Enable Midstream chief resigns

OREANDA-NEWS. June 03, 2015. Oklahoma-based Enable Midstream chief executive Lynn Bourdon has resigned and will be replaced at least temporarily by an executive from a parent company.

Bourdon resigned on June 1 after serving as company president and chief executive for little over a year. He was hired from Enterprise Product Partners in February 2014 to use his natural gas and NGL background to help usher the company through an initial public stock offering in April 2014.

Since the IPO, however, Enable has been mostly unsuccessful in expanding its assets out of the US midcontinent, an expressed objective of CenterPoint Energy, which owns a 50pc management interest and a 58.3pc limited partner stake in Enable.

In a conference call with investors today, Enable said that inability to expand and a general lack of communication between Enable management and the utility companies that have the largest ownership stakes were reasons for the change in leadership, according to analysts at Tudor, Pickering, Holt & Co.

Pete Delaney, chairman and chief executive of OGE Energy, which also owns a major stake in Enable, will serve as interim CEO while the company conducts a search for a permanent replacement. Delaney will step down from his post at OGE and will be replaced by Sean Trauschke, the current president of OGE's subsidiary Oklahoma Gas and Electric.

Enable's first quarter income fell by 39.3pc year-on-year to \\$91mn, pulled down by weaker commodity prices and an increase in operating and financial expenses.