By Rania El Gamal and Saeed Azhar
DUBAI (Reuters) – Saudi Aramco has dropped Morgan Stanley as an advisor for the sale of its gas pipelines and picked JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs for the role, three sources familiar with matter said.
JPMorgan had also advised Aramco on the sale of the oil pipeline business, which was sold to a consortium led by Washington-DC based EIG Global Energy Partners for $12.4 billion.
Aramco has also invited banks to advise on the financing of the deal, sources told Reuters, the second major midstream deal after the sale of the oil pipelines.
Aramco, Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs declined to comment. Bloomberg reported the news earlier.
Morgan Stanley, which was among the top advisors for Aramco’s $29.4 billion initial public offering in 2019, also missed out on the oil pipeline advisory role.
It was not immediately clear why Morgan Stanley was dropped on the gas pipeline deal, sources said.
The gas pipeline stake sale will have a similar structure to the oil pipeline deal, sources have told Reuters earlier.
Aramco has used a lease and lease-back agreement to sell a 49% stake of newly formed Aramco Oil Pipelines Co to the buyer and rights to 25 years of tariff payments for oil carried on its pipelines.
(Additional reporting by Hadeel Al Sayegh; Editing by David Gregorio)
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