ONEOK - Earnings Call - Q2 2025

Transcript

Speaker 7

Good morning everyone and welcome to the ONEOK second quarter 2025 earnings conference call. All participants will be in a listen only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the STAR key followed by zero. After today's presentation there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question you may press STAR and then one on your touchtone phones. To withdraw your questions you may press STAR and two. Please also note today's event is being recorded. At this time I'd like to turn the floor over to Megan Patterson, Vice President, Investor Relations. Ma'am, please go ahead.

Speaker 1

Thank you, Jamie. Welcome to ONEOK's second quarter 2025 earnings call. We issued our earnings release and presentation after the markets closed yesterday, and those materials are available on our website. After our prepared remarks, management will be available to take your questions. Statements made during this call that might include expectations or predictions should be considered forward-looking statements and are covered under the Safe Harbor provision of the Securities Act of 1933 and 1934. Actual results could differ materially from those projected in forward-looking statements. For a discussion of factors that could cause actual results to differ, please refer to our SEC filings. Just a reminder for Q&A, we ask that you limit yourself to one question and one follow-up to fit in as many of you as we can. With that, I'll turn the call over to Pierce Norton, President, Chief Executive Officer.

Speaker 5

Thanks, Megan. Good morning and thank you for joining us. On today's call is Walt Hulse, our Chief Financial Officer, Treasurer and Executive Vice President, Investor Relations and Corporate Development, and Sheridan Swords, Executive Vice President and Chief Commercial Officer. Also on the call are Kevin Burdick, Executive Vice President and Chief Enterprise Service Officer, and Randy Lentz, our Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer. Yesterday we announced higher second quarter results and affirmed our 2025 financial guidance ranges, which were originally provided in late February. Our second quarter adjusted EBITDA increased 12% compared with the first quarter, highlighting the continuation of incremental synergy capture and increasing supply and demand strength. As we exited the winter, we saw accelerated volume momentum through the seasonal improvements across our operations, driving sequential quarter growth in NGL natural gas processing volumes across all regions and increasing refined products demand.

The sequential EBITDA growth we experienced this quarter was consistent with our expectations at the beginning of the year and begins to demonstrate the potential earnings from bringing these assets together. As we continue to navigate an evolving macroeconomic landscape and shifting market dynamics, we believe the energy sector remains resilient, with domestic and global demand for U.S. energy continuing to be well supported. Producers across our acreage continue to execute their 2025 drilling plans and drive efficiencies in their drilling and completion techniques. We're monitoring the 2026 market dynamics closely while continuing to execute on our growth strategy and support supply and demand market themes.

Our focused investments on high-return organic projects such as the Bakken's Elk Creek Liquids Pipeline, West Texas NGL Pipeline and Denver Refined Products Pipeline expansions, and the Medford Fractionation Facility provide significant operating leverage and position us to capture incremental growth across our assets in the Williston Basin, Powder River, Mid-Continent and Permian Basin. Today we are announcing a final investment decision on a new natural gas processing plant in the Permian's Delaware Basin, further expanding and enhancing our presence in what is a key strategic area for ONEOK. Sheridan will provide more details on this project and our Permian Pro strategy in his remarks. Our acquisitions are delivering tangible benefits as we continue to make meaningful progress on acquisition-related synergies and organic growth. Our continuously integrated assets, diversified business mix and strong balance sheet provide flexibility and enable opportunities even during changing market dynamics.

As always, we remain intentional and disciplined in our approach to capital allocation as we evaluate future opportunities. I'll now turn it over to Walt and Sheridan to provide their financial and commercial updates.

Speaker 4

Walt, thank you. Pierce, second quarter 2025 net income attributable to ONEOK totaled $841 million, or $1.34 per share, more.

Speaker 5

Than 30% increase compared with the first quarter.

Speaker 4

Second quarter adjusted EBITDA totaled $1.98 billion, or $2 billion when excluding transaction costs of $21 million, which is consistent with the approach used in our guidance. The acquired Magellan and Medallion assets delivered nearly $450 million in adjusted EBITDA during the second quarter, contributing to a strong year over year. We ended the second quarter with $97 million in cash and no borrowings outstanding under our $3.5 billion credit facility. During the quarter, we reduced our senior notes by nearly $600 million, including more than $400 million of notes paid at maturity. Year to date, we've extinguished nearly $850 million in senior notes, underscoring our proactive approach to managing debt and clear progress towards achieving our long-term leverage target of 3.5 times, which we expect to reach in 2026.

