Two published reports Friday indicated that the third largest oil and natural gas company in China was considering a takeover bid to acquire all or part of Unocal Corp. Both the Wall Street Journal and London’s Financial Times said that China National Offshore Oil Corp. (CNOOC) was considering making a bid of more than $13 billion for the El Segundo, CA-based company. Unocal is ranked as the ninth largest U.S. energy company in terms of reserves. According to sources, the state-owned CNOOC has asked financiers to study taking over the entire company and then selling the U.S. assets. The Journal cited unnamed sources and called CNOOC’s interest “highly preliminary.” Unocal had no comment on the reports.

Enbridge Energy Partners LP has closed its acquisition of the North Texas Natural Gas System from Devon Energy Corp., first announced iin November. The effective date of the transaction is Jan. 6. The acquired assets serve areas of the Fort Worth Basin and include approximately 2,200 miles of natural gas gathering pipelines and three processing plants with aggregate processing capacity of 81 MMcf/d. Total current inlet volumes are approximately 55 MMcf/d.

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