GE Energy Financial Services and Alinda Capital Partners LLC are seeking a buyer for natural-gas utility SourceGas LLC, according to people familiar with the matter.
The Golden-based company could fetch more than $1.5 billion in a sale, including debt, some of the people said. Potential buyers of SourceGas include large utilities and infrastructure-focused private-equity funds.
SourceGas and its subsidiaries operate more than 18,000 miles of distribution, gathering and transmission pipelines as well as storage facilities in Colorado, Arkansas, Nebraska and Wyoming, according to its website. The company has more than 415,000 customers.
General Electric Co. and Alinda formed SourceGas after buying the U.S. natural-gas retail distribution assets of Kinder Morgan Inc. in 2007 for $710 million.
The sale comes as GE works to shrink its banking business, although the company plans to hold on to the energy financing unit behind SourceGas.