With yesterday's earnings announcement, we affirmed our 2025 financial guidance ranges, including net income attributable to ONEOK of $3.1 billion to $3.6 billion, and an adjusted EBITDA range of $8 billion to $8.45 billion. Our expectation to achieve results within our guidance ranges reflects current market conditions and is supported by producer performance, recently completed projects, increasing seasonal demand for refined products, and the timing of acquisition-related synergies. While the market environment and commodity price outlook is different today than when we originally announced financial guidance in February, we continue to see resilience in producer activity across our operations and benefits from our integrated system. We also remain on track to realize approximately $250 million of synergies in 2025, consistent with our guidance, with significant additional contributions expected in 2026. Our 2026 outlook, also provided in February, was based on commodity prices at the time.

Given current market conditions, we believe our 2026 outlook for adjusted EBITDA should be adjusted downward by approximately 2% or $200 million to reflect current commodity prices and resulting spread differentials. We continue to expect year over year mid to upper single digit EBITDA growth in 2026. We are tempering our previous outlook based on a cautious macro environment.

Speaker 7

In addition.

Speaker 4

To our future earnings growth. We also reviewed our tax position following the recent tax legislation and expected a benefit of more than $1.3 billion in lower cash taxes over the next five years due primarily to enhancements related to bonus depreciation and interest expense deductibility. With our commitment to investing in infrastructure that strengthens energy security and resilience, the enhanced tax provisions enable us to immediately expense the full cost of qualifying investments. We now don't expect to pay any meaningful cash taxes until 2028, which is a year later than our previous expectations. Additionally, we expect our cash tax rate in 2028 and 2029 to be less than the full 15% corporate alternative minimum tax rate, which is lower than our previous expectations. This increase in expected free cash flow will enhance our flexibility as it relates to capital allocation.

Now I'm turning the call over to Sheridan for a commercial update.

Speaker 2

Thank you, Walt. During the second quarter, we saw a significant rebound in volumes following normal and expected first quarter seasonality. We experienced strong sequential order growth coming out of the first quarter with higher natural gas processing volumes and double-digit NGL growth across all regions. Taking a closer look at the natural gas liquids segment, total NGL raw feed throughput volumes increased 18% compared with the first quarter. Rocky Mountain region volumes averaged nearly 470,000 barrels per day, a record for the region driven by increased ethane recovery and higher propane plus volume compared with the first quarter of 2024. Mid-Continent and Permian NGL volumes both increased 20% compared with the first quarter, supported by higher ethane recovery levels, improved seasonality, and newly contracted volumes beginning to ramp up in the Permian phase.

During the quarter, we experienced lower fractionation utilization due to maintenance, which resulted in a $13 million impact in the second quarter from unfractionated NGLs and inventory. We expect to fractionate these NGLs and recognize their earnings over the next two quarters. We saw minimal impacts from ethane export disruptions during the quarter. The importance of ethane to the global market was evident during this period, and it's clear there is strong demand for U.S. ethane in the global market. We continue to see opportunities for economic ethane recovery across our system for the balance of the year. The buildout of connectivity between our Mont Belvieu and Conway NGL platforms and our strategic Houston and Mid-Continent refined products assets remains on pace. All three critical Houston connections at Lena Park, East Houston, and our Pasadena MVP joint venture are expected to come online in the third quarter of this year.

We have strong line of sight to these pipelines operating at high utilization and delivering earning contributions in the first quarter. In the fourth quarter of this year, with executed synergies related to our liquids blending business, we expect record blending volumes in 2025 and 2026. Our Texas City LPG export joint venture is also progressing as planned, and we continue to have a lot of interest from customers on this strategically positioned wellhead-to-water solution. Moving on to the refined products and crude segment, second quarter refined product volumes increased sequentially as seasonal demand picked up. We expect continued demand growth in the third quarter as we've entered peak summer travel season. Diesel and aviation fuel volumes have remained strong during the first half of the year, and we expect that to continue for the remainder of the year.

Regional supply disruptions in the Mid-Continent tempered gasoline volumes during the quarter, however, volumes have recovered following the completion of refinery maintenance in late spring. Following the July tariff rate adjustments, we increased our refined products rate by mid-single digits. As expected, our refined products pipeline to the Denver area is on track for a mid-2026 completion, and we're currently seeing record jet fuel volumes into the Denver International Airport. Turning now to our three businesses, our gathering and long haul assets continue to perform with wellhead gathering volumes on our Medallion assets up approximately 20% year over year. The overall decrease in crude volumes compared with the first quarter 2025 was due primarily to low margin exchange volumes. These volumes have significantly lower rates than wellhead gathering or long haul shipments, so the earning impact was not material.

