Cleco Corp. Announces Sale Of Natural Gas Pipeline, Oil And Gas Production Assets.

PINEVILLE, La. -- Cleco Corp. (NYSE:CNL) announced today the sale of substantially all of the assets of Cleco Energy LLC, its subsidiary that controlled natural gas pipelines and oil and gas production assets.

Cleco Energy's assets were sold in two transactions. The natural gas pipelines were sold to subsidiaries of Millennium Midstream Energy, LLC ("MME") of Houston, Texas, in a deal that closed Nov. 16.

The company's oil and gas production assets were sold to Chalker Energy Partners LLC on Sept. 15. The terms of the two sales were not disclosed.

"We felt the time was right to exit the business, which was a small part of our wholesale energy operation," Cleco President and CEO David Eppler said. "Our primary focus is on our regulated utility and strengthening our balance sheet. We weren't going to make the investments needed for Cleco Energy to grow, so it made sense to divest the business."

"We are excited about the opportunities to expand our onshore operations as we continue to build a gas and liquids midstream company and supply our customers with energy products," said MME President John O'Shea. Chief Operating Officer of MME, Kevin Coxon, added, "This acquisition grows our operations to over 400 miles of pipelines and gives MME additional opportunities to provide tailored producer services to our growing independent producer customers."

Cleco Corp. is an energy services company headquartered in Pineville, La. It operates a regulated electric utility that serves 264,000 customers across Louisiana. Cleco also operates a wholesale energy business that has approximately 2,100 megawatts of generating capacity, including the Perryville plant, a 718-megawatt plant. The sale of Perryville to a subsidiary of Entergy is pending. For more information about Cleco, visit www.cleco.com.

Millennium Midstream Energy is a traditional gas and NGL midstream company. It owns/operates or controls interests in 14 offshore gathering laterals in the Gulf of Mexico and 2 major gas processing plants along the Louisiana gulf coast. MME currently gathers, transports and processes over 150 MMCFD of gas and markets over 2.5 million gallons of NGLs per month.