Centerpoint Energy Inc. CNP

CenterPoint Energy, Inc., incorporated on August 31, 2001, is a public utility holding company. The Company's operating subsidiaries own and operate electric transmission and distribution facilities, and natural gas distribution facilities, and own interests in Enable Midstream Partners, LP (Enable). The Company's segments include Electric Transmission & Distribution, Natural Gas Distribution, Energy Services, Midstream Investments and Other Operations. Its Electric Transmission & Distribution segment provides electric transmission and distribution services to retail electric providers (REPs). Its Natural Gas Distribution segment offers intrastate natural gas sales to and natural gas transportation and distribution for residential, commercial and industrial customers. Its Energy Services segment includes non-rate regulated gas sales to, and transportation and storage services for, commercial and industrial customers. Its Midstream Investments segment includes equity investment in Enable that owns, operates and develops natural gas and crude oil assets. Its Other Operations segment includes office buildings and other real estate used in its business operations and other corporate operations, which support all of its business operations.

The Company's indirect subsidiaries include CenterPoint Energy Houston Electric, LLC (CenterPoint Houston), which is engaged in the electric transmission and distribution business in the Texas Gulf Coast area that includes the city of Houston, and CenterPoint Energy Resources Corp. (CERC Corp. and, together with its subsidiaries, CERC), which owns and operates natural gas distribution systems (NGD). A subsidiary of CERC Corp. offers variable and fixed-price physical natural gas supplies to commercial and industrial customers, and electric and gas utilities.

Electric Transmission & Distribution

CenterPoint Houston is a transmission and distribution electric utility that operates within the state of Texas. CenterPoint Houston constructs and maintains transmission facilities and provides transmission services. In the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, Inc. (ERCOT), end users purchase their electricity directly from certificated REPs. CenterPoint Houston delivers electricity for REPs in its certificated service area by carrying lower-voltage power from the substation to the retail electric customer. CenterPoint Houston's distribution network receives electricity from the transmission grid through power distribution substations and delivers electricity to end users through distribution feeders. CenterPoint Houston's operations include construction and maintenance of distribution facilities, metering services, outage response services and call center operations.

CenterPoint Houston's electric transmission business, along with those of other owners of transmission facilities in Texas, supports the operation of the ERCOT independent system operator (ISO). The transmission business has planning, design, construction, operation and maintenance responsibility for the portion of the transmission grid and for the load-serving substations it owns, within its certificated area. CenterPoint Houston participates with the ERCOT ISO and other ERCOT utilities to plan, design, obtain regulatory approval for and construct new transmission lines necessary to increase bulk power transfer capability and to remove existing constraints on the ERCOT transmission grid.

As of December 31, 2016, Houston Electric owned 28,702 pole miles of overhead distribution lines and 3,692 circuit miles of overhead transmission lines, including 287 circuit miles operated at 69,000 volts, 2,188 circuit miles operated at 138,000 volts and 1,217 circuit miles operated at 345,000 volts. As of December 31, 2016, Houston Electric owned 23,937 circuit miles of underground distribution lines and 26 circuit miles of underground transmission lines, including two circuit miles operated at 69,000 volts and 24 circuit miles operated at 138,000 volts. As of December 31, 2016, Houston Electric owned 232 major substation sites having a total installed rated transformer capacity of 60,854 megavolt amperes. As of December 31, 2016, Houston Electric operated 14 regional service centers located on a total of 292 acres of land. These service centers consist of office buildings, warehouses and repair facilities that are used in the business of transmitting and distributing electricity.

Natural Gas Distribution

As of December 31, 2016, CERC Corp.'s natural gas distribution business (NGD) was engaged in regulated intrastate natural gas sales to, and natural gas transportation for, approximately 3.4 million residential, commercial, industrial and transportation customers in Arkansas, Louisiana, Minnesota, Mississippi, Oklahoma and Texas. The metropolitan areas served in each state by NGD are Houston, Texas; Minneapolis, Minnesota; Little Rock, Arkansas; Shreveport, Louisiana; Biloxi, Mississippi, and Lawton, Oklahoma. NGD also provides unregulated services in Minnesota consisting of residential appliance repair and maintenance services along with heating, ventilating and air conditioning (HVAC) equipment sales.

