
Copano Energy
National natural gas distributor and supplier in the US.
Date | Investors | Amount | Round |
---|---|---|---|
- | investor | €0.0 | round |
N/A | €0.0 | round | |
investor | €0.0 | round | |
* | $5.0b Valuation: $5.0b | Acquisition | |
Total Funding | 000k |
Copano Energy, LLC was a significant player in the midstream natural gas sector, focusing on providing services to producers. The company was founded in 1992 by John R. Eckel Jr. After graduating from Columbia University and working at Lehman Brothers, Eckel entered the energy sector, culminating in the establishment of Copano. He led the company's growth from a single 23-mile pipeline to a publicly traded entity with a vast network. The firm went public with an initial public offering in November 2004, trading on NASDAQ under the symbol CPNO.
The company's core business involved natural gas gathering, processing, treating, compression, and transportation. It operated an extensive network of pipelines, primarily in Texas, Oklahoma, and Wyoming. Copano's business model was largely fee-based, providing services to natural gas producers and shielding the company from direct commodity price volatility. Its infrastructure included thousands of miles of pipelines and multiple processing plants that separated natural gas liquids (NGLs) like ethane and propane from the raw gas stream. These services were critical for making natural gas market-ready and for extracting valuable NGLs for use in the petrochemical industry and as fuels.
A major milestone in the company's history was its acquisition by Kinder Morgan Energy Partners, LP (KMP) in May 2013. The deal, valued at approximately $5 billion including debt, was a strategic move for Kinder Morgan to expand its footprint in key shale plays such as the Eagle Ford and Barnett Shales in Texas and the Mississippi Lime and Woodford Shales in Oklahoma. The acquisition integrated Copano's gathering and processing assets with Kinder Morgan's extensive pipeline transportation and storage network. At the time of the acquisition, Copano operated roughly 6,900 miles of pipelines and nine processing plants.
Keywords: Copano Energy, midstream natural gas, John R. Eckel Jr., Kinder Morgan acquisition, natural gas gathering, natural gas processing, pipeline operator, Eagle Ford Shale, Barnett Shale, Texas pipelines, Oklahoma energy, natural gas liquids, NGL fractionation, energy infrastructure, Houston energy company, NASDAQ CPNO, public energy company, gas treating, asset integration, shale gas services