El Paso reduces interest in GulfTerra-Enterprise merger, achieves debt-reduction goal

By OGJ editors

HOUSTON, Apr. 22 -- El Paso Corp. has amended its agreements last December relating to the proposed merger of GulfTerra Energy Partners LP and Enterprise Products Partners LP, reducing El Paso's interest as a general partner even more in exchange for $370 million in cash(OGJ Online, Dec. 15, 2003). The transaction enables El Paso to reach its stated debt-reduction goal.

Under the terms of the original transaction, El Paso agreed to sell a 50% interest in GulfTerra, along with 13.8 million GulfTerra common units and certain processing assets for $1 billion in cash. El Paso retained a 50% interest in the general partnership of the combined GulfTerra-Enterprise master limited partnership, along with about 13.5 million common units of Enterprise following the close of the merger.

Under the most recent amended agreement, El Paso will retain only 9.9% of the merged entity and the right to exchange its general partner interest for Enterprise common units having an equivalent aggregate cash distribution.

The incremental $370 million in cash El Paso will receive at closing will bring its net cash proceeds from the overall transaction to $1.35 billion.

"With the proceeds from this transaction, we have now announced or sold $3.4 billion of assets, putting us within the range of the $3.3-3.9 billion of asset sales we originally targeted for sale by the end of 2005," said El Paso CEO and Pres. Doug Foshee.