Western Gas Partners LP (WES) on Thursday agreed to acquire the Red Desert Complex and related assets, primarily located in the greater Green River Basin of southwestern Wyoming, from parent Anadarko Petroleum Corp. for $483 million.

Included in the purchase is Anadarko’s 100% ownership interest in Mountain Gas Resources LLC (MGR), which owns the Red Desert Complex, a 22% interest in Rendezvous Gas Services LLC and related facilities.

Red Desert represents most of MGR’s cash flow (90%) and includes the Patrick Draw processing plant with a capacity of 125 MMcf/d, the Red Desert processing plant with a capacity of 48 MMcf/d, 1,295 miles of gathering lines and related facilities. Rendezvous owns a 338-mile mainline gathering system serving the Jonah and Pinedale Anticline fields in southwestern Wyoming, which delivers gas to WES’s Granger Complex and other locations.

“We continue to execute our strategy of growing the WES portfolio in liquids-rich areas,” said CEO Don Sinclair. “These assets are a great complement to our existing footprint in the greater Green River Basin, which continues to see solid resource development. As a result of our capital markets activity in 2011, we are able to consummate this material transaction while still maintaining conservative leverage ratios.”

Red Desert and Rendezvous together are expected to generate more than 98% of MGR’s operating cash flows. The transaction is seen as immediately accretive to the partnership, with the acquisition price representing about a seven times multiple of the assets’ forecasted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization for the next 12 months, WES said.

To manage the commodity-price risk associated with the assets, the partnership and Anadarko are entering five-year, fixed-price commodity swap agreements. Consistent with the swap arrangements put in place with previous transactions, the agreements would cover all nonfee-based system volumes.

The acquisition, scheduled to close in January, is to be financed through $160 million of cash on hand, debt and by issuing common units to Anadarko and general partner units WES’s general partner, Western Gas Holdings LLC at an implied price of about $37.38/unit.

The partnership was launched by Anadarko as a public offering in 2008 (see Daily GPI, Dec. 23, 2008). And since then WES has built its asset base mostly through Anadarko acquisitions.

In July the partnership paid Anadarko $130 million for the Bison gas treating facility and related assets in the Powder River Basin (see Daily GPI, July 6). In 2010 it paid Anadarko $498 million to buy the Wattenberg gathering system and related assets in the Denver-Julesburg Basin of northeastern Colorado (see Daily GPI, Aug. 3, 2010). Also in 2010 it completed another transaction with Anadarko, purchasing midstream assets in southwest Wyoming for $254.4 million (see Daily GPI, Feb. 2).

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