Magellan Midstream Partners of Tulsa, a publicly traded partnership that owns and operates 9,400 miles of fuel pipelines, bought Longhorn in July for $350 million, which included $100 million of fuel inside the pipeline. It bought the pipeline from financially troubled Flying J Inc., a Utah-based truck stop and refinery operator that bought the pipeline in 2006.
Magellan had a contract to operate Longhorn for Flying J before buying the pipeline.
The company is constructing more storage tanks to increase storage capacity at Longhorn’s El Paso terminal, 13551 Montana near Zaragoza Road, from 900,000 barrels to 1.3 million barrels, said Bruce Heine, a Magellan spokesman in Tulsa. Magellan is spending $25 million to expand the El Paso terminal and to connect the pipeline to a Magellan terminal in Houston, he said.
According to Heine, the storage expansion is aimed at providing “customers with additional flexibility in order to meet their market requirements locally and regionally.”