© 2014 The Texas Lawbook.
By Natalie Posgate
Staff Writer for The Texas Lawbook
(March 4) – A transaction closed Monday for Tulsa, Okla.-based Williams Partners, LP to acquire a 100 percent membership interest in Williams Energy Canada ULC (WECU) from its affiliated company, The Williams Companies, Inc. for $1.2 billion.
The primary assets of WECU include an oil sands offgas processing plant near Fort McMurray, approximately 260 miles of NGL and olefins pipelines and an NGL/olefins fractionation facility and butylene/butane splitter facility at Redwater.
Baker Botts represented the Conflicts Committee of the Board of Directors of Williams Partners GP LLC, with a predominantly Houston-based set of lawyers. Houston M&A partner Joshua Davidson led the transaction, and received assistance from partners Matt Kuryla and David Sterling; special counsel Chris Pratt and Chuck Campbell; associates Travis Wofford, Zach Craft, Devi Chandrasekaran, Esther Kolni, Dan Kruger and Brian Finch; Austin associate Alyssia Bernazal; and attorneys from the firm’s Washington, D.C. office.
In 2012, Davidson also led the Baker Botts team when it represented Williams Partners in its $2.4 billion acquisition in chemical and pipeline assets from The Williams Companies. The deal was the first of its kind to involve a master limited partnership to acquire an ethelyne cracker.
Davidson has assisted Williams Partners with a handful of top-down transactions by representing the company’s conflicts committee.
The majority of legal work for The Williams Companies was handled in-house, but Houston partners Robert McNamara and Angela Richards of Andrews Kurth assisted with tax matters. On the in-house end, Williams Senior Vice President and General Counsel Craig Rainey and Assistant General Counsel John Gammie were involved.
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