RE: MLPs in the Mid-Content I have worked closely with Scotia Waterous a couple of years ago to package a retail energy company. It begtins with a CIM document that they circulate to a large list of companies that they feel would be interested. the CIM is a brief on the company's various perspectives. Once they have a list of interested parties they bring the two parties together and Waterous provides the potential acquirer a much longer document with last five years particulars along with the go-forward plan. Equal management would present the document verbally and attempt to sell the potential on the merits of the company.
I was very impressed with the firm as you mentioned. Their leads and support people are very sharp.
The issue will be the fact that equal will not be as appealing to an MLP or LP as the Canadian portion I believe will not be able to be included in the tax treatment so they may have to divest of the Canadian assets and use the cash to help reduce the investment cost to buy the US assets.
I hope they score but my concern also is that there are so many depressed asset values in the oil and gas industry right now, EQU may not get the minimum bid necessary to make the transaction feasible to shareholders.
By any standards, EQU has very very good assets and are producing 10,000 BBLs per day. It is no wonder that analysts had double digit target prices on the stock before the dry gas price meltdown. They still have an average target of $5.50.