Williams added another $80 million in cash on Friday to the $3.4 billion in transactions announced earlier last week to resolve its current liquidity crisis and strengthen its finances. The company said it closed the sale of its Kansas Hugoton natural gas gathering system to FrontStreet Hugoton LLC, an affiliate of FrontStreet Partners LLC and GE Structured Finance Group, for $100 million. Williams will net $80 million after purchase price adjustments to reflect current capital obligations assumed by FrontStreet and net revenues from prior periods.

“The Hugoton divestiture brings an immediate infusion of cash that contributes above and beyond the transactions we announced yesterday to improve our finances,” said Phil Wright, CEO of Williams’ energy services unit. “The sale also is consistent with our strategy to concentrate our midstream businesses on core growth basins.” Williams intends to focus midstream operations on Wyoming, the San Juan Basin and the Gulf Coast, particularly the deepwater Gulf of Mexico (see Daily GPI, July 8).

Under the gun to make $800 million in debt payments and with very little cash available, Williams scrambled to put together a massive set of transactions on Thursday. New credit agreements were secured giving Williams about $2 billion, but to make those deals, Williams sold or guaranteed some of its solid income-producing assets — interests in two pipeline companies, Seminole and Mid-American, for $1.2 billion; natural gas properties in Wyoming for $350 million; gas properties in the Anadarko Basin for $37.5 million; and the Cove Point liquefied natural gas (LNG) facility for $217 million (see Daily GPI, Aug. 2). Williams also backed a secured credit agreement, which was put together by Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc., with “substantially all” of the assets of subsidiary Barrett Resources. Negotiations were apparently nonstop for almost a week before any transactions were completed.

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