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For pipeline companies, it may be easier to buy than build.

Enbridge Inc. agreed to purchase fellow line owner Spectra Energy Corp. for US$28 billion in stock. The largest-ever foreign purchase by a Canadian company, the combination will create the biggest energy pipeline and storage operator in North America.

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“We’ll be the FedEx” of the pipeline business, Greg Ebel, Houston-based Spectra’s chief executive, said in an interview. “We ship, we pick up, we store product,” said Ebel, who will become non-executive chairman at Enbridge.

The takeover comes amid a wave of consolidation in the pipeline industry, after lower oil and natural gas prices have diminished demand for shipments and as building new projects becomes increasingly difficult because of local opposition. Protesters disrupted hearings on a proposed TransCanada Corp. pipeline in Montreal last week. Several arrests were made last week at a site in North Dakota where Energy Transfer Partners is trying to build a line to Illinois.

“The environmentalists are out there, they’re powerful, and they’re trying to stop the natural gas pipelines,” said Jay Hatfield, chief executive officer of Infrastructure Capital Management LLC, a New York-based hedge fund. “If you own one, that makes it that much more valuable.”