TRANSCANADA PURCHASES COLUMBIA PIPELINE - Columbia Mountaineer Xpress Project Affects Calhoun

(03/19/2016)

TransCanada, the company that proposed building the Keystone XL Pipeline, will purchase Columbia Pipeline Group for $13 billion. Columbia Pipeline has several transmission line with compressor station projects in progress in West Virginia, including the Mountaineer Xpress proposed to run a few miles through Calhoun County with a proposed $94 million compressor station in a remote area of the county near the Ritchie line. The Calhoun Commission has been in tax negotiations with Columbia Pipeline. TransCanada already owns 42,500 miles of pipeline in North America. Columbia Pipeline Group, which was spun off Indiana-based utility company Nisource last year, has extensive holdings in West Virginia, where it employs more than 700 people and operates around 2,500 miles of pipeline. The company is valued at roughly $9 billion. "The acquisition represents a rare opportunity to invest in an extensive, competitively-positioned, growing network of regulated natural gas pipeline and storage assets in the Marcellus and Utica shale gas regions," said Russ Girling, TransCanada's president and chief executive officer, in the statement. The acquisition would give TransCanada a position in the heart of the Marcellus shale play, potentially connecting rising volumes of cheap natural gas to its existing system.

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