Expanding its natural gas gathering and processing footprint in the U.S. Midcontinent and Gulf Coast, Houston-based Enbridge Energy Partners LP (EEP) said Wednesday that it has completed its previously announced $247 million acquisition of gathering and processing assets in North Texas from Cantera Resources Inc., an affiliate of Morgan Stanley Capital Partners.

First announced on Nov. 19, 2003, EEP said that acquiring the North Texas System bolsters the partnership’s portfolio of gathering and processing systems with access to long-life natural gas reserves in the active U.S. Midcontinent and Gulf Coast regions (see Daily GPI, Nov. 21).

The North Texas System primarily serves the Fort Worth Basin, including growing natural gas production from the Barnett Shale zone. Gas throughput on the system currently averages approximately 170 MMcf/d. System facilities include more than 2,000 miles of gas gathering pipeline and five active processing plants with aggregate processing capacity of 217 MMcf/d.

EEP called the acquisition strategic, noting that it believes local markets for Fort Worth Basin production are nearing saturation and additional market outlets will be required. The partnership added that the proposed expansion of its East Texas System transmission line provides a logical alternative to deliver into the major Carthage, TX natural gas hub, if suitable interconnections are developed between the North and East Texas Systems (see Daily GPI, Aug. 19).

The partnership said it expects the acquisition to be immediately accretive to its distributable cash flow and should provide modest growth over the next several years.

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