Good morning. My name is Colin, and I'll be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to Keyera Corp.'s First Quarter Conference Call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there'll be a question-and-answer session. If you'd like to ask a question during this time, simply press star then number one on your telephone keypad. If you'd like to withdraw your question, please press star followed by two. Thank you. I would now like to turn the call over to Calvin Locke, Manager of Investor Relations. You may begin.
Thank you. Good morning. Joining me today will be Dean Setoguchi, President and CEO, Eileen Marikar, Senior Vice President and CFO, Jamie Urquhart, Senior Vice President and Chief Commercial Officer, and Jarrod Beztilny, Senior Vice President, Operations and Engineering. We will begin with some prepared remarks from Dean and Eileen, after which we will open the call to questions. I would like to remind listeners that some of the comments and answers that we will give you today relate to future events. These forward-looking statements are given as of today's date and reflect events or outcomes that management currently expects. We will refer to some non-GAAP financial measures. For additional information on non-GAAP measures and forward-looking statements, please refer to Keyera's public filings available on SEDAR or on our website. With that, I'll turn the call over to Dean.
Thanks, Calvin, and good morning, everyone. Before we begin, I wanna take a moment to address the ongoing wildfire situation across Central and Northern Alberta. Our first priority is the safety of our people, the surrounding communities, and emergency responders. Thankfully, all Keyera employees and their families in the affected areas are safe and accounted for. As a precaution, we have shut in several of our plants. We continue to monitor the situation and will restart as conditions allow. We'd like to thank all emergency response personnel involved in fighting these fires and hope that all remain safe. Turning to our quarterly results. Keyera had a very strong start to the year, delivering record results in our fee for service business segments. Our proven business model has delivered reliable returns through all commodity cycles, and our strong first quarter results reinforce the effectiveness of our strategy.
In our G&P business, we saw a 12% year-over-year volume growth, driven by record volumes, including the highest ever at our Wapiti and Pipestone gas plants. Our G&P customers continue to be in a strong financial position, allowing for continued volume growth while improving cash flow stability for the segments. Our liquids infrastructure segment delivered record results, benefiting from strong utilization and margin contribution from the additional acquired interest at our KFS complex. Our marketing segment had another strong quarter, supported by the strength of our iso-octane and condensate businesses. Today, we provided our updated annual guidance for the segment. We now expect marketing to contribute between CAD 330 million-CAD 370 million for the year. I'm pleased to share that we have reached a major milestone on KAPS with the first barrels shipped on the pipeline. Construction is complete.
Costs are within our latest estimate of CAD 1 billion net to Keyera. The condensate line was put into service and began flowing in April. The natural gas liquids line is expected to be in service and flowing in June. We have officially 50% partner following the closing of their acquisition in April. KAPS is a link that fully integrates our business from wellhead to end market. With the pipeline in service, we're a stronger and more competitive company, focusing on and leveraging the strength of our integrated value chain to maximize value for all stakeholders. Our recent acquisition of additional fractionation capacity at KFS provides an advantage in attracting volumes to our integrated value chain.
We can offer customers frac capacity services in a very tight market and provide a full suite of services to connect products to the highest value markets. By providing an alternate end-to-end solution for customers, we remain competitive for the long term. As a result, we're better equipped to maximize value from new and existing assets and drive higher overall returns for our shareholders. In the last five years, we have invested significantly to establish a competitive footprint in the Montney and connect it to our core liquids infrastructure. These projects include Wapiti, Pipestone, KAPS, and our recent KFS acquisition. These investments support our annual adjusted EBITDA growth rate of 6%-7% from our fee for service business from 2022 to 2025. They also support growth beyond this timeframe.
With this large strategic spend behind us and those assets starting to contribute to cash flow growth, we are reaching a free cash flow inflection point. Our capital allocation priorities remain unchanged. They are firstly to ensure the financial strength of our business and then to balance increasing returns to our shareholders with disciplined capital investment. I'll now turn it over to Eileen to provide an update on Keyera's financial performance for the quarter.
Thanks, Dean. Adjusted EBITDA was CAD 292 million for the quarter compared to CAD 257 million for the same period last year.