Moving on to the natural gas gathering and processing segment, volumes increased in all regions compared with the first quarter of 2025, with producers increasing activity coming out of winter. Looking first at the Permian Basin, following 4% growth in volumes in the second quarter, we reached 1.6 billion cubic feet per day in July. Currently, we have 12 active routes on our dedicated acreage, providing a line of sight to filling our existing processing capacity in the region and driving the need for additional capacity. In addition to our already announced 150 million cubic feet per day relocation to the Midland and approximately 75 million cubic feet per day of low-cost expansion at existing Delaware facilities, we've also reached final investment decision on construction of a new plant in the Delaware Basin.

The new Bighorn plant will have a capacity of 300 million cubic feet per day with the ability to treat high CO2 gas. The plant and treater are expected to cost approximately $365 million. Bighorn is supported by acreage dedication and expected to be completed in mid-2027. These growth opportunities will increase ONEOK's processing capacity in the Delaware Basin to 1.1 billion cubic feet per day with a little over 700 million cubic feet per day currently and will position ONEOK for additional growth opportunities in the basin across our value chain. The Permian Basin continues to be a key area of strategic growth for us, and we will continue to be actively engaged in intentionally assessing opportunities to expand and enhance our integrated operations within the basin.

In the Mid-Continent, there are 12 rigs running on our dedicated acreage in Oklahoma and a number of projects underway to connect and optimize assets in the region. Second quarter natural gas processing volumes increased 9% compared with first quarter, in line with our expectations, and continue to show resilience. Rocky Mountain region processing volumes averaged more than 1.6 billion cubic feet per day in the second quarter of 2025, a 4% increase compared with the first quarter. We saw a ramp in well completions in the second quarter compared with the first quarter and expect the same level in the third quarter, reflecting the normal seasonality we see in this region. There are currently 15 rigs on our dedicated acreage. As Pierce and Walt noted, producers across our operations remain resilient, and the effectiveness they have gained in recent years is being highlighted in this environment.

I'll close with our natural gas pipeline segment, which continues to outperform compared with our guidance expectations. Approximately 75% of the outperformance is tied to legacy EnLink assets and our ability to optimize that system as demand for natural gas continues to rise, particularly related to power generation and industrial demand. Our footprint is uniquely positioned to meet that growth, and we're in active conversation with customers to support project developments through direct connections. We are also well positioned to benefit from increased demand tied to LNG exports in Louisiana. Pierce, that concludes my reports. Thank you.

Speaker 5

Sheridan and Walt, I want to begin by thanking all of our employees. Their efforts and commitment to bringing together our assets, teams, and ideas is evident in the strength of our day-to-day operations and the solid results we continue to deliver. ONEOK remains well positioned in today's market environment to continue delivering long-term value for our stakeholders, through the strength of our balance sheet, stable and long-standing customer base, diversified earnings across our integrated value chain, and the dedication of our experienced and innovative employees. We're focused on running our business efficiently and providing essential products and services that make a difference. Just as important as what we do is how we do it, with a steadfast commitment to safety, integrity, and responsibility. In that spirit, I'm pleased to share that our 17th annual Corporate Sustainability Report will be published on our website this week.

I encourage you to take a look and see the measurable progress we've made on our sustainability-driven goals. Our workforce and operations have grown significantly in recent years. Our commitment to our core values has never wavered. Together, we're delivering the energy that makes a difference in how we live, how we move, communicate, and learn across the U.S. and around the world—a shared purpose that creates value for all of our stakeholders. Operator, we're now ready for questions.

Speaker 1

Operator Pierre.

Speaker 2

It.

Speaker 7

Ladies and gentlemen, at this time we'll begin the question and answer session. To ask a question, press star and then one on your touch tone phones. If you are using a speakerphone, we ask you please pick up the handset prior to pressing the keys. To withdraw your question, you may press star and 2. We ask that you please limit yourselves to one question and a single follow-up. At this time, we will pause momentarily.

Speaker 2

To assemble our roster.

Speaker 7

Our first question today comes from Spirit. Please go ahead with your question.

Hey, thanks, operator. Good morning, everybody. First question, maybe to start with the 2026 outlook. Certainly sympathize with the change in the environment since February.

Speaker 5

Walt, I guess I'm curious how.

Can you describe this revised outlook? I think you said mid to high single digits, and if you could, maybe.

Speaker 2

Just provide a little bit more color.

On how much of that growth is hardwired by either contractual volumes, synergies, cost savings. In other words, things that don't necessarily rely on volume growth.

Speaker 5

This is Pierce. Let me take a shot at that first, and then I'll pass it to Walt to add some additional color. I think you hit on it, which is, you know, with the volatility in the market, the spread differentials that have tightened in comparison to those that we used as assumptions for that 2026 adjusted EBITDA outlook. As we said in the script, we continue to work with our producers and understand their 2026 plans as well.

