Buckeye Partners LP (BPL.N), which operates pipelines and other transportation and storage assets for liquid petroleum products, said it bought a 50 percent stake in a marine terminal company for $1.15 billion.
Buckeye Partners said on Monday that the other 50 percent in VTTI B.V. will continue to be held jointly by Vitol, the world’s largest oil trader, and Vitol’s investment vehicle.
VTTI, which owns and operates about 54 million barrels of petroleum products storage through 13 terminals globally, was previously equally owned by Vitol and its investment vehicle, according to VTTI’s website.
A majority of VTTI’s cash flows are also supported by take-or-pay storage agreements with Vitol, Buckeye Partners said in a statement.
The company said it expects the deal to immediately add to its distributable cash flow per limited partner unit in 2017.
“We expect this investment to generate increasing quarterly distributions supported by stable fee-based cash flows,” Chief Executive Officer Clark Smith said.
Midstream companies such as Buckeye Partners make money by charging fees for use of their facilities but have faced sharp declines in throughput due to a two-year rout in oil prices.
The company also said on Monday it commenced a 7.5 million offering of limited partnership units to partly fund the deal.
Barclays Capital Inc acted as the exclusive financial adviser to Buckeye Partners.
The deal is expected to close in early January 2017.
(Reporting by Arathy S Nair in Bengaluru; Editing by Savio D’Souza)
