MidAmerican Marches Forth With Dynergy Pipeline Purchase

Dynegy has agreed to sell a natural-gas pipeline for $1.88 billion in cash and assumed debt to MidAmerican Energy Holdings, a unit of Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Inc. that has been buying energy assets in the recent past.

MidAmerican will pay $928 million in cash and assume $950 million in debt to acquire the 16,600-mile (26,700-kilometer) Northern Natural Gas pipeline system, which runs from Texas to the Great Lakes, the companies said.

Dynegy acquired Northern from Enron for $1.5 billion in cash and $950 million of assumed debt. It is selling assets after energy trading declined and credit dried up. The purchase is the second this year for MidAmerican, which also in March paid $960 million to Williams for the Kern River gas pipeline.

Buffett is “picking them off one by one,” said Allan J. Meyers, who manages a billion dollars in the Fifth Third Large Cap Value Fund and has sold his Dynegy shares. “He's getting this on the cheap.”

©

&to=http://www.dynegy.com/' target=_blank>DYNEGY

&to=http://www.midamerican.com/' target=_blank>MidAmerican Energy Holdings