NORTH AMERICA

USA

Access Midstream WINNER:

About Access

Access Midstream is a Master Limited Partnership (MLP). An MLP is a publicly- traded limited partnership that combines the tax advantages of a partnership with the liquidity of a publicly-traded stock.

Stice says MLPs are a great fit for midstream companies like Access because MLPs utilize their lower cost of capital to make investments in low-risk, moderate- return infrastructure projects.

“This allows us to generate distributions that are very favorable to investors,” he said. “We anticipate sustained 15 percent annual distribution growth for years to come.”

He said Access is positioned to capitalize upon America’s vast supply of natural gas, with a focus on owning, operating, developing and acquiring midstream energy assets in the United States.

Because Access provides gathering, processing, treating and compression services to producers under long-term, fixed-fee contracts, investors can be assured of cash-flow stability and sustained distribution growth.

By The Numbers

• Went public July 2010 (NYSE: ACMP) • Total Assets: $6.9 billion • Dedicated Areas: 8.7 million acres • Miles of Pipe: 6,101 • Volume: 3.5 billion cubic feet per day • Wells Gathered: 7,904 • Direct Employees: 1,279 • Customers: Chesapeake, Total, Statoil, Anadarko Petroleum, Mitsui, Shell and other producers

• $3.5 billion in capital expenditures planned in 2013, 2014 and 2015

*Data as of quarter ended March 31, 2013

Access Midstream operations are focused in the key unconventional basins in North America – the Barnett, Eagle Ford, Haynesville, Marcellus, Niobrara and Utica shales and the Mid-Continent region.

40 Finance Monthly CeO AwArdS 2013

J. Mike Stice Unmatched Access

Headquartered in Oklahoma City, Access Midstream (NYSE: ACMP) is one of the largest midstream companies in the United States with more than 6,000 miles of natural gas pipelines and processing and treating facilities in 12 states. Access moves an average 3.55 billion cubic feet of gas per day, making it the nation’s leading gathering and processing master limited partnership (MLP).

2012 was a year of tremendous change for Access Midstream, which split from energy giant Chesapeake Energy into a stand- alone entity, secured a new strategic partner in Williams (NYSE: WMB) and negotiated the buy-out of $2.16 billion dollars in Chesapeake assets.

We caught up with CEO J. Mike Stice, who took time to reflect on the extraordinary transformation and how it tested his leadership style.

Stice became CEO of Access (then Chesapeake Midstream Partners) in September 2009, after 28 years with

ConocoPhillips and its predecessor companies.

“Negotiating the buy-out of the Chesapeake assets was likely the hardest thing I did in my whole career, the whole 32 years,” Stice said. “We were simultaneously breaking away from Chesapeake while negotiating the terms and conditions of the deal that would ultimately acquire all of Chesapeake’s midstream assets. I had to make commitments to employees in advance of knowing whether or not I was going to be successful in bringing the commercial transaction across the table.

“The uncertainty of this transaction tested my own risk tolerance,” he said. “I am a risk-adverse person by nature and because of that, I am particularly well suited for a business that is about building infrastructure and one that carefully delivers predictable results, quarter to quarter. From that standpoint, I feel perfectly at home managing a midstream business.

“We often tend to look for comfortable areas where we can apply past experience