CenterPoint Energy, OGE Energy Corp. announce senior operations leadership

HOUSTON and OKLAHOMA CITY, July 31, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- CenterPoint Energy, Inc. (NYSE: CNP) and OGE Energy Corp. (NYSE: OGE) today named the senior operations leadership team of the natural gas midstream partnership that includes CenterPoint Energy's interstate pipelines and field services businesses and OGE Energy Corp.'s  midstream business Enogex LLC.   In addition, the companies announced the new name and logo of the partnership, which closed on May 1 and is managed by a general partner whose governance is shared by CenterPoint Energy and OGE on a 50/50 basis.

(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20020930/CNPLOGO)

(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20130731/DA56580LOGO)

The new leadership team includes:

Keith Mitchell, 51, Chief Operating Officer. Prior to this position, Mitchell was the president of Enogex and was a member of the Enogex Board of Directors. A 20-year Enogex veteran, he also previously served as the company's chief operating officer.

Mark Schroeder, 56, General Counsel. Prior to this position, Schroeder was the senior vice president and deputy general counsel of Regulation for CenterPoint Energy and has worked in the company's Legal department for 10 years. He also worked for El Paso Energy and Enron.

Walter Ferguson, 57, Senior Vice President – Field Operations, Engineering and Construction. Prior to this position, Ferguson was division senior vice president of CenterPoint Energy's Midstream Field Operations, Engineering and Construction. His career spans 32 years with CenterPoint Energy.

R. Poe Reed, 57, Senior Vice President – Pipeline Commercial Operations. Prior to this position, Reed was the division senior vice president and chief commercial officer for CenterPoint Energy's Pipelines business since 2011. He spent 31 years of his career with DCP Midstream.

Steve Merrill, 49, Senior Vice President – Gathering and Processing Commercial Operations & Administration. Prior to this position, he was the chief operating officer of Enogex. Merrill also served as vice president of Human Resources at OGE Energy Corp. and chief financial officer of Enogex. Prior to joining Enogex, he was director of U.S. operations for Plains All-American.

David Jewell, 60, Senior Vice President – System Optimization and Daily Commercial Operations. Prior to this position, Jewell was division senior vice president of CenterPoint Energy's Midstream Capacity Operations Optimization & Gas Systems. Before joining CenterPoint Energy, he worked 31 years in the energy industry, including 15 years with Duke Energy.  

Pete Kirsch, 50, Senior Vice President – Environmental Health & Safety and Compliance Services. Kirsch began his career with CenterPoint Energy 23 years ago and was division senior vice president of the company's Midstream Technical and Compliance Services prior to this position.    

Paul Brewer, 54, Senior Vice President - Project Management Office (PMO), including Business Performance Improvement and Supply Chain. Prior to this position, Brewer was the vice president of Operations of Enogex. He joined Enogex in 2008 after having served as vice president of Operations for DCP Midstream.

Tom Levescy, 44, Chief Accounting Officer. Prior to this position, Levescy was the chief accounting officer of Enogex. He joined the company in 2005 as controller. Before joining Enogex, he had more than 10 years of experience in public accounting. 

"We are fortunate to have a tremendous amount of talent in the combined organizations," said David M. McClanahan, president and CEO of CenterPoint Energy. "We are confident the operations management team announced today will provide the leadership necessary to ensure we continue to operate safely, serve our customers and grow our business."

"This is an important next step towards operating as an integrated and united company," said Pete Delaney, OGE Energy chairman, president and CEO. "While we continue to work toward completing our leadership team, the focus today is on establishing the senior operations leadership so that we can work toward serving customers, growing the partnership and living up to our Enable Midstream expectations."

The principal offices of the gathering and processing leadership team will be in Oklahoma City and the interstate pipeline's principal offices will be in Houston. The principal office of the executive management team is also expected to be in Oklahoma City.

In addition to announcing operations leadership, McClanahan and Delaney also revealed that the partnership's new name is Enable Midstream Partners™, LP.  The new company logo, they said, reflects the union of two companies, combining knowledgeable employees and strategically located assets to serve customers in some of the country's most highly-productive energy regions.

"It is with great pride and excitement that we announce the name for this new company as Enable Midstream Partners," McClanahan said. "We chose the name Enable Midstream Partners because it captures the rich heritages of CenterPoint and OGE, reinforces our customer focus and reflects the strength of our employee base."

"Enable Midstream Partners stands for dependability and trust. It emphasizes our ability to compete and enable the success of our customers," Delaney said. "Our customers say they know us to be problem solving, service-oriented organizations. We intend to leverage those competencies to capture new growth opportunities." 

Enable Midstream has combined assets of nearly $11 billion in nine states. It owns and operates 8,400 miles of interstate pipelines with nearly 9 billion cubic feet per day of transport capacity and nearly 2,300 miles of intrastate pipelines. It also has more than 11,000 miles of gathering lines, which in 2012 moved nearly 4 billion cubic feet of natural gas per day.
Additionally, it has more than 90 billion cubic feet of natural gas storage capacity and 11 major processing plants with nearly 2 billion cubic feet per day of inlet capacity. 

CenterPoint Energy, Inc., headquartered in Houston, Texas, is a domestic energy delivery company that includes electric transmission & distribution, natural gas distribution and competitive natural gas sales and services operations. The company serves more than 5 million metered customers primarily in Arkansas, Louisiana, Minnesota, Mississippi, Oklahoma, and Texas. The company also owns a 58.3 percent limited partner interest in Enable Midstream Partners, a midstream partnership it jointly controls with OGE Energy Corp. with operations in major natural gas and liquids-rich producing areas of Oklahoma, Texas, Arkansas and Louisiana. With more than 8,700 employees, CenterPoint Energy and its predecessor companies have been in business for more than 135 years. For more information, visit the website at www.CenterPointEnergy.com.

OGE Energy is the parent company of Oklahoma Gas and Electric Company, a regulated electric utility serving more than 800,000 customers in Oklahoma and western Arkansas. In addition, OGE owns a 28.5 percent limited partner interest in Enable Midstream Partners and holds 50 percent of the general partner interest in Enable Midstream, created by the combination of OGE's Enogex LLC midstream subsidiary and the pipeline and field services businesses of Houston-based CenterPoint Energy. For more information, visit the website at www.OGE.com.

SOURCE CenterPoint Energy, Inc.