Distributable cash flow was CAD 227 million or CAD 0.99 per share, compared to CAD 178 million or CAD 0.81 per share for the same period in 2022. Net earnings were CAD 138 million compared to CAD 114 million for the same period last year. These results were driven by record performance from our fee for service business segments and strong performance from the marketing segment. Keyera continues to maintain a strong financial position, ending the quarter with net debt to adjusted EBITDA at 2.6x , at the lower end of our targeted range of 2.5x-3x . Moving to our guidance for 2023. We now expect our marketing segment to contribute between CAD 330 million and CAD 370 million of realized margin in 2023.
This is up from our base guidance of CAD 250 million- CAD 280 million. Today's guidance accounts for financial hedges currently in place and assumes the AEF facility operates near capacity for the remainder of the year, there are no significant logistics or transportation curtailments, and current forward commodity pricing for any unhedged volume for the remainder of the year. Growth capital guidance remains unchanged at between CAD 200 million and CAD 240 million, and maintenance capital guidance remains unchanged at between CAD 75 million and CAD 85 million. Cash tax expense is still expected to be nil. Thank you, and I'll now turn it back to Dean.
Thanks, Eileen. Keyera delivered another strong quarter and remains in a strong financial position. The basin is growing, we're executing a strategy for long-term value creation. With KAPS in service and available frac capacity, we're able to leverage our integrated value chain to drive strong returns for our shareholders. A reminder that we'll be hosting our annual general meeting later this morning at 10:00 A.M. Mountain Time. The meeting will be held virtually, can be accessed through our website. On behalf of Keyera's Board of Directors and management team, I thank our employees, customers, shareholders, Indigenous peoples, and other stakeholders for the continued support. With that, I'll turn it back to the operator for Q&A.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we'll now conduct a question-and-answer session. If you'd like to ask a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad. If you'd like to withdraw your question, please press star followed by two. If you're using a speakerphone, please lift the handset before pressing any keys. One moment for your first question. Okay, your first question comes from Robert Hope from Scotiabank. Rob, please go ahead.
Good morning, everyone. I was hoping you could add some additional color on your capital allocation priorities for the rest of the year. You know, as we take a look at 2023, you know, Keyera will be generating significant cash flow. Its leverage is reasonable. The payer ratio is reasonable as well. As you kinda highlighted, CapEx is really gonna step down after KAPS. When looking forward, how do you weigh, you know, increasing the dividend share buybacks in 2023 versus securing some additional new growth projects here?
Go ahead, I'll let Eileen answer that question.
Thanks, Rob. As you know, our first priority has always been to maintain our balance sheet strength. Our immediate focus has certainly been to bring KAPS online, and given the sheer size of the investment, we wanna ensure that the pipeline operates and cash flows ramp according to plan. The next focus is to return to our long history of dividend growth. Ultimately, the timing will be a board decision. Beyond the balance sheet and dividend growth, it will be really a competition for capital between reinvesting in our business and share buybacks when they make sense to do so. Our preference, of course, would be to do smaller-sized growth projects, smaller relative to the large projects that we've undertaken in the past, that really generate strong returns and meet our overall investment criteria.
Yeah, Rob, maybe if I could just add on to that. I mean, the great thing is, you know, we're in a great position where we have, we think we have a lot of great growth opportunities ahead of us as well. You know, we'll certainly try to balance both priorities of returning capital to shareholders, but also continuing to grow our fee-for-service cash flow, as Eileen said, with some really great projects, and that will drive future dividend growth in the future.
All right. Appreciate that. Maybe as a follow-up question, just in terms of the growth backlog, you know, you've been a little capital constrained here for while the KAPS is being constructed. You know, do you have a, you know, maybe a laundry list of smaller growth projects that you could quickly move on? Or, you know, should it take some time to, you know, backfill the growth backlog? I guess, you know, second to that would be, you know, what opportunities seem the most attractive to you right now?
Yeah, that's a great question, Rob. You know, our first priority this year is, as Eileen said, is that we obviously wanna get KAPS online and we're well underway on that front, so really great to report that. You know, I think it's a for this year, at least, it's a, it's a great year for us to focus on our base business and to, you know, make sure that we capture a lot of low-hanging efficiencies, not necessarily with, you know, investing incremental capacity, but it's just making the most of what we have. There's a long lead time. You know, I look over at Jamie and his team and, there's a long lead time to projects. You know, we do have a number of projects that we're looking at that we're doing engineering FEED on.
