Midcoast Energy Partners LP (NYSE: MEP) entered the emerging Eaglebine Shale play in East Texas through two key transactions totaling about $160 million, the company said in a Feb. 9 news release.

In one transaction, New Gulf Resources LLC sold its midstream business in Leon, Madison and Grimes counties, Texas, to Midcoast. The deal includes a natural gas gathering system that is currently in operation moving equity and third-party production.

New Gulf purchased the system in May 2014 from subsidiaries of Halcón Resources Corp. (NYSE: HK) in a $450 million deal that included East Texas acreage and rights to 3-D seismic data.

In the second transaction, Midcoast will build, own, and operate the Ghost Chili Lateral pipeline and associated facilities in Houston County, Texas.

Midcoast said it executed agreements with Burk Royalty Co. Ltd. and SEM Operating Co. LLC, a subsidiary of Sequitur Energy Resources LLC, for the natural gas pipeline gathering header.

The initial facilities are projected to be placed in service by late 2015. The Ghost Chili Lateral is expected to be in full service by mid-2016.

The company said the Ghost Chili Lateral and New Gulf assets will complement its existing East Texas system, which serves the Cotton Valley, Haynesville Shale, Bossier Shale and other productive formations.

Not including its recent transactions, the company owns 4,100 miles of gathering and transmission pipelines, five active natural gas processing plants and seven active treating plants in East Texas.

Additionally, the company’s new Beckville processing plant in the Cotton Valley play is targeted to enter service early in the second quarter of 2015.

The combined transactions will enhance Midcoast’s competitive position in the Eaglebine, said C. Gregory Harper, president of Midcoast, in a statement.

Harper said it will also provide additional opportunities for accretive growth in the company’s natural gas gathering, processing and transportation businesses.

“We are also very pleased that the contracts associated with these investments are largely volume-commitment-based, which is in line with our commitment to progress MEP toward contract structures with more certain cash flows," he said.

"This marks another step forward as we execute on our strategic initiatives to geographically diversify our asset footprint, increase the partnership's demand-based revenues and drive low-risk growth in distributable cash flow to our unitholders," he added.

The collective Eaglebine investments will be undertaken by Midcoast Operating LP. They will be jointly funded 51.6% by Midcoast and 48.4% by Enbridge Energy Partners LP (NYSE: EEP), which formed the MLP in 2013.

Midcoast is a full-service natural gas and NGL midstream business with a combined processing and treating capacity of about 2.9 billion cubic feet per day. The company also has assets in the Anadarko and Fort Worth basins.

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