Speaker 2

You know, in a kind of up.

Speaker 5

the down commodity market, especially related to oil prices, and both of these factors, we did lower our 2026 outlook by around 2% or that $200 million, as Paul said in his remarks. I'll turn it over to him for a little bit more color on this as well.

Speaker 4

Yes, the price here in our 2026 outlook really comes from the fact that we have a number of projects that come on in 2026, including the refined products expansion. We'll start to see the ramp on the West Texas LPG. More importantly, the connections of Easton and some of the other connections between our Refined Products and NGL business are expected to provide more of the incremental increase over 2025 than producer activity. It's really a benefit from these ongoing synergies layering in and then producer.

Speaker 5

Activity on top of that.

Great, that's helpful color. Second one, maybe just going to natural gas, Sheridan. Like you said, ODES seems to be a bright spot, especially now with these EnLink assets in there.

Speaker 2

I guess I'm just curious. Two-part question here.

Speaker 4

One, just give us a little bit.

More color on exactly what's driving that and if it's become something ratable enough to maybe start including in the forward guidance. You also mentioned data centers and AI and power demand on the back of your comments. There's still in discussion.

Speaker 2

It's just curious, you know where you.

Are maybe innings wise in those discussions and when we should expect an announcement on that front.

I'll start with the AI on that and the data centers and the industrial man. Obviously, I think we're in discussions with over 30 different people. Not all those are going to come to fruition and we're at different levels. What we've learned through that is it's not done until it's done. We are actively participating in some, some we think are further along than others. We've been in this business long enough that they can change on a dime. We're still very opportunistic about that on the industrial side. We have actually contracted some people over on the Mississippi River corridor where we think we have a big advantage having that last pipe in there, and that will start coming on over the next couple of years.

Speaker 5

None of them are huge.

Speaker 2

When you do enough, these little ones, they make it, they can make a pretty big difference. When we look at the EnLink assets, we just know as we continue to integrate and look at how by bringing a different mindset to their assets and looking at it differently and how we utilize those assets, we.

Speaker 5

Are starting to see some pretty big opportunities.

Speaker 2

As you're seeing coming out, as we continue to grow, some of that can be a little bit related to spread. Other ones are going to be volume, and we continue to, the team continues to work on that and to bring more of it to a steady state that we can continue to project out over the next couple years. I think you'll see that in our guidance when we come out in 2026. We've been very excited about the natural gas business. I think I said early on that we didn't put a whole lot of weight on the Louisiana side of the natural gas business. We bought EnLink. As you can see from the numbers, it's really starting to perform great.

Speaker 5

Helpful caller.

I'll leave it there for today.

Speaker 2

Thanks everyone.

Speaker 7

Our next question comes from Jeremy Tonet from JPMorgan. Please go ahead with your question.

Speaker 2

Hi, good morning, Jeremy.

Speaker 7

Jeremy, I know in the commentary you described synergy capture picking up in the back half of 2025. I was wondering if you could provide a bit more color on specific opportunities in how that, I guess, you know, feeds into confidence in the guidance range. Any, you know, kind of concrete.

Speaker 2

Examples there and what's coming together would be helpful. Thanks. Jeremy shared it. We bought the Easton assets in 2024 and we came out that we were going to be connecting our NGL assets at Mont Belvieu into the refined products assets that we bought from Magellan. You're seeing that starting to come through. That's going to be done here at the end of this quarter and that's going to do two things for us. That's going to create more volume for us to be more NGL volumes to blend and also be able to reduce our cost to be able to blend, which even creates more value when you are able to blend, if the spreads are there. That's what you're seeing in the Easton assets.

Also, the Easton assets, if you think about going into MVP and Galena Park, will be able to actually sell that product to some of our customers at that location, giving them a better product at that location, a better service offering, and obviously they'll move a lot more volume in there. We're going to see some pickup in both blending and tariff as those assets come back on. As we look into 2026, we're also doing this same thing up in the Mid-Continent where we're connecting our Conway assets into our Mid-Continent refining assets. Once again, we can make sure we have the right amount of volume there. When the blend opportunity is there, we can reduce the cost of getting that change at that location, which allows us even to push it out further on our system.

These are kind of the last big projects that we have of the blending aspect of the Magellan acquisition. We've done other ones and put them in service. If you remember in my comments, I said right now in 2025 we're expecting record blend volume on our system. In 2026, everything looks like we will beat that volume as well, the 2025 volume and 2026. Got it.

Speaker 7

That's helpful. Thank you. I just wanted to pivot towards BridgeTex here. I was wondering if you could provide a bit more color on, you know, economics there in, you know, synergies as well. Will you be consolidating BridgeTex?