You know, we've talked before about the potential for a fractionation bottleneck. You know, we think that to be able to add frac capacity in increments is a lot better for our business in terms of us being able to contract, you know, that capacity up as we go. We also see the potential to add more G&P capacity, especially in our Montney area, and also the potential for Zone 4 on, onto KAPS, which would connect us to the, towards the BC border. Those are some of the initial sort of things that we're looking at. On top of that, we have a lot of exciting projects that we see for our longer term future in the heartland that relate to helping to enable energy transition projects.
Again, we see a very exciting, you know, future for us in terms of projects that we could add to enhance our integrated value chain.
Thank you. Appreciate the color.
Thank you.
Your next question comes from Robert Kwan from RBC Capital Markets. Robert, please go ahead.
Great. Thank you. Good morning. If I can just kind of come back to this notion of the cash flow inflection point and follow up on a few things. You know, Eileen, you talked about smaller size projects. Can you just talk about what range you're thinking about? Then does the construction timeline, how much does that factor into whether you want to pursue it? Just, I guess, starting with that.
Yeah, thanks, Robert. It's kind of what we said at our investor day. It's very consistent a year ago. We're in that CAD 300 million-CAD 400 million type of project range is what we would, you know, be looking to spend. Again, you know, in terms of what those projects are, they have to meet our investment criteria. The returns, in particular, the quality of cash flow, those are all of the things that we're looking at. Yes, there is lead time. As to Dean's point earlier, those things, those projects are being, you know, envisioned today in order and all the FEED work before they get sanctioned.
Yeah, Robert, if I could add, I mean, I think the point we're making is that with KAPS, we now have a fully integrated system out of the Montney Duvernay area. You know, KAPS was a CAD 2 billion gross pipeline and a CAD 1 billion net to Keyera. That consumes a lot of resources, you know, company-wide. Certainly we do not see any projects of that, anywhere near that magnitude in the future for us. Now we're just adding on and complementing the integrated value chain that we already have. Also mention, you know, we talked about our integrated value chain from the Montney, but we also have a fully integrated Montney, sorry, a fully integrated system from the Deep Basin as well.
As we see more growth in our basin, you know, we have essential infrastructure that will help enable that growth.
Great. Thank you. Just in terms of the ensuring financial strength before you kind of go to capital allocation or new investment, how are you looking at that number? You exited the quarter 2.6x that EBITDA, so that's, you know, at the bottom end of that 2.5x-3x range. That's also on elevated marketing. Where do you need to be, you know, to be comfortable to really start putting capital either out the door for building up that growth pipeline and/or buying back stock?
Robert, yes. We expect to remain within that range. You're absolutely right that, you know, we're on the lower end, just given the higher marketing contribution. As we look forward and even with that more of a base marketing guidance, we expect to, you know, our capital program will adjust so that we are within that 2.5x- 3x range. That's where I'd say that CAD 300 million-CAD 400 million is very comfortable to remain within that, within that range.
Okay. That's perfect. I'll just finish with a quick one here. KFS, the guidance was 11x acquisition multiple. Just wondering how you're tracking now that you've got into the new contract year. Are you kind of still tracking that 11x or are you doing a little bit better here?
Yeah, certainly. I mean, it's early days. We closed that acquisition in February. You know, as we've been saying is that, you know, the frac market is very tight. Having access to that available frac and storage capacity in particular is helping us to leverage our overall value chain. I would say that acquisition is working out very well and well within our guidance that we provided earlier.
That's great. Thank you.
Thank you.
Your next question comes from Robert Catellier from CIBC Capital Markets. Robert, please go ahead.
Good morning, everyone. I had similar questions to the first two Robs, but maybe I'll come at it from a different angle here. My question is, now that you have the additional interest in KFS and KAPS is being placed into service, is there an argument for a higher long-term marketing guidance?
Yeah, I mean, you know what, we're very. That's a very good question, Rob. You know, what I would say is that with every asset that we add to our business, our marketing team, it allows them to access more barrels so that we're a volume times margin business. The more barrels that they get to touch, the more margin they generate. Assets like KAPS over the long term is gonna help us generate more marketing, and that drives higher return on capital corporately. You know, it's something that we continue to monitor. Obviously, we've seen some very exceptional iso-octane margins.
