Targa Sells Petroleum Terminals on East and West Coast

SEATTLE (Oil Monster): Houston pipeline firm Targa Resources said it plans to sell its petroleum terminals in Baltimore and Tacoma, Wash. to help fund the construction of major pipeline projects in Texas.

Targa said the crude oil and refined products terminals, which also include crude storage, will sell for $160 million to a private equity-backed affiliate of the Boston-based ArcLight Capital Partners.

In August, Targa said it is teaming up with a bevy of partners to build a 600-mile natural gas pipeline system from West Texas' Permian Basin to the Corpus Christi and Houston regions.

While there's a race to build a slew of crude oil pipelines to serve the record levels of production from the booming Permian, there's also a lot of associated gas produced from the oil wells. Targa is now looking to compete with Houston's Kinder Morgan and a few other companies building massive gas pipelines from the Permian.

Targa aims to build the Whistler Pipeline project in partnership with Florida's NextEra Energy, Ohio's MPLX and some private equity investors. MPLX is the pipeline arm of Marathon Petroleum.

Targa also is currently building the Grand Prix natural gas liquids pipeline from the Permian to the Houston area.

And Targa isn't just competing with Kinder Morgan. Targa also owns a 25 percent stake in Kinder Morgan's Gulf Coast Express pipeline that's under construction to ship natural gas from the Permian to the Corpus Christi region.

Targa also is considering building a natural gas liquids pipeline from Oklahoma to the Houston region.

 Courtesy: www.houstonchronicle.com