Kinder Morgan Canada shares drop on debut after $1.3 bln IPO

Shares in Kinder Morgan Canadian debuted at C$16.06 on Tuesday on the Toronto Stock Exchange after raising C$1.75 billion ($1.3 billion) in an initial public offering (IP0) at C$17.00 each last week.

Kinder Morgan spun off its Canadian unit to part-finance the expansion of Trans Mountain pipeline, but political opposition to the project is set to mount after an election this month in the province of British Columbia, through which the pipeline runs, resulted in an informal alliance of two anti-Trans Mountain parties rising to power.

Kinder Morgan's C$17 per-share target was a revision from its original projected range of C$19 to C$22. The company has acknowledged "the political climate was not ideal," but said it has made a final investment decision on Trans Mountain and filed for an IPO anyway as the project's financing contingency period concludes at the end of May.

The Trans Mountain expansion nearly triples the capacity of the crude pipeline from the oil-producing Alberta province to the British Columbia coast.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said the Trans Mountain pipeline will proceed despite the political threat to kill the project in British Columbia.

"Regardless of the change in government in British Columbia or anywhere else, the facts and evidence do not change," Trudeau told reporters at a joint news conference with his Italian counterpart in Rome, The Globe and Mail reported on Tuesday.

By 9:33 AM EST, the shares were trading at C$16.00, down 5.9 percent from the IPO price.

($1 = 1.3488 Canadian dollars)

(This article has not been edited by DNA's editorial team and is auto-generated from an agency feed.)