In brief: Kinder Morgan buying El Paso Corp.
NEW YORK – Kinder Morgan plans to buy El Paso Corp. in a $20.7 billion deal that’s expected to create America’s largest natural gas pipeline operator.
Kinder Morgan Inc. is expanding its reach as the U.S. becomes increasingly reliant on natural gas. Drillers are pumping ever-increasing amounts from underground shale deposits across the U.S. Natural gas prices have dropped to less than a third of their level of three years ago, and power companies are using more of the fuel because it emits fewer greenhouse gases than coal.
The deal also adds to founder and CEO Richard Kinder’s energy empire. Kinder, 66, started the company with friend William Morgan after leaving his post as president of the now-defunct Enron Corp. Forbes lists his net worth at $6.4 billion.
The new pipeline system would stretch 80,000 miles – long enough to wind around the globe three times. Kinder Morgan’s pipelines in the Rocky Mountains, the Midwest and Texas will be woven together with El Paso’s expansive network that spreads east from the Gulf Coast to New England, and to the west through New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada and California.
Robert McFadden, a Houston-based natural gas pipeline consultant, said the expanded network will make it easier to move natural gas from new shale fields that have mushroomed across the U.S. in the past few years.
Union studying post office’s future
WASHINGTON – The post office’s largest union said Sunday it is hiring its own financial consultants to study the future of the financially strapped agency.
The National Association of Letter Carriers said it is hiring the investment bank Lazard Group LLC and former White House adviser Ron Bloom as consultants on the future of the post office. Bloom is a former assistant to President Barack Obama for manufacturing policy.
The Postal Service lost $8 billion in 2010 and the picture is likely to be worse when details of fiscal 2011 are released next month. The agency has proposed cutting mail delivery to five days a week, closing thousands of offices and cutting its staff by as many as 200,000.
“The nation’s letter carriers are committed to preserving six-day-a-week universal services to every address in every village, town and city in the nation,” said Fredric V. Rolando, president of the 280,000-member union.
Two girls die after being hit by train
SPANISH FORK, Utah – Two 15-year-old girls died and a 13-year-old girl was critically injured after they were struck by a freight train in Utah.
Utah County sheriff’s Sgt. Spencer Cannon said the three girls were taking photos when they were hit Saturday evening in Spanish Fork Canyon. He said the teens apparently knew one train was coming, but did not realize another train was coming from the opposite direction and became caught between them. The Deseret News reports Essa Ricker and Kelsea Webster were killed in the accident. Kelsea’s sister, Savannah Webster, underwent surgery Sunday at a hospital.
Cannon said one train either hit the girls or threw them into the path of the other, but it is also possible they were hit by both trains.
Third orca found dead in Alaska river
ANCHORAGE, Alaska – A third killer whale that swam up Alaska’s Nushagak River has been found dead.
A spokeswoman for NOAA’s National Marine Fisheries Service said the carcass of the third whale, a juvenile, was spotted Friday near Grass Island, across the river from Dillingham in an area influenced by tides.
Julie Speegle said in a statement that biologists believe the juvenile likely swam there rather than its body being moved by the tide.
The juvenile and two female orcas, including one pregnant whale, were spotted in fresh water more than three weeks ago. Necropsies last week on the other two whales provided no obvious reasons for their deaths.