Morgan Stanley Infrastructure Partners (MSIP) has acquired a 47.5% interest in the Greenlight Electricity Centre project, a 932-megawatt gas-fired combined cycle power generation facility to be developed in Sturgeon County, Alberta. The interest was acquired by MSIP from OPTrust, Kineticor's majority shareholder. The facility will provide power for a major C$13 billion co-located data centre development being advanced by Meta Platforms, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp. The Greenlight Electricity Centre is a landmark data centre and hyperscaler power development project in Alberta.
Concurrently with the closing of the transaction, MSIP together with partners Pembina Pipeline Corporation (47.5%) and Kineticor Asset Management (5%) completed project financing to support the estimated development cost of C$4.6 billion.
The transaction involved a coordinated cross-border legal team, with Bennett Jones acting as Canadian counsel to MSIP and collaborating closely with Kirkland & Ellis, which served as US counsel.
The Bennett Jones team was led by David J. Macaulay, and included Kristos J. Iatridis, Jason D. Roth, Jie (Kevin) Zhou, Elizabeth K. Dylke, Lauren Carson, Blake Miller, Phillip Hanna and Amy Verhoeff (Commercial Transactions, M&A), Jessica Kennedy and Thomas Machell (Energy Regulatory), Karen J. Dawson, Taylor Davis and Xaverie MacLennan (Banking & Secured Transactions), Greg M. Johnson, Julia Qian Wang and Zachary Thacker (Tax), Alixe A.L. Cameron, Samantha Lush and Jessica Munro (Commercial Real Estate), Zirjan (Zee) J. Derwa (Competition & Antitrust) and Vasilis F. L. Pappas, FCIArb and George W.H. Reid (Litigation).
