Antero Midstream Corp. bought Marcellus assets of Crestwood Equity Partners LP on September 12 for $205 million in cash, signing another sale of noncore assets by the Houston-based company.
Crestwood has strategically enhanced its asset portfolio through a series of A&D transactions for the previous 18 months to create a competitive scale in the Williston, Delaware, and Power River basins. The strategy covered acquisitions of Oasis Midstream Partners, Sendero Midstream, and Crestwood Permian Basin Holdings LLC (CPJV), which was a 50:50 joint venture of Crestwood and First Reserve.
This company release highlighted the confidence in the portfolio achieving the company's long-term leverage ratio target of sub 3.5x in 2023 and showed the commitment to generating accretive unitholder returns and solidifying their financial flexibility for the future.
Crestwood's Marcellus natural gas gathering and compression assets are based in West Virginia in Doddridge and Harrison counties. The assets consist of a legacy gas system that was purchased by Crestwood from Antero Resources Corp. in 2012 for $376.8 million.
Antero Resources established Antero Midstream in 2012 to service its rapidly growing natural gas and NGL production in the Appalachian Basin. The transaction on September 12 represents a bolt-on acquisition that is valued to be more than 10% accretive to free cash flow after dividends through 2026.
The assets to be bought cover 72 miles of dry gas gathering pipelines and nine compressor stations with about 700 MMcf/d of compression capacity. The current throughput on the system is approximately 200 MMcf/d, resulting in important available capacity for increase without major capital investment.
Crestwood said that the Marcellus assets have been impacted in recent years by Crestwood's anchor producer concentrating development activity on the rich gas window of the southwest Marcellus Shale. For this reason, the assets have been on natural field decline since 2017 and are noncore to Crestwood's long-term development strategy of growing as a leading midstream operator in the Williston, Delaware, and Power River basins.
The deal includes almost 425 undeveloped drilling locations and 120,000 gross dedicated acres from Antero Resources mainly in Harrison County. The acquisition is also anticipated to raise Antero Midstream's compression capacity by 20% and gathering pipeline mileage by 15%.
The transaction is anticipated to close the fourth quarter and illustrates a multiple of over 7 times 2023E adjusted EBITDA. For Antero Midstream, the transaction multiple was at about 6x the next 12 months valued adjusted EBITDA, excluding synergies.
Crestwood aims to use the proceeds from the Marcellus sale to improve financial flexibility through a combination of debt reduction and opportunistic common unit repurchases.
Antero Midstream will finance the deal with borrowings under the company's revolving credit facility.
Locke Lord LLP served as legal adviser to Crestwood. Vinson & Elkins LLP served as legal adviser to Antero Midstream.
