Buckeye Closes Purchase Of Eagle Ford Midstream Assets

Emily Moser, Hart Energy

Buckeye Partners LP (NYSE: BPL) announced Sept. 16 it completed its $860 million purchase of an 80% interest in Buckeye Texas Partners LLC from Trafigura AG.

Buckeye Texas Partners LLC and its subsidiaries, which are owned jointly with Trafigura, will own and operate a vertically integrated system of midstream assets including a deepwater, high volume marine terminal located on the Corpus Christi Ship Channel, a condensate splitter and LPG storage complex in Corpus Christi and three crude oil and condensate gathering facilities in the Eagle Ford Shale.

Trafigura will be a key customer of these assets under 7- to 10-year minimum volume throughput, storage and tolling agreements, which will support 100% of the cash flows associated with the assets, said Clark C. Smith, chairman and CEO of Houston's Buckeye Partners, in a statement.

"We expect this acquisition to be highly accretive to our distributable cash flow per limited partner unit beginning in 2016 and to position Buckeye for acceleration of distribution growth," Smith said.

Once the initial phase of expansion is complete, the assets will form an integrated system with connectivity from the production in the field to the marine terminal infrastructure in Corpus Christi, creating a logistics platform with significant flexibility and optionality.

"We are excited to incorporate this unique integrated system of assets into the Buckeye portfolio," he said. "This acquisition expands our geographic and product diversity with a premier position on the U.S. Gulf Coast and in the prolific Eagle Ford Shale."

Citigroup was exclusive financial advisor to Trafigura for the transaction. Barclays provided a fairness opinion to the board of directors of Buckeye GP LLC, the general partner of Buckeye.