Speaker 4

Jeremy, we were opportunistic here. We had the opportunity to increase our holdings from 30% up to 60% at very attractive multiples compared to recent transactions in the marketplace. You know, given the connectivity to our Medallion assets, we really thought that that made a lot of sense to continue to get more of that business. No, we will not be consolidating it going forward because we still have a governance structure with our other partner there that keeps it more of a 50/50 type of governance.

Speaker 2

Got it. That's helpful. Thanks.

Speaker 7

Ladies and gentlemen, our next question comes from Theresa Chen from Barclays. Please go ahead with your question.

Speaker 1

Morning.

Speaker 0

Looking at the downstream side of things on NGLs, your largest competitor in Permian NGL infrastructure has publicly disparaged the economics of new LPG export facilities. Do you care to respond to this, and how has the commercialization progress been for your JV Texas City Terminal?

Speaker 2

What I'd say, as we said earlier, we're not going to talk about infield contracts or whatever, but we have had a lot of interest in our dock going forward and since out of 2028. The big reason for this interest is really our by far premium location outside of the Houston Ship Channel, right next to and an hour, two hours away from buoy zero. It's a much better little district location. Right now we are seeing rates in line with what our estimated economics are. We are still very excited about this project going forward.

Speaker 5

Theresa, this is Pierce. Only thing I would add is, you know, if you look at the LNG exports, you look at the AI demand, that additional volume, you know, whatever that number is going to be, whether or not that's 14 Bcf a day or higher, a significant amount of that is actually going to come with liquids, and you can actually calculate, you know, how much liquids is going to come with that additional volume. We do think there's going to be plenty of propane and butane out there to ship globally.

Speaker 0

Very helpful, thank you. Looking at the volatility that we've seen year to date in commodity prices, would you expand a bit more on the expectations you have on GMP volume by Basin and what those conversations with your producers look like at this point?

Speaker 2

Sure, Theresa. What I say is in the Bakken right now our volumes are still looking to be in our guidance range. Overall rig counts have stayed steady this past year and producers are continuing to drill the longer laterals, which reduces the number of wells we need to connect to hold or grow our volumes. Year to date, we are in line with about 30% of well connects being 3 mile laterals. We still continue to have very active discussions with producers on where they are and kind of wait and see where they come out, where they're going to be in 2026. Obviously, we've seen some pretty good ramp up from first quarter to second quarter.

If we go down looking at Oklahoma, we're still seeing strong activity across our footprint, especially in the Cherokee formation, and you saw that we were up 9% from first quarter to second quarter. We continue to benefit from bringing the EnLink and legacy ONEOK systems together and the synergies we're driving through there. That helps us expand not only our footprint out there but also be able to access all of our capacity in our system, especially being able to prioritize our higher efficiency capacity. As you move to the Rockies department, we're seeing volume drift second quarter. As we said last time, we were a little slow coming out of the gate, but we caught up pretty quickly and at 1.6 Bcf, we're in line where we thought we'd be at this time and continue to move forward.

There are a couple less rigs in the Midland right now, but the Delaware seems to really be ramping up and we're moving in. That's why we FID'd this new plant as well as some new low-cost expansions out in the Delaware. Out there, we see a very long runway for growth. Coming up pretty soon, we'll have all the new expansions in the Midland with that new plant coming down. That's backed by acreage dedication and volume from existing producers. In 2027, we'll see the new Delaware plant coming online. Even though we're seeing a lot of volatility in the market, producers for right now seem to be fairly steady or fairly resilient.

Speaker 1

Excellent.

Speaker 0

Thank you for that detailed answer, Sheridan.

Speaker 7

Our next question comes from Michael Blum from Wells Fargo. Please go ahead with your question.

Speaker 4

Thanks. Good morning everyone. Just wanted to ask another question on BridgeTex. Just wonder if you can discuss the performance of BridgeTex this quarter. Obviously you've increased your position there. Want to get your view of the outlook for that pipeline over the next couple years.

Speaker 2

We continue to see the volume on that increase as we continue to go forward. Obviously, that pipeline heads right into our East Houston facilities, so it also feeds our downstream assets as well. We continue to see growth in the crude oil volume out of the Permian. We think they'll continue to lead to more volume on the system. Also, with us having a larger share, it makes it more advantageous to us to direct our volume, our volume coming off of our field gathering to that system as well, where some of that volume was going down some other pipelines. Obviously, we wouldn't have increased our stake in there unless we were very excited about what we see going forward.

I think you're seeing the benefit of our integrated assets with the Magellan and EnLink crude systems together being able to feed the pipelines of our choice and not just going to other third party pipelines. We capture more value, not only get it on our pipeline, as I said, but it also feeds into our East Houston and big crude oil distribution center where we get additional value downstream. Got it.

