A goal reached: linking Alberta, Gulf Coast
Strong unit-holder return propels pipeline owner
ENBRIDGE’S 2014 milestone came when workers fused the final links on a chain of pipes running from Alberta’s oil sands to Texas’ Gulf Coast.
The new route was the culmination of yearslong expansion projects and wrangling with everyone from regulators to business partners.
“A number of years ago the company was thinking, ‘We need to get additional access to the Gulf Coast,’ because the refining complex there is by far the most sophisticated anywhere,” said Mark Maki, president of Enbridge Energy Partners. “That strategy really kind of kicked in in 2014.”
Enbridge Energy Partners is a Houstonbased master limited partnership and member of the Enbridge family of companies. Enbridge Energy Partners’ parent is based in Calgary.
Enbridge Energy Partners holds wellestablished crude oil transportation assets and passes on the major- ity of profit those lines generate out to investors, called unit holders. It employs 3,420 in the U.S. and 740 in Houston.
The partnership placed third this year on the Houston Chronicle’s list of top-performing public companies, driven in part by a strong gain in earnings per share, which are called units, and strong unit-holder return. Earnings per unit grew 272 percent, while total unit-holder return was 43 percent. The company also reported 2014 annual revenue of $7.96 billion.
Through 2014, Enbridge Energy Partners’ equity price rose from near $28 to nearly $40, while also paying a dividend of about $2.20. That appreciation happened after a change in the way the companies interacted and an announcement that a pipeline would move from Enbridge’s parent company to Enbridge Energy Partners.
Greg Harper, president of gas pipelines and processing and a top Houston executive for Enbridge, said the partnership’s success last year was in part due to the culmination of years of planning to get Canadian oil into new markets.