The inaugural Midstream Finance conference took place this week in Dallas and almost as if right on cue we lead with a big midstream deal. Oklahoma City-based Enable Midstream Partners agreed to acquire Velocity Midstream, a private crude oil and condensate gathering and transportation company in the Anadarko Basin’s Scoop and Merge plays. The deal is for $442 million. On the same day, Enable also announced a crude oil and water acreage dedication in the Williston Basin. Analysts with Tudor, Pickering, Holt & Co. said the concurrent announcements by Enable doubles down on the company’s strategic pivot to liquids.

Endeavor Energy Resources is exploring a sale that could value the Midland, Texas-based, privately held oil producer at more than $10 billion, a source familiar with the matter told The Wall Street Journal. Endeavor, which holds more than 300,000 net acres in the Permian Basin, has selected JP Morgan Chase and Goldman Sachs to arrange the potential sale, the Journal’s source said.

Hilcorp Energy’s long-awaited oil and gas production facility in federal waters off Alaska received conditional approval from the U.S. Department of the Interior this week. Hilcorp is seeking to build a nine-acre artificial gravel island in shallow waters of the Beaufort Sea.

In Mexico, Pemex is set to begin crude imports in November, for the first time in over a decade. It needs them to feed Mexico’s main refinery, which is working below capacity due to a lack of light oil. But that didn’t stop president-elect Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador from criticizing the plan to import U.S. light crude from Phillips 66, calling it a sign of the country’s failed economic policies. The purchase of 1.4 million barrels of Bakken crude will follow a tender awarded earlier this week to Phillips 66. Up to 100,000 barrels per day of crude imports are planned for the last quarter of 2018.

Finally, Norway’s oil services firm Aker Solutions expects to win a lease offshore California to build a floating wind farm as part of a wider consortium, the company’s CEO said. The consortium of private companies applied for a lease to build a 100- to 150-megawatt floating offshore wind farm off the coast of Humboldt County by 2024.

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