Speaker 4

Can you give us an update on West Texas LPG, kind of where does volume or utilization stand today? How do you see the path filling that up, and is this latest processing plant you?

Speaker 5

Announced part of that?

Speaker 2

Thanks, Michael. If you remember on that West Texas NGL, we contracted that with a base set of volume that did not fill up the pipeline. That gave us a nice rate of return. We're continuing to hook up plants as coming online and delivering it as well. Obviously, as we bring on the Shadowfax plant that's moved out of the Barnett into the Midland, that will add more volume onto our NGL pipeline. The $70 million a day, $70, $75 million a day of low-cost expansions in the Delaware, we're adding more NGLs to the pipeline and this new plant will also add more NGLs to the pipeline. We're also still in discussions with a lot of third-party plants to continue to contract them up as well. As we said, we think we have a pretty long runway with this very cheap capacity coming out of the Permian.

You add on that when we get the Medford Fractionation Facility up, which is very low-cost NGL fractionation capacity expansion, we continue to be able to not only maintain our market share out there, but grow it not only on the GMP side, but on the NGL side.

Speaker 4

Thank you.

Speaker 7

Our next question comes from Jean Ann Salisbury from Bank of America. Please go ahead with your question.

Speaker 6

Hi, good morning. Rigs have come down a bit in the Bakken. I was just wondering if you have a sense of whether producers are high grading to oilier acreage in the current environment or if you would actually kind of expect gas to oil ratio to increase over the next year.

Speaker 2

Perhaps some of the lower growth. I think as we said, I think we'll always continue to see gas oil ratios continue to take up as this naturally bolt basis. That will continue to happen. We are, with some consolidations up there, seeing some people making sure where they're going to drill, what they're going to go forward and where they're looking at it. Obviously, we're in conversations with that. What you know, really, they drill, it now takes more of a bigger impact into next year. We're in the conversation with those, continue to look forward. Some go down, some go up as.

Speaker 4

We continue to go forward.

Speaker 2

That's still very much a basin that a lot of the producers up there consider very key for them, and they're going to continue to want to play an active part in that area. That makes sense.

Speaker 6

Thank you. Obviously, one of the major synergies from the Magellan acquisition has been butane blending. I know this comes up on every call, but could you just give a little bit more detail on kind of broadly how much of it is just recurring almost midstream revenue that wasn't there before, and how much of it is a more volatile marketing spread that's based on the spread of pricing?

Speaker 2

In 2025, where you could see that we're not seeing the same level of spread that we saw in 2024, that's having an impact on many four. What we have done is we've been able to make up quite a bit of that by blending a lot more volume, and that's because the synergy projects are coming online. As we talked before, we can ship product up our pipelines; instead of trucking it, we can move it on pipelines. That's what you're going to see with the NGL connectivity between Conway and the RPC Mid-Continent assets, the Eastern assets, all that's bringing that in. Some of that already started earlier, some started today. I would say most of the spread compression we've seen, we then make up for volume, which gives you a great option.

As far as spreads continue to widen, you'll see an upside in earnings when those spreads are more at a wider level.

Speaker 1

That's super helpful, thank you.

Speaker 7

Our next question comes from Manav Gupta from UBS. Please go ahead with your question. Good afternoon. I just wanted to go back and.

Speaker 2

Check on the delivered base in GV. I think you closed, bought the remaining 49.9% for $940 million. Can you talk about the benefits of this transaction at this point of time? Sure.

Speaker 4

We clearly have a strong interest in growing our Delaware position. We made a move there announced on this call, adding another plant in the Delaware. It made a lot of sense to go ahead and buy in that joint venture partner's piece. I think clearly we didn't expect to do it quite as quickly as we did. The joint venture partner was ready to move on. The private equity had been in it for quite some time. We went ahead and did that fund at an attractive multiple, and it now gives us the flexibility to grow that business, making our own decisions, allocating capital where we want to, when we want to, how we want to. It has really enhanced our flexibility, built the business, and set the platform for growth building forward.

Speaker 2

Thank you.

Speaker 7

I'm sorry for asking this.

Speaker 2

There's a minute of silence on my phone. For some reason, I'm having technical difficulties. If somebody's already asked this, can you talk about the Elk Creek pipeline expansion? Is it still scheduled and when should we expect that to hit for full capacity? Thank you. The Elk Creek pipeline expansion is fully, it's done, it's completed, and we are at over 400,000 barrels a day. I think 435,000 barrels a day is the capacity on the Elk Creek pipeline. You combine that with the Bakken pipeline, we're at 575,000 barrels. That project is completed. We're completely done. Thank you.

