Berkshire Hathaway will have to cancel latest pipeline deal

Even if Warren Buffet is one of the richest people on planet earth, he must recognize and respect the power of the US government. Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (NYSE: BRK.A) recently announced that it is abandoning its plans to acquire a $ 1.7 billion natural gas pipeline due to antitrust issues. Oil giant Dominion Energy had already sold gas transmission equipment to a Berkshires subsidiary last November. However, Dominion Energy has canceled its plan to sell Questar Pipelines to Berkshire Hathaway because of the ongoing uncertainties surrounding the Federal Trade Commission approval. Questar Pipelines operates primarily in Colorado, Wyoming and Utah. As a result, the FTC may have been concerned about overlap with PacifiCorp (Berkshire’s energy subsidiary), which owns Rocky Mountain Power, an energy company that serves the people of Idaho, Wyoming and Utah. In November, when the first parts of the deal were finalized, Dominion Energy said Buffet's Berkshire Hathaway had already paid approximately $ 1.3 billion in cash, pending full payment in the near future. Dominion Energy said it had plans to pay Questar's $ 430 million debt to Berkshire Hathaway once the deal was closed. Now that the sale has been called off, Dominion Energy said it would try to strike a deal with another bidder. It added that it hopes to close the deal before or during the last month of the year. The decision to cancel this sales agreement comes days after the US president signed an executive order aimed at further scrutinizing mergers, including deals that have already been made and other measures that will encourage healthy competition in the economy must. The cancellation of these deals isn't a huge blow to Berkshire Hathaway, a huge corporation that owns companies like Duracell, Dairy Queen, and Geico. Its energy subsidiary alone recorded sales of $ 4.8 billion in the first quarter of 2021.