Yes Virginia, there still is an energy executive whom you can admire. Chicago-based Morningstar Inc., a worldwide investment research firm, has named Richard D. Kinder, chairman and CEO of Kinder Morgan Energy Partners LP (KMP), as one of four nominees for its CEO of the Year award for 2002. It will announce the winner live on CNBC on Jan. 3 at about 11:20 a.m. (Eastern time).

Following a year in which a couple of former energy executives were handcuffed and trotted off to jail, two committed suicide, and endless federal agency investigations into the trading and pricing activities of energy companies were begun, it’s kind of refreshing to see an energy executive being noticed for something other than shady practices.

“Unlike many energy firms that ‘drank the Kool-Aid’ by betting heavily on energy trading, Kinder has stayed resolutely focused on generating income by investing in hard assets — often those that were sold off over the past few years by firms that jumped on the energy-trading bandwagon,” according to a Morningstar article.

Kinder Morgan is one of the nation’s largest owners and operators of products pipelines and natural gas lines. Some of its most notable gas pipelines include Natural Gas Pipeline Co. of America, Trailblazer, TransColorado Gas, KMI Interstate Gas Transmission, Horizon and KN Wattenberg.

Kinder’s “stick-to-your-knitting strategy” has worked well for shareholders since the master limited partnership was formed in 1997, Morningstar said. KMP’s shares are about triple what they were at the start of 1998, and partnership distributions have more than doubled, it noted. KMP stock was trading at $34.66 early Tuesday.

“Since Kinder Morgan Energy Partners is a master limited partnership, it has to pay out 90% of its cash flow, and that’s actually how Kinder himself gets paid. As the largest individual shareholder, Kinder makes more money only by increasing partnership distributions. (He received only $1 in cash compensation from Kinder Morgan in 2001). He’s also bought an additional $858,000 worth of KMP and related companies during 2002, so his interests seem pretty clearly aligned with those of shareholders,” Morningstar said.

But there is one “caveat” to the glowing profile of Kinder. He was “president and chief operating officer of Enron until 1996, though the available evidence says that he left because he wasn’t ‘visionary’ enough for the folks who wanted to pursue the asset-light strategy that got Enron into so much trouble,” it noted. “He hasn’t been implicated in any of the wrongdoing at the firm, however, and he’s certainly treated shareholders well during his stewardship of Kinder Morgan.”

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