Pipeline Giant Kinder Morgan Just Announced The Second-Largest Energy Transaction Ever

Kinder Morgan announced it would buy out all its subsidiaries, making it the largest energy infrastructure firm in North America, according to Bloomberg's Susan Warren.

At an all-in valuation of $71 billion, its the second-largest energy transaction ever, according to the FT's Stephen Foley.

The Houston-based firm currently has three additional sub-units independently trading on the New York Stock Exchange. These firms will now all be consolidated under the KMI ticker.

The move comes nearly a year after a trader named Kevin Kaiser of Hedgeye Risk Management called into question how Kinder Morgan was booking expenditures and criticized the wave of so-called Master Limited Partnerships, which Kinder Morgan had taken part in. MLPs are designed to allow energy companies to get around some corporate taxes. But Kaiser said MLPs constituted a "regulatory nightmare." In a statement on its site Sunday, Kinder Morgan CEO Richard Kinder said the transaction " dramatically simplifies the Kinder Morgan story."

Since Kaiser' Sept. 2013 analysis, all of Kinder Morgan's entities have underperformed the S&P500 (in gold):

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