Speaker 7

Our next question comes from Keith Stanley from Wolfe Research. Please go ahead with your question.

Speaker 4

Hi, good morning.

Speaker 2

Want to start with a clarification question. Walt, you said Q2 sequential growth was in line with your expectations. I think you said Q1 was in line as well. Would you say the midpoint of 2025 EBITDA guidance range is still the base case and what needs to happen to get there?

Speaker 5

Keith, this is Pierce. We still see the path to our midpoint. There are kind of two keys to that. We talked a lot today about spreads. One of those keys for us to get to that midpoint, maybe even exceed it, is to have some widening of those spreads, especially in our refined products business. As you know, with crude oil down, it also affects the RBOB pricing. It squeezes that spread between the butane and RBOB. Also, just making sure that our producers continue to execute on their 2025 drilling plans. We think that's.

Speaker 2

That's.

Speaker 5

That's in line. We think that's going to continue to happen. Walt, you have anything to add to that?

Speaker 4

No, I think that's absolutely right. We see a clear path that we could get there. There's also, you know, obviously some volatility in the marketplace with crude prices bouncing around. We need a couple of things to follow the right direction, but we're cautiously optimistic.

Speaker 2

Okay, thanks for that clarification. My second question, I wanted to ask on the LPG export facility, can you give a sense of how contracted that capacity is at this point and what you're seeing as far as market pricing for LPG exports right now? One of your competitors had a somewhat bearish tone the other day. Yeah. As I said earlier today, we haven't, won't talk about contracts or what we're doing on that side of it for those competitive reasons. What I would say is due to our premier location and everything else, we're still seeing rates in line with our economics of why we, when we FID this project. I know there's a lot of rhetoric around there, but we definitely think our location, why we went down there, has really given us an advantage. Thank you.

Speaker 7

Our next question comes from Brandon Bingham from Scotiabank. Please go ahead with your question.

Speaker 4

Hey, thanks for taking the questions here. I just wanted to ask on CapEx, on the CapEx front, in light of the FID of the processing plant, how much of that, if any, is going to be hitting 2025 and then just kind of how we should think about 2026 versus 2025 gross spend. Yeah, very little of it is going to really be hitting 2025. I will start the construction, begin where we are in the year. You know, you'll definitely see a bigger spend in 2026 than you would in 2025. You know, CapEx will give our guidance as we come out in February. I think consistent with what we've said in the past, we've got a bunch of larger projects kind of rolling off here in 2026. Metro project, you know, fund will start winding down. Our Colorado Refined Products project will come to completion.

We'll see CapEx starting to trail, trail downward a little bit from that 2026 period and forward.

Speaker 2

Okay, thanks.

Speaker 4

That's helpful. Maybe kind of a roundabout way of looking at synergies. You've discussed some of the bigger things as far as the eastern system and the integration plays there.

Speaker 2

I'm just kind of curious if there's.

Speaker 4

Maybe more singles, doubles, things that aren't being highlighted that you're seeing could kind of stack up and really drive some of that significant capture that you're.

Speaker 2

Discussing year over year. Absolutely. We're seeing a lot of that from all three of the acquisitions. We've talked about some of those publicly, about how even with Medallion, we were willing to spend a little more capital on some smaller projects that had high return but not guaranteed returns on that. They're very high. Those have been in place and are doing quite well. A lot of those little ones you get to Magellan and EnLink, we've had synergies between the two. EnLink and Magellan. By disconnecting those two systems out in the Midland where we now have trucks, crew trucks that were driving past an EnLink station to get to a Medallion station or driving past the Medallion station to get to an EnLink station. We've reduced those costs. Being able to come down. Some of the things we do, just different mindset.

We're buying more of the product on the Medallion system to be able to feed and fill our other pipelines.

Speaker 4

Our long haul pipelines were part of.

Speaker 2

The Magellan acquisition to get down into our East Houston terminal where we have a big distribution system going out and also have an export dock down that area, continue to grow that in the EnLink legacy, the GNP, we're up in the mid top. Those assets are sitting a lot on top of each other. We've already had a lot of success where EnLink may have a contract and a well comes up that's a long ways away from them. That would take a lot of extra capital to get there if it even could be economical. The legacy ONEOK system was close by that they could hook that system in there, get very attractive rates.

We've been able to tie the systems together to open up more capacity that we don't have to spend any additional capital and that makes you more competitive in the marketplace to be able to access more of it going forward. There is a long list. There are actually probably more little singles and doubles than the big ones. It's just that they're kind of the same thing and they're kind of down in the minutia. I think you can see by what we've been able to do with these assets and our results that we are getting a large share of the synergies.

Speaker 4

Awesome.

Speaker 2

Great. Thanks so much.

