Deal Details for Williams/Access Midstream Merger – TTV of $50B!
One of the biggest–perhaps THE biggest–midstream stories of 2014 is the buyout of Access Midstream by Williams (see Big News: Williams Partners Buying Access Midstream for $6B). Access Midstream, formerly Chesapeake Midstream, has a big footprint in the Marcellus/Utica region. Yesterday (Sunday night) Williams and Access issued a joint statement that the merger plan is now done. The deal outline is settled–and now it’s down to the lawyers and approvals from the government. They expect the completed merger/takeover by Williams to be done “by early 2015.” Yesterday’s announcement (below) gives the blow by blow of the negotiated deal. It also outlines the roles that Access’ corporate officers will play in the newly combined company. As MDN said initially, this deal has the makings of creating a worthy challenger to Kinder Morgan, the nation’s largest midstream company. We originally estimated the combined value of Williams and Access combined would be around $38 billion. According to the announcement yesterday, the “total transaction value” (TTV) of this deal will be ~$50 billion!…
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Lately it seems like a week doesn’t go by that a new pipeline project is announced. No one should be surprised, but of course we all are. It only makes sense: drillers have sunk a lot of holes in the Marcellus and Utica, and now all of that gas and natural gas liquids (NGLs) needs a way to get to market. The northeast alone can’t handle all of the gas and NGLs being produced. Yes, the ethane cracker plants will help with regards to ethane–but there’s still way more ethane that even the planned three cracker plants can handle. And way more methane (natural gas) than the northeast can absorb. How do you get it to market? With pipelines. The first thing pipeline operators do is pick the “low hanging fruit”–in this case reversing pipelines and using loops to increase capacity and change the direction of the flows. But according to the midstream companies themselves, the low hanging fruit is about all picked. Now it’s on to the higher hanging fruit–so-called “greenfield” pipelines that cut through “virgin” land. Below we have a very interesting quote about decisions that will soon be made impacting the rest of this decade, along with a very useful chart of pipeline projects…
The previously announced ethane cracker plant that is slated to be built near Parkersburg, WV is coming along very nicely, according to Odebrecht spokesman David Peebles. A talk at the West Virginia Chamber of Commerce’s Annual Meeting and Business Summit at The Greenbrier last week, along with conversations with the Parkersburg News and Sentinel, provided some key details about just where the project sits. Once again MDN notices how quickly (and convincingly) the Odebrecht cracker project is progressing after being announced just last fall, as opposed to the ponderous path being taken by Shell with their planned cracker plant, announced 2 1/2 years ago. Neither plant is a done deal, yet. But in light of Odebrecht’s full-speed-ahead attitude and news from last week, it sure seems like the WV cracker is a lot closer to being a done deal than the Shell cracker…