Natural gas gathering and compression assets
According to a release, the company has sold around $412 million in "natural gas gathering and compression assets" to Veresen Midstream.
The pipeline and compression stations were part of Encana's Cutbank Ridge partnership with Cutbank Dawson Gas Resources, a Mitsubishi subsidiary.
Doug McIntyre, an Encana media relations officer, said the sale of the midstream assets would allow Encana to reinvest upstream in the Montney—in the actual extraction of gas from the ground.
"It frees us up to redirect our capital into our core business, which is upstream production," he said. "Otherwise, that capital would have been required to build that sort of infrastructure in the Montney over the next five years."
Encana plans to invest between US$600 and $700 million in the Montney in 2015. McIntyre said it was too early to say how many jobs that investment would create in the South Peace.
Encana employees will continue to operate the compression stations, which can handle around 675 million cubic feet per day. McIntye said the change in ownership would have "absolutely no staff impacts" on Encana employees.