NGD is engaged in commodity price stabilization pursuant to annual gas supply plans presented to and/or filed with each of its state regulatory authorities. These price stabilization activities include use of storage gas and contractually establishing structured prices (fixed price, costless collars and caps) with its physical gas suppliers. As of December 31, 2016, NGD owned and operated an underground natural gas storage facility with a capacity of seven billion cubic feet (Bcf). As of December 31, 2016, it had a working capacity of two Bcf available for use during the heating season and a maximum daily withdrawal rate of 50 million cubic feet (MMcf). As of December 31, 2016, it also owned eight propane-air plants with a total production rate of 180,000 Dekatherms (DTH) per day and on-site storage facilities for 12 million gallons of propane. As of December 31, 2016, it owns a liquefied natural gas plant facility with 12 million-gallon liquefied natural gas storage tank and a production rate of 72,000 DTH per day.

Energy Services

CERC offers variable and fixed-priced physical natural gas supplies to commercial and industrial customers, and electric and gas utilities through CenterPoint Energy Services, Inc. (CES) and its subsidiary, CenterPoint Energy Intrastate Pipelines, LLC (CEIP). CES offers a range of natural gas management services to gas utilities, industrial customers, electric generators, smaller commercial and industrial customers, municipalities, educational institutions and hospitals. These services include load forecasting, supply acquisition, daily swing volume management, invoice consolidation, storage asset management, firm and interruptible transportation administration and forward price management. CES also offers a portfolio of physical delivery services designed to meet customers' supply and price risk management needs. These customers are served directly, through interconnects with various interstate and intrastate pipeline companies, and portably, through its mobile energy solutions business.

In addition to offering natural gas management services, CES procures and optimizes transportation and storage assets. CES maintains a portfolio of natural gas supply contracts and firm transportation and storage agreements to meet the natural gas requirements of its customers. CES aggregates supply from various producing regions and offers contracts to buy natural gas with terms ranging from 1 month to over 5 years. In addition, CES participates in the spot natural gas markets to balance daily and monthly purchases and sales obligations. Natural gas supply and transportation capabilities are leveraged through contracts for ancillary services, including physical storage and other balancing arrangements.

Midstream Investments

Enable owns, operates and develops strategically located natural gas and crude oil infrastructure assets. Enable serves production areas in the United States, including several unconventional shale resource plays and local and regional end user markets in the United States. Enable's assets and operations are organized into two segments: gathering and processing, which provides natural gas gathering, processing and fractionation services and crude oil gathering for its producer customers, and transportation and storage, which provides interstate and intrastate natural gas pipeline transportation and storage service to natural gas producers, utilities and industrial customers. Enable's natural gas gathering and processing assets are located in Oklahoma, Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana and Mississippi and serve natural gas production in the Anadarko, Arkoma and Ark-La-Tex basins. Enable also owns a crude oil gathering business in the Bakken Shale formation of the Williston Basin. Enable's natural gas transportation and storage assets extend from western Oklahoma and the Texas Panhandle to Alabama and from Louisiana to Illinois.

Enable provides gathering, compression, treating, dehydration, processing and natural gas liquids (NGL) fractionation for producers engaged in the areas in which Enable operates. Enable's processing plants in the Anadarko basin are interconnected through its super-header system. This system facilitates the flow of natural gas from western Oklahoma and the Wheeler County area in the Texas Panhandle to the Cox City, Thomas, McClure, Calumet, Clinton, South Canadian and Wheeler processing plants. Enable provides fee-based interstate and intrastate transportation and storage services. Enable's transportation and storage assets are designed and built to serve natural gas and electric utility companies in its areas of operation. Enable's storage operations are located in Louisiana, Oklahoma and Illinois.