The old phrase “If these walls could talk,” suggests that a building, house, or even a single room, harbors the history of that place as inanimate witnesses of the past. If you’re hip to that concept, then the nation’s oldest natural gas pipelines also have stories worth discovery. This is one of the latest.

Reese Energy Consulting is following news on Houston-based Natural Gas Pipeline Company of America (NGPL). Built in 1931, NGPL today is the largest transporter of gas to Chicago, and one of the nation’s largest interstate pipeline systems at 9,100 miles originating in Amarillo, Texas, and stretching across nine states. NGPL is also a major hauler of gas to Gulf Coast LNG export facilities and situated fine and dandy to flow gas to power plants and AI data centers.

PE-firm ArcLight recognized this back in 2021, snapping up an initial 25% interest for $830 million in NGPL, then jointly owned by Kinder Morgan and Brookfield Infrastructure Partners. ArcLight now reports it will take a 62.5% controlling interest in NGPL. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. KM will retain a 37.5% interest and operate the assets.

If this pipeline could talk, it would tell you of its early days 94 years ago as the first 1,000-mile pipeline built in the U.S., how it changed hands many times over the years as these things tend to do, and how it’s still alive and kickin’