The natural gas pipeline industry had it's regulations changed around '85 that made it so pipeline operators had to let anyone use their pipes. This meant Enron

The natural gas pipeline industry had it's regulations changed around '85 that made it so pipeline operators had to let anyone use their pipes. This meant Enron didn't have to actually own pipes. They could just buy and sell natural gas from the wellhead to the refinery. They made a lot of money doing this. They then tried to copy that to anything else that can conceivably move over a fixed, expensive infrastructure like electrical power lines, broadband lines, water pipes etc. They wanted to be in heavy industry with an "asset lite" model. The Enron physical pipeline business still exists as Kinder Morgan as Enron sold it off because they didn't want to deal with the physical infrastructure anymore. Everything else was just financial engineering.