You know, we're capitalizing on that. It's something that our team is continuing to evaluate, and at the right time, we'll come back and revise our guidance when appropriate. Obviously, over the last several years, we've well outperformed our base guidance. I think our five-year average is in the CAD 340 range, CAD 340 million range, versus the CAD 250 million-CAD 280 million range. It just demonstrates the strength of that business, certainly under good conditions.
Okay. Just to follow on there, what contracting updates can you provide on KAPS now that it's mechanically complete and, you know, you have KFS as well, and the Blueberry River First Nations land agreement has been achieved?
You know, Rob, I was waiting for you to ask that question. No, it's a very, very relevant question and, you know, what I can say is that we are in active discussions with a number of producer customers. First of all, I'd say that, you know, we welcome Stonepeak as our new 50% partner. Obviously that process dragged on for a long time. We're finally able to work with our new partner and our early interactions with them have been very positive. They're very motivated to work with us to fill this pipeline. That's great. We have a lot of meetings scheduled with them coming up here.
What I'd say is that, you know, our producer customers are really expressing, you know, the understanding of the value of having redundancy. You know, if you, if you spend CAD billions of dollars or CAD hundreds of millions of dollars developing an area and you have only one way, one means of transportation, sometimes that puts you at operational risk. You know, for those reasons, for competitive reasons, you know, we're certainly very confident that we're gonna get our fair share of volumes on KAPS. I would also say we have the advantage of having a new pipeline as well. We have a very competitive integrated system. Again, with our recently acquired volumes or frac capacity at KFS, that's helping us leverage that whole integrated value chain, including KAPS.
you know, I'd also say that from a broader perspective, we're very bullish in terms of the basin, in terms of where natural gas volumes are going. Globally, LNG is gonna continue to grow in demand, and we know that we're gonna see, you know, LNG Canada coming in, come online in a couple of years, and also more expansions on the NGTL system into the U.S. With that, we certainly believe volumes will grow, NGL volumes will grow, and we'll get our fair share of that. With all that, I do also wanna point to our 6%- 7% fee-for-service EBITDA growth. KAPS is certainly a part of that. That's gonna help us achieve that 6%- 7% growth out to 2025.
Also wanna, you know, reinforce that KAPS will also contribute right to the end of the decade and continue to grow. Again, we're very confident on our contracting on KAPS, and we'll provide an update when appropriate.
Okay. Last one for me then, just on the capital allocation. How does Tuck In M&A fit with the capital all-allocation strategy, and how would you characterize the pipeline? Is there anything... Is it robust, or is it, are you pretty much focused on organic growth?
No, I mean, you know, I don't think we're any different than any other company. I mean, we have assets that we covet that would be very complementary to our business and, you know, we remain consistent with our messaging, which is it has to be strategic to our business. It has to be value accretive to our shareholders, and it has to be within our debt leverage parameters as well. Those are the three boxes that we need to tick and we definitely see some opportunity. It's just a question of, you know, can you pry stuff loose at the right price?
Okay. Thanks, everyone.
Thank you.
Your next question comes from Linda Ezergailis from TD Securities. Linda, please go ahead.
Thank you. With the quite constructive iso-octane fundamentals, I'm wondering, if you've kind of, sharpened your pencil a little bit on the merits of potentially, twinning AEF, if so, would there be an ability to contract it to a certain extent? What sort of advantage would a brownfield expansion have over greenfield?
Thanks for the question, Linda. I'll turn that over to Jamie.
Yeah. Thanks, Linda. You know, really good question. You know, we've often looked at twinning AEF. Really the approach that we've been taking and being relatively successful at is, you know, just increasing the capacity of that facility in smaller pieces and phases rather than doubling that facility. More cost-effective and lower risk. You know, we did some stuff at the last turnaround that we have just conducted a performance test on, and we're assessing those results, and they look positive at this point. You know, it's, we're not doubling the capacity, but it's a, it's a meaningful increase, as it pertains to the capabilities of those assets. Hopefully that answers your question.
Yeah, Linda. To Jamie's point, if you look at our volume utilization, which we do publish in our quarterly reports. You'll see over time that our volumes that we've been performing at have been increasing over time. As Jamie said, a lot of that is just a relentless focus on reliability at that facility, which again, we're looking for just higher overall production over a four-year cycle.
Thank you. Just to follow up, your marketing business did quite well with liquids blending. Can you provide more context around that opportunity and whether it might continue? Might there be changes related to the Mainline settlement changing things, or TMX coming online or any other dynamics that might shift around what's going on in that market?
