Williams Partners to buy Canadian assets from Williams for $1.2 billion

Feb. 27, 2014
Williams Partners LP, Tulsa, has agreed to acquire Williams Cos. Inc.’s Alberta operations for $1.2 billion. The transaction is expected to close Feb. 28. Williams currently owns 64% of Williams Partners, including general partner interest.

Williams Partners LP, Tulsa, has agreed to acquire Williams Cos. Inc.’s Alberta operations for $1.2 billion. The transaction is expected to close Feb. 28. Williams currently owns 64% of Williams Partners, including general partner interest.

The assets include an oil sands offgas processing plant near Fort McMurray, 260 miles of NGL and olefins pipelines, and an NGL-olefins fractionation facility and butylene-butane splitter facility at Redwater.

Williams Partners also will buy an in-progress Redwater facility expansion project, which provides additional fractionation business to Williams Partners related to development of offgas processing at the CNRL Horizon upgrader facility retained by Williams.

Williams Partners said operating results from the assets are expected to contribute distributable cash flow to the company of $135-160 million during the remainder of the year and $200-240 million next year.

Williams Partners owns most of Williams’ interstate gas pipeline and domestic midstream assets. Williams also owns Canadian operations and certain US olefins pipelines assets, as well as an investment in Access Midstream Partners LP, a midstream natural gas services provider.

Williams Partners in 2012 purchased 83% undivided interest owned by Williams in its Geismar, La., olefins production plant. Williams Partners also paid more than $2.2 billion for Williams’ refinery-grade propylene splitter and $100 million for pipelines along the Gulf Coast (OGJ Online, Nov. 5, 2012).

Six years earlier, Williams Partners acquired 25.1% interest in Williams’ Four Corners LLC subsidiary, an integrated gas gathering and processing system, for $360 million (OGJ Online, Apr. 10, 2006).

In 2002, Williams Partners bought Williams Pipe Line Co.—then-6,747 miles of pipeline delivering petroleum products to 11 Midwestern states—from Williams for $900 million (OGJ Online, Mar. 21, 2002).