A method is presented for calculating an area target for a heat exchanger network (HEN). The approach is based on the solution of a linear programming problem modeled as an optimal transportation task. The transportation model uses temperature intervals and does not require knowledge of enthalpy intervals for the fixed heat recovery level. Restricted matches can be directly accounted for. A heuristic rule has been developed on a number of temperature intervals that keeps the number of variables and constraints in reasonable limits while ensuring accurate results. The targeting method can also be applied to HENs consisting of multipass (1-2) heat exchangers. The results from case studies have shown that solutions from the developed approach are very close to those calculated by complex nonlinear programming based methods.