efforts throughout Florida. We anticipate hiring substantially all of the current El Paso employees that have made this business such an integral part of the Florida petroleum supply infrastructure,” said TransMontaigne COO William S. Dickey. The deal is expected to close in the first quarter.

Last Monday, Canadian Superior Energy Inc. announced an agreement to purchase El Paso’s Drumheller Area oil and gas assets, production facilities, gas plants and undeveloped lands located in central Alberta. The C$59 million deal had an effective date of Oct. 1, 2002, and includes 2,800 boe/d of gas and oil production and high working interests in 170,000 gross acres of land (106,693 net acres). The transaction also includes extensive seismic data and infrastructure assets consisting of interests in three gas plants, three oil batteries, 20 production facilities and 130 kilometers of company-operated pipelines.

The two asset sales are part of El Paso’s strategy to exit non-core businesses, strengthen its balance sheet and reduce debt. They follow multiple other announced and completed sales and transactions, including El Paso’s plan to exit the energy trading and marketing business. El Paso closed more than $3.6 billion in sales transactions last year. It plans to close $1.4 billion of additional non-core asset sales by the end of the first quarter 2003, and another $1 billion of asset sales during the remainder of 2003. The company will focus operations on core production, midstream and its non-merchant power businesses this year.

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