Enbridge to buy Dominion gas businesses in $14-billion deal
The leaders of Enbridge Inc. have signed a deal to buy Dominion Energy Inc.’s natural gas distribution businesses for $9.4 billion as well as the assumption of $4.6 billion in debt. If completed as expected next year, the transaction is set to make Enbridge the largest gas utility in North America.
Calgary-headquartered Enbridge plans to pay cash for the assets of Ohio Gas Co., Questar Gas Co. and Public Service Co. of North Carolina Inc., which operate a combined 78,000 miles of distribution, transmission, gathering and storage pipelines as well as storage facilities with more than 62 bcf of capacity. Combined, the businesses have about 3 million customers in Ohio, North Carolina, Utah, Idaho, and Wyoming and in 2022 generated net profits of $697 million on revenues of more than $3.3 billion.
Combining Enbridge’s presence in Ontario and Quebec with Dominion’s subsidiaries will yield a utility with 7,000 employees and 7 million customers delivering about 9.3 bcfd.
“The assets we are acquiring have long useful lives and natural gas utilities are ‘must-have’ infrastructure for providing safe, reliable and affordable energy,” Enbridge president and chief executive officer Greg Ebel said in a statement in which he also called this transaction a once-in-a-generation opportunity. “These businesses align with Enbridge’s business risk model and long-term growth targets.”
Ebel and his team expect Dominion’s natural gas utilities to add about $2 billion to Enbridge’s roughly $16 billion of adjusted EBITDA in 2025, the first full year they will be under the company’s umbrella.
Shares of Enbridge (Ticker: ENB) were down more than 5% to roughly $33.50 Sept. 6. Over the past 6 months, they have given up nearly 15% of their value, trimming the company’s market capitalization to about $68 billion.
Geert De Lombaerde | Senior Editor
A native of Belgium, Geert De Lombaerde has more than two decades of business journalism experience and writes about markets and economic trends for Endeavor Business Media publications Healthcare Innovation, IndustryWeek, FleetOwner, Oil & Gas Journal and T&D World. With a degree in journalism from the University of Missouri, he began his reporting career at the Business Courier in Cincinnati and later was managing editor and editor of the Nashville Business Journal. Most recently, he oversaw the online and print products of the Nashville Post and reported primarily on Middle Tennessee’s finance sector as well as many of its publicly traded companies.
