El Paso E&P Sold for $7.15B to Private Equity Group

摘要

Late Friday El Paso Corp. announced that it entered into a definitive agreement to sell its exploration and production (E&P) unit, EP Energy Corp., for close to $7.15 billion to affiliates of Apollo Global Management LLC and Riverstone Holdings LLC, as well as Access Industries Inc. and other parties. El Paso last May announced that it intended to spin off the E&P unit as a publicly traded company so that it could concentrate on its natural gas pipeline and midstream units. However, after agreeing to buy El Paso in October, Kinder Morgan Inc. (KMI) executives indicated that an outright sale, as a complete package or in pieces, was preferred over a spinoff (see NGI, Oct. 24, 2011).