From Houston Business Journal:

Houston-based Enbridge Energy Partners LP (NYSE: EEP) has closed on a $2 billion deal to jointly acquire interest in the Bakken Access pipeline system.

The Bakken Access system includes the much-contested Dakota Access Pipeline and the Energy Transfer Crude Oil pipeline. Dakota Access recently received the final easement it needed for Dallas-based Energy Transfer Partners LP (NYSE: ETP) — one of the owners of the system — to complete construction.

Enbridge is buying into the project through a 75 percent interest in a joint venture with a subsidiary of Findlay, Ohio-based Marathon Petroleum Corp. (NYSE: MPC), called MPLX LP (NYSE: MPLX), according to an Energy Transfer press release. Enbridge will pay $1.5 billion through a bridge loan from its parent company, Calgary-based Enbridge Inc. (NYSE: ENB). MPLX will pay the remaining $500 million with cash on hand, according to its own press release

The Enbridge-MLPX joint venture now has a 49 percent interest in a separate joint venture between Energy Transfer and Philadelphia-based Sunoco LogisticsPartners LP (NYSE: SXL). The Energy Transfer-Sunoco joint venture, in turn, owns a 75 percent interest in the Bakken Access system. Houston-based Phillips 66 owns the remaining 25 percent of the system.

Before the Enbridge and Marathon JV reached an agreement to buy interest in the Bakken Access system, Enbridge was working on a different system, called the Sandpiper project. Marathon was going to be the anchor shipper for Sandpiper, which would have moved crude out of the Bakken and into Enbridge’s terminal near Superior, Wisconsin, where it could connect into the rest of Enbridge’s system for shipping either to the Chicago refining market or further south to the Gulf Coast.

But regulatory troubles in Minnesota ground that process to a halt. When Enbridge and Marathon announced their agreement to buy interest in the Bakken Access system back in August, Enbridge said that once the deal closed, it and Marathon would terminate their joint venture agreements around Sandpiper. A month later, Enbridge announced it was withdrawing its regulatory applications for Sandpiper, effectively shelving the project.

Construction on the Dakota Access Pipeline portion of the project is expected to be complete in the second quarter. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers granted the final easement to the project after President Donald Trump signed an executive order supporting the project and other infrastructure developments like it.


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