Western Midstream will employ 150 in Firestone

FIRESTONE — Oil and gas company Western Midstream Partners LP has acquired a building in Firestone and plans to employ around 150 people.

“The office market has been challenging the last few years, so this is a big boost to our economy,” said Paula Mehle, the southeast Weld County town’s director of economic development. “It will be exciting to have this building busy with employees again and people coming in regularly from Houston for meetings and training. It will increase our daytime population, our hotel occupancy and increase our restaurant demands as we’re continuing to market the community.”

The 14-year-old, 41,661-square-foot, two-story building, southeast of the interchange of Interstate 25 and Colorado Highway 119, had been home to Crestone Peak Resources, which put the property on the market in July 2000.

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WES DJ Gathering LLC closed Feb. 1 on the nearly $5 million purchase from Crestone Peak Resource Holdings of the building at 10188 East I-25 frontage Road, just south of American Furniture Warehouse and the Fowler I-25 Kia of Longmont auto dealership. Jeff Wood, Monica Wiley and Anthony Albanese of CBRE represented the property.

Mehle’s records show that Crestone employed 107 people in the building when it was put up for sale. She recalled visiting when Crestone operated there. “They even had a vending machine where workers could get things like ear plugs and gloves,” she said.

Western Midstream (NYSE: WES) is “just making some improvements to communications on the property,” Mehle said. “We’re anticipating their move in there any time now.”

The building also will be convenient to the new mobility hub that the Colorado Department of Transportation is developing there, which will become a stop on CDOT’s Bustang rapid-transit bus service between Fort Collins and Denver.

According to Western Midstream’s website, the company is “engaged in the business of gathering, compressing, treating, processing, and transporting natural gas; gathering, stabilizing and transporting condensate, natural gas liquids and crude oil; and gathering and disposing of produced water for our customers. In our capacity as a natural gas processor, we also buy and sell natural gas, NGLs and condensate on our behalf and our customers under certain gas processing contracts.”

An offshoot of Houston-based Occidental Petroleum Corp. (NYSE: OXY), Western Midstream executed several agreements in December 2019 that cut Occidental’s stake in the company and enabled it to operate as a standalone business. Reuters reported last month that Occidental is exploring the sale of Western Midstream that analysts say could be valued at more than $20 billion, including debt. The potential divestment is part of Occidental’s plan to reduce an $18 billion debt it built through actions such as its $12 billion purchase of oil and gas producer CrownRock in December and its $54 billion purchase of Anadarko Petroleum in 2019.

Reuters reported that Western Midstream could draw interest from companies such as Enterprise Products Partners, Williams Cos. and Kinder Morgan, as well as private equity and infrastructure funds.

However, a company statement said “WES has not launched a sales process nor has it engaged bankers or other advisors with a view toward doing so. We are aware, as has been publicly stated, that Occidental Petroleum Corp. has expressed interest in divesting assets. We cannot speak to the composition of the assets OXY may seek to divest, and any questions regarding OXY’s ownership interest in WES should be directed to OXY.”

Western Midstream’s shares reached a new 52-week high during trading on Wednesday, trading for as much as $36.39. At midafternoon Friday, it was trading at $35.96 per share.