Speaker 7

Our next question comes from Sunil Sibal from Seaport Global. Please go ahead with your question.

Speaker 5

Hi, good morning everybody.

Speaker 8

A couple of clarifications starting off on the blending side of things. I know you talked about good visibility to the volumes in Q4 and 2026. Could you talk a little bit about your hedging strategy or how much those margins and those blending operations are hedged as of now, and how does that compare with, say, previous years?

Speaker 4

Typically don't.

Speaker 2

Talk about our competitor, even how much we have hedge.

Speaker 5

I would say we're kind of.

Speaker 2

We're in line where we were last year at this time on the hedging activity. We're very opportunistic on that. One of the, from the last question, one of the synergies that we have with Magellan is that because of our access to normal butane, we don't have to lock it in when we buy the normal butane to lock the spread in. We can be more opportunistic and see when the normal to RBOB spread's at a level that we like, then we can lock it in. Because with our NGL assets, we kind of have butane on demand that whenever our blenders see the time to build, they can just call our NGL. They'll put the, they'll get the butane form so they are evolving against it and continue to go forward. We can be very opportunistic on that.

Just overall, the spreads have been a lot narrower where they were last year. We still have the opportunity this year to be able to store product, go from to. We don't have to sell it right when we blend it, right when we actually make the blend, we can look out for it and see if there's another time to sell at that time, continue to go forward. We still have all those opportunities as we can go forward that we've had last year. Like I said, we're in line with where we were last year on testnet.

Speaker 4

One thing I would add is that we spent a lot of time talking about spreads here on this call. I think it's important to put them in context. I mean, we're talking about maybe $100 million or $200 million on $8 billion plus. We're talking about 2% variability. It's just when you get to a midpoint, that's putting a pin in the number, a very large number. Variability on our overall earnings of any of these spread relationships is really immaterial. It's just kind of the noise at the end of the spear.

Speaker 8

Okay, thanks for that. On the new processing plant that you've sanctioned in the Permian, I think you mentioned $365 million or so of CapEx related to that. That's on building the plant and the related infrastructure also to fill up that plant. How should we be thinking about economics on that? Obviously, with your integrated footprint, the economics improve. If you think about, on a standalone basis, how should we be thinking about economics on that investment?

Speaker 2

$365 million is for the cryo, for the cryo plant, which includes residue compression and things at the plant as well as a large CO2 treater. That area, we're seeing more and more CO2 in the Delaware coming out that needs to be treated. That's an important part. We are putting in not just the cryo and the compression there at the plant, but also the CO2 as well, CO2 treater. There will be additional capital that would be spent in routine growth for hooking up wells and stuff like that. We have that throughout our system. That's our continual process. We go through capital. Okay.

Speaker 8

Returns wise, anything to highlight there?

Speaker 2

Could you repeat that? Sorry.

Speaker 7

Yeah.

Speaker 8

I was wondering, you know, when you think about, you know, return on that investment in that processing plant, obviously you've got integrated economics.

Speaker 4

I was curious, you know, just.

Speaker 8

On the processing side, how the returns on these kind of investments stack up.

Speaker 4

We don't ever get into the specific returns on that particular asset. I think you touched on the key point there that, you know, the benefit of having the EnLink business as part of the ONEOK overall business is that we get the integrated value all the way from the field throughout our value chain. Incrementally, it's quite a profit.

Speaker 2

Got it. Thank you.

Speaker 7

We have a follow-up question from Jeremy Tonet from JPMorgan.

Speaker 2

Please go ahead with your follow-up question.

Speaker 7

Hi, thanks for letting me back in. Just a quick one, if I could. As it relates to the 2026 outlook.

Speaker 2

Would you be able to share any?

Speaker 7

Color on commodity price expectations to underpin that backdrop there? Is it kind of on the.

Speaker 2

Strip and current spreads or any other color you could provide? Thanks. Sure.

Speaker 4

Jeremy, we don't want to set a precedent of you double dipping here, but we'll put it in this time. Basically, the update we gave you, adjusting that down to 2% for the $200 million, was bringing it to current market. That's kind of as we look through that and that $65, $66 free range.

Speaker 7

With that, ladies and gentlemen, we'll be concluding today's question and answer session. I'd like to turn the floor back over to Megan Patterson for closing remarks.

Speaker 1

Thank you, Jamie. Our quiet period for the third quarter starts when we close our books in October and extends until we release earnings in late October. We'll provide detail for that conference call at a later date. As always, our IR team will be available throughout the day for any follow ups. Thank you everyone for joining and have a good day.

Speaker 7

Ladies and gentlemen, with that, we'll conclude today's conference call and presentation. We do thank you for joining. You may now disconnect your line.