Kinder quit Enron after Kenneth Lay won a five-year extension of his contract to be chairman and chief executive, blocking Kinder from moving up at the company. Kinder Morgan was formed in July 1999 when Kinder and his partners bought KN Energy, a Colorado-based pipeline company. Kinder and Bill Morgan, also a former Enron executive, created the company that would become Kinder Morgan by buying Enron's stake in gas-liquids and carbon-dioxide pipelines as Enron expanded in energy trading.