After a couple of years’ worth of share price underperformance by all four of Kinder Morgan’s business entities, folks expected the pipeline giant might be working on changes, but not necessarily the one that came down Sunday evening.

In a $71 billion deal, pipeline giant Kinder Morgan Inc. revealed its plan to consume its MLPs, creating the largest energy infrastructure corporation in North America with an estimated enterprise value of $140 billion. On Monday, investors showed their approval, boosting the Kinder complex’s market value by more than $13 billion.

“A transaction was not surprising. I would say this transaction was a little surprising,” said Kenny Feng, president and CEO of Alerian, a leading MLP index. “But then, if you think about the history of the MLP space, Rich Kinder and his taking of those Enron assets and turning the MLP into a growth vehicle, as opposed to just a stable cash-flow vehicle. He was a pioneer in this space, so for him to take this particular step, creates a certain element of surprise.”

On the other hand, Feng mused, CEO Rich Kinder’s 24% stake in the corporation makes him a significant shareholder.

“He’s going to do what’s in the best interest of that particular company, and it’s been viewed as a positive by the entire marketplace,” he said.

Feng explained that Kinder Morgan had been in the “high splits”—where incentive distribution rights (IDRs) grant an MLP’s general partner 50% of its profit—longer than many MLPs have been traded on the public markets.

During the last decade, a number of MLPs have filed IPOs without using the IDR, the first being Copano Energy LLC, which, ironically, was acquired by Kinder Morgan last year, Feng noted.

“While you’ve seen a handful of other companies go that route in terms of when they went public, that really hasn’t caught on as a trend. What this suggests is the market is willing to bear, at IPO time at least, the possibility of reaching the high splits and then having to engage in some sort of transaction to compensate the general partner for removing those splits, either a reset of the IDRs themselves to some different tiered level, buying them out or eliminating a high tier,” Feng said. “I’m surprised to some extent that the market has continued to be willing to bear this structure, given that eventually this transaction has to take place. The fact the market has allowed that to happen come IPO time, to a certain degree, just suggests that the energy renaissance continues to happen, there continues to be interest in the structure, and investors are willing to take that because the growth is still there.”

During a conference call with investors, Kinder wasn’t shy about his interest in an MLP space that’s ripe for acquisitions. More than 100 MLPs today have a combined market value of about $560 billion.

Feng noted, however, that some MLPs, like the merger between Inergy Midstream LP and Crestwood Midstream Partners LP last year, could band together to lower their own cost of capital and increase their scale.