Brian Oswald
Chief Financial Officer
Hey Robert it's good to hear your voice again. Before I start, I believe in giving credit where credit is due, and it was Grier who focused on this and wanted to push the edges and I think we would have gotten them anyway, but the timing could not have been better, as I think anybody familiar with the business knows. I think people in our business know, financial assets, we are not supposed to fall in love with these things, they are not children's, they are always for sale at an appropriate bid and what has happened in the case of Gas Solutions is that, the value of the company in the eyes of other people has increased tremendously two years ago when we put up for sale, then it decreased somewhat, while the commodity markets declined, now it's increasing again, as the people are not familiar with the main value of Gas Solutions is the spread between natural gas and West Texas intermediate. If you look at the propane curve, you will see a good proxy for the value of Gas Solutions, which is why we use the propane curve to edge. What we have done is we have continued our conversations with a number of interested parties. And we have let them know that we see a lot of value here and so there may be a value gap between where we are and where they are, rather then be dependent on our own abilities up here in New York, which I think everyone knows are quite limited to maximize the value of Gas Solutions. We have a wonderful management team there, but we have supplemented it now, we have Bob Bourne who has come in from Energy Transfer, which is a major midstream company backed by Energy Spectrum and he has got tremendous relationships with Houston Gas Pipeline and many of the midstream operators down there, they had a meeting with Exco just a day or two and Mark Hull, our person who keeps an eye on that, said, we go to a meeting with Exco and there is a small deal on the table and when we leave with Bob, there was a big deal on the table. So, we are very excited, because I think anyone in our business knows, the ability to attract AAA managers, these portfolio companies and really drive results is what makes the business exciting, fun and also wealth building for our shareholders.