David L. Porges
Analyst · Heikkinen Energy Advisors.
Well the ONEOK announcement, itself, of course, doesn't really have much impact on us. We looked at the alternatives around LDC before we decided to sell, as opposed to doing some type of a spinoff and things like that. We looked at that. Well we're obviously interested to read more, as we are with any of our companies and any of our peer group, interested to read what they're up to and look at their rationale and see how it turns out for them. But the thought process we have on monetizing other assets as a best way to create shareholder value is really the same as it was. If we're not going to be able to -- or don't think it's economical for us to do the development, the optimal development of those assets, then we look at alternatives, whether it's selling to somebody else, as we've done a couple of times, or getting some other source of capital, as we have, of course, with the Midstream, with the MLP. So I don't think there's anything magic about year end for that. We're obviously not pressured from a liquidity perspective, that's in reasonable shape, I'd say. So we'll continue to work on that. I mean the -- so the urgency isn't raising capital, the urgency is doing the right thing to create value. And we continue to look at those alternatives. I mean, obviously, Nora and Huron are ones that we've talked about the possibility of having different approaches to that. With Midstream, I think the issue is going to be drops and I think a lot more of that is going to be driven by what's going in EQM than EQT, what the capacities are and things like that since, again, we do think that the best owner of a lot of those assets is probably EQM, as opposed to EQT. And then to help you figure out what we do with it, with the MLP, generally, and the GP, you're right, we started introducing the issue of how much value could be there and, frankly, we're going to be trying to being -- encouraging our shareholders to take a look at what that value is. And it's hard to tell whether there's going to be enough transparency there that things will be fine as we move through the splits or whether the right thing to do will be to do something else. The separate issue somebody else had raised about what do you do when you get into a high splits for the GP, that's a real issue for MLPs when they grow that fast. And separate from EQT corporate structure issues, when we get to that point, we will have to address that issue so that EQM is able to make acquisitions that are accretive for its unitholders.