Big-game hunter Duncan bags pipeline company

HOUSTON (Reuters) - Dan Duncan's passion is big-game hunting, but he may have bagged his biggest trophy yet when his Enterprise Products Partners LP (EPD.N) bought TEPPCO Partners LP TPP.N on Monday to create the largest publicly traded U.S. pipeline company.

Duncan, 76, is Houston's richest man, with assets Forbes magazine estimates at $5.9 billion, mostly in his controlling stake in Enterprise. But he has always kept a low profile, remaining active in business but not the social scene in Texas' biggest city.

"He is remarkable. You look at him, and you wouldn't think he had two cars in his garage. He's very laid-back, modest, has a built-in smile on his face, kind of like a Ronald Reagan," said oilman George Strake.

Duncan earned a reputation for creating "win-win" deals and forming enduring personal relationships while building his business.

"In this business, everyone has the same product," Duncan told the Houston Chronicle in April 2006. "What's unique, besides your assets and staff, is your relationships. If you earn people's trust, you'll receive the first call when they want to make a deal."

Analysts and traders familiar with the companies say that Duncan has turned Enterprise from a brick and mortar pipeline operator into a lean and aggressive operator building new infrastructure when it isn't pursuing acquisitions.

TEPPCO said on Monday it had agreed to be bought by Enterprise in a deal worth $3.3 billion.

Duncan was not available for comment on Monday.

HELICOPTER CONTROVERSY

Duncan's low-profile status was shattered by a 2007 investigation into a 2002 hunting trip to Russia during which he shot a moose and a sheep from a helicopter.

The recipient of several awards from Safari Club International was never charged with a crime for the hunting incident, and he told a U.S. grand jury he took the shots at the instruction of a guide and assumed it was legal.

Only later did he learn that hunting from aircraft, long illegal in the United States, was also illegal in Russia and that bringing home the trophy might have violated U.S. law against trafficking in illegal kills.

Duncan's philanthropic endeavors have also gained him fame in Houston, where he has given more than $200 million to medical and educational institutions.

He has cited as his key influence his grandmother, who raised him in East Texas during the Great Depression after his mother died of tuberculosis when he was 7 and his father took to traveling the country to find work. When Duncan was 17, his father died from leukemia.

Although his trousers were threadbare, Duncan excelled scholastically and gained the respect of his peers as an athlete and a "nice person," one classmate told the Chronicle.

He worked as a roughneck in the oilfield and did a stint in the U.S. Army before heading to business school. He joined a small, independent pipeline company, Wanda Petroleum, in the 1950s, and went out on his own when that company was sold in 1968.

(Additional reporting by Joshua Schneyer in New York; editing by Matt Daily and Gunna Dickson in New York)