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Regular-article-logo Friday, 04 July 2025

Enron sells pipeline assets for $ 1.8 bn

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The Telegraph Online Published 23.05.04, 12:00 AM

Houston, May 22 (Reuters): Texas natural gas tycoon Oscar Wyatt is paying $1.8 billion for Enron Corp’s prized pipeline assets in a deal announced on Friday that puts him back in the gas business and gives the bankrupt energy giant cash to repay creditors.

NuCoastal LLC, a Wyatt-led consortium that includes affiliates of Citigroup, Kelso & Co. and ArcLight Capital Partners LLC, will also assume $430 million in outstanding debt belonging to CrossCountry Energy.

CrossCountry is the company Enron formed in June 2003 to hold its ownership interests in three natural gas pipeline systems — Transwestern Pipeline Company, Citrus Corp., and Northern Plains Natural Gas Company.

The sale gives Wyatt’s company some of the best-run and most consistently profitable assets Enron has left, and will give the bankrupt energy trader money to repay creditors who lost billions when it fell into bankruptcy in late 2001.

“These assets are far and away the best that Enron has left. This puts Oscar back in the game,” said John Olson, who runs 2003 Houston Energy Partners, an energy hedge fund affiliated with the Sanders Morris Harris investment bank.

Wyatt ostensibly retired after selling his Coastal Corp. to El Paso Corp. in 2001, a deal that cost him dearly when El Paso’s stock fell 90 per cent in the wake of Enron’s accounting scandal and ensuing bankruptcy.

Wyatt back again

The colourful billionaire was unable to stay away from the business arena and has been using his second corporate iteration, NuCoastal, to look for new opportunities over the past two years.

The deal is expected to close in the fourth quarter, pending approval by the US bankruptcy court in Manhattan that is overseeing Enron’s Chapter 11 proceedings. The court will hold an overbid process to allow other potential buyers to submit higher bids.

Enron’s unsecured creditors committee and board of directors has approved the sale, which must pass muster with state and federal regulators.

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