Kinder Morgan Acquires Gulf Coast and Southern California Terminals for More Than $60 Million

HOUSTON, April 17 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Kinder Morgan Energy Partners, L.P. today announced it has purchased certain terminal assets from US Development (USD) and A&L Trucking, L.P. in two separate transactions representing a total investment of approximately $63 million. The assets include two rail terminals and a dry-bulk storage and loading operation in southern California and the Texas Gulf Coast area.

"These strategically located terminals complement existing facilities that we own in the Los Angeles and Houston areas and will provide terminaling services to move growing supplies of ethanol into high-demand markets and handle bulk product imports," said KMP Terminals President Jeff Armstrong. "These acquisitions are expected to be immediately accretive to cash available for distribution to KMP unitholders."

Included in the transaction is the purchase of USD's Lomita rail terminal in Carson, Calif., which is the highest volume rail ethanol terminal on the West Coast. The terminal has the capability to receive and offload as many as 100 railcars within a 24-hour period. The quick turnaround time makes the facility especially valuable for refiners and producers working to meet California's growing demand for ethanol.

KMP also purchased the USD rail facility located in Deer Park, Texas, which offers a variety of loading, storage and staging services for up to 900 cars at a time. In addition, the adjacent petcoke terminal that KMP purchased in 2005 gives the rail facility access to the Houston Ship Channel for the first time, creating opportunities to expand and offer additional services. In turn, the acquisition maximizes the value of the company's existing deepwater terminal by providing customers with both rail and vessel transportation options for bulk products.

As part of the A&L Trucking purchase, KMP acquired equipment and infrastructure for storing and loading bulk steel at a 30-acre site along the Houston Ship Channel leased through the Port of Houston. The facility provides KMP's customers with another import location for their products and is an ideal complement to the company's nearby bulk facility purchased from General Stevedores in 2005, which accommodates domestically delivered steel products.

KMP is one of the largest publicly traded pipeline limited partnerships in America and owns or operates more than 27,000 miles of pipelines and approximately 145 terminals. Its pipelines transport more than 2 million barrels/day of gasoline and other petroleum products and up to 9 billion cubic feet/day of natural gas; and, its terminals handle over 80 million tons of coal and other bulk materials annually and have a liquids storage capacity of about 70 million barrels for petroleum products and chemicals. KMP is also the leading provider of CO2 for enhanced oil recovery projects in the United States.

The general partner of KMP is owned by Kinder Morgan, Inc. , one of the largest energy transportation, storage and distribution companies in North America. Combined, the two companies have an enterprise value of more than $35 billion.

This news release includes forward-looking statements. Although Kinder Morgan believes that its expectations are based on reasonable assumptions, it can give no assurance that such assumptions will materialize. Important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements herein are enumerated in Kinder Morgan's Forms 10-K and 10-Q as filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.