Pipeline giant has winning bid for natural gas assets

Houston’s Enterprise Products Partners said it won an auction to buy the natural gas pipeline assets of the bankrupt Azure Midstream with a bid of $189 million.

The auction win gives Enterprise an expanded presence in East Texas and northern Louisiana with 960 miles of natural gas gathering pipelines, three processing facilities and two natural gas liquids pipelines that can each ship 10,000 barrels daily.

Dallas-based Azure filed in January in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Texas, with Houston’s M5 Midstream bidding $151.5 million.

M5 is an affiliate of Houston’s M3 Midstream and Indigo Resources.

After upping the offer with the winning bid, Enterprise Executive Vice President William Ordemann said the assets fit nicely with the existing footprints in East Texas and the Haynesville Shale.

With the bankruptcy court signing off on the sale on Wednesday, Enterprise said the deal could be completed as soon as April.

The deal continues Enterprise’s growth spree. Enterprise in the fall completed its large ethane export terminal along the Houston Ship Channel and is now building out a massive oil pipeline from Midland to the Houston area.

Enterprise also is nearing completion of a plant in Mont Belvieu that would convert propane into propylene, one of the most common building blocks of plastics.

In January, Enterprise said it will construct a new isobutane processing unit at its Mont Belvieu campus to create chemicals used in the manufacturing of lubricants, rubbers and gasoline additives.