The Associated Press

Gas and utility company NiSource Inc. announced Sunday that it plans to split off its natural gas pipeline and related businesses into a stand-alone publicly traded company.

The new company, Columbia Pipeline Group Inc., will control the business of transporting and storing natural gas. It is expected to be listed on the New York Stock Exchange and has 15,000 miles of natural gas transmission pipelines and nearly 300 billion cubic feet of underground natural gas storage capacity.

NiSource will continue to provide natural gas to more than 3.4 million customers in seven states under the Columbia Gas and NIPSCO brands. It will also continue to provide electric distribution, generation and transmission services for approximately 450,000 NIPSCO electric customers in northern Indiana.

NiSource said the split is expected to occur in the middle of 2015. The combined company currently has a market capitalization of $12.16 billion.

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