Salt Lake City-based Questar is spinning off its natural-gas and oil exploration-and-production operation as a separate, publicly traded company that will be based in Denver.
The new company, to be called QEP Resources, will employ 800 nationwide, including about 165 at its existing office in Denver and 20 in Cortez.
Once the spinoff is completed, expected within three months, QEP plans to add another 20 workers in Denver through transfers and new hires, said Questar chief operating officer Chuck Stanley.
“We won’t have the most people working for us in Denver, but we’ll be the largest publicly traded (exploration-and-production) company headquartered in Denver,” said Stanley, who will become president and chief executive of QEP.
QEP is expected to have an enterprise value of $8 billion to $10 billion, Questar officials said. Enterprise value is the company’s market capital plus debt. The company will trade under the ticker symbol “QEP.”
The addition of a corporate headquarters is a welcome change for the Denver community, which has lost several in recent years, including Frontier Airlines and Coors. Denver is slated to lose another high-profile headquarters with the pending departure of telecommunications giant Qwest, which has agreed to a buyout from Monroe, La.-based CenturyTel.
Questar said Tuesday that its board of directors has conditionally approved the spinoff, which is subject to the successful restructuring of certain credit lines and other approvals.
The spinoff will create a high-growth, but risky, exploration-and-production company in QEP. It will leave Questar with a slower growth operation that includes a regulated natural-gas utility serving about 900,000 homes and businesses in Utah, Wyoming and Idaho.
“Questar would be a uniquely integrated natural-gas company with a track record of solid returns on capital, visible growth and the capacity to pay and grow a competitive dividend,” Questar chairman Keith Rattie said in a prepared statement.
Questar will remain based in Salt Lake City. The company’s stock fell 36 cents to close at $46.60 Tuesday.
Andy Vuong: 303-954-1209, avuong@denverpost.com or
