Natural gas pipeline on drawing board

Kinder Morgan Energy Partners and Calpine Corp. plan to jointly develop a $624 million pipeline to carry national gas to California from New Mexico.

Calpine, headquartered in San Jose, Calif., is one of the largest electric generators in the nation. Houston-based Kinder Morgan is a publicly traded pipeline partnership.

The Kinder Morgan-Calpine pipeline would carry gas from the San Juan basin of New Mexico to the California-Arizona border.

The pipeline, with a capacity of 740 million cubic feet of natural gas a day, is expected to be completed during the summer of 2003.

Richard D. Kinder, a Cape Girardeau native, is chairman and chief executive officer of Kinder Morgan.

Kinder Morgan is one of the largest midstream energy companies in American, operating more than 30,000 miles of natural gas and products pipeline in 26 states. The company also has retail distribution, marketing, gathering, electric generation and terminal assets.