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Pembina fell as much as 1.8 per cent to $48.37 on Wednesday before paring losses. Kinder Morgan Canada jumped as much as 35 per cent to $14.84.

Before the deals were announced early Wednesday, there was speculation that Kinder Morgan Canada could be a potential buyer for the Trans Mountain pipeline that runs from Alberta to Vancouver. The government bought the line from Kinder last year and has promised to sell the conduit back to a private company after it completes a long-delayed expansion project. Multiple indigenous groups in Canada have expressed interest in buying a stake in the line, and analysts have said the line also might be a good fit for pension funds.

Pembina’s Dilger said on the conference call that the Trans Mountain line would fit into the company’s strategy of serving western Canadian oil producers but that the company doesn’t want to take on the baggage that comes along with the project, which has faced opposition and legal challenges from environmentalists, indigenous groups and British Columbia’s government.

Though Pembina is “uniquely qualified” to operate Trans Mountain, “we don’t want to submerge our entire management team and subject our entire organization and reputation to all the noise that entails,” Dilger said on a conference call to discuss the transaction.

Pembina also confirmed that another party has a right of first refusal on one of the assets it acquired. The company wouldn’t disclose the party or the asset, but Dilger said on a call to discuss the deal that if that right of first refusal were to be exercised, it would shrink the size of the assets Pembina is buying “a little bit” but would not be “devastating.”

Bloomberg.com