Energy Transfer announced a $2.625 billion acquisition Tuesday.

But the most interesting part of the transaction isn’t the price.

Energy Transfer is acquiring Vaquero Midstream, which operates approximately 300 miles of natural gas pipelines and three processing plants in the Delaware Basin.

Those assets do not operate in isolation.

Vaquero’s system is already connected to Energy Transfer’s much larger network.

And that helps explain why infrastructure becomes increasingly valuable as networks grow.

Every step of the gathering, processing, and transportation process requires specialized physical infrastructure.

Energy Transfer has spent decades assembling those pieces.

Today, the company operates approximately 140,000 miles of pipelines and associated infrastructure across 44 states.

That scale means Energy Transfer does not necessarily have to build an entirely new system every time it wants to expand.

Sometimes it can simply connect to a network already in place.

That is essentially what the Vaquero transaction does.

Vaquero brings gathering pipelines and processing capacity in the Delaware Basin.

Energy Transfer brings the enormous downstream network.

Connect the two and the infrastructure can work together.

Now Vaquero’s volumes will create additional activity at pipelines, fractionation facilities, terminals, and export facilities that Energy Transfer already owns.

Vaquero also has three processing trains that currently have combined capacity of approximately 675 million cubic feet per day, and it has room for two more.

If that expansion occurs and production around the system continues growing, Energy Transfer could potentially move greater volumes through infrastructure that has already been built.

And Energy Transfer is putting considerable faith behind that bet.

Of the $2.625 billion purchase price, $1.95 billion will be paid in cash, with the remainder coming through approximately 33.3 million newly issued Energy Transfer common units.

That is worth noting because issuing stock means giving up a piece of the company permanently.

There are certainly times when that makes sense, but using cash for most of the purchase limits the amount of new ownership Energy Transfer has to issue.

But fundamentally, the transaction demonstrates how infrastructure investments of all types can have effects far beyond an individual construction project.

Building one asset can make another asset more useful.

And over time, those connections can develop into networks that move enormous amounts of energy, goods, people, water, electricity, or information across an economy.

The Vaquero acquisition is ultimately just one transaction involving one company, but it provides a useful real-world example of how good infrastructure investments can connect useful assets and add value across industries and entire economies.