You know, Linda, what I would say overall in terms of our marketing performance, I mean, obviously a lot of it is driven off of our iso-octane business. On top of that, I mean, it's a, it's a physical business, so we do make, you know, margin off of each one of our products, propane, butane, condensate. What we found is that there's a lot more volatility in markets and also dislocation of markets, and we have the assets to take advantage of those dislocations. We've actually been able to enhance our marketing cash flows over the last several years because of that.
If you even look back to 2020, I mean, we had a very strong year in 2020, partly because of our hedges, but also because there's just a lot of product that got displaced. Again, we have the physical assets to take advantage of it. I wouldn't pin it on one particular commodity outside of iso-octane, which has been very strong. It's just, you know, again, we have the physical assets, the logistics expertise, and the marketing expertise to make incremental income. You know, Jamie, if you wanna add anything else to that.
The only thing I'd add, Dean, is that that's where the storage that we acquired through the acquisition, at KFS really, has come to bear in Q1, and we expect that to continue to be the case going forward.
Thank you.
Your next question comes from Ben Pham from BMO. Ben, please go ahead.
Okay. Thanks, and morning. Let me just start with KAPS now that it's flowing volumes. Can you talk about some of the value drivers going forward? You got the volumes ramping, new contracts potentially. You get the Zone 4, then you got potentially contracting on the upstream and downstream side of things. I'm wondering, like when you think of those three areas of value enhancement on KAPS, is it all related together in terms of working in fashion, or are they working separately? How do you think about how those three play out from more of just a, maybe not necessarily a timing perspective, but what goes first and what goes next?
Yeah. Ben, thank you for the question. If I think I understand your question, it's really how we enhance KAPS and how that also fits into future growth relating to KAPS. Let me just take a stab at answering that. If I'm not answering your question, please ask your question again. First of all, you know, our primary priority is to go and contract more barrels on KAPS. Again, as I said earlier, you know, we see some very good opportunities to do that for all the reasons I described. From what we're seeing in Northeast BC, with the Treaty 8 and the Blueberry First Nations, we think that all those advancements are very positive.
I think there's still room to grow in terms of further definition on how certain elements of those agreements. We feel very good that it's progressing in the right direction. With that, and also with LNG Canada coming on in the next 2 or 3 years, you know, we certainly see more volume growth in BC. With that, again, for the same reasons why producers want a competing system in Alberta, we see, you know, sort of that same sentiment in BC. You know, Zone 4 is going to be dependent on, again, the confidence of the producers in BC, stepping up to commit to contracts on that system.
For us then to connect towards the Alberta border to collect some of those volumes. On our downstream business and, you know, like I say, we're an NGL business and we're a volume times margin business, so the more volumes that we attract to our downstream, you know, frac storage marketing business, is very positive for Keyera overall. That could potentially lead to, you know, more frac capacity additions beyond just the debottleneck. Again, it could mean more rail egress, pipe egress and more marketing contributions. Overall, we view it as a positive to our entire integrated business.
Okay. And maybe a follow-up on that, Dean, is do you, do you need to secure more contracts on the base KAPS before seeing solidification of Zone 4 or debottleneck downstream?
Those are separate decisions. Like, you know, Zone 4 has to stand on its own economics. You know, we're driving to, you know, again, add volumes onto zones 1 to 3. Zone 4 is a totally separate decision.
Okay. That's what I was kinda getting at in terms of how those three things are playing the... if it's in a linear fashion or not. Okay. Thanks for that. Then maybe on the marketing side of things, can you maybe provide an update on how you're thinking about the hedging? I know you had some disclosure in terms of hedging positions. Can you maybe provide context even of how you hedge versus last year directionally? Maybe start there.
Sure. I'll turn that over to Jamie.
Yeah, Ben. Our risk management program, we've been very consistent over the years on how we apply it. We're very disciplined in that regard and we don't let market volatility or sentiment get in the way of our discipline in that regard. You know, as in previous years, we're very comfortable with respect to our execution on our risk management program. The guidance that we provided is reflective of the, of our risk management program in place right now. Certainly, you know, as we progress throughout the year, we'll be very patient. We're in a good position to be patient around executing that hedging program for the remainder of the year and also into 2024.
Okay, great. Maybe one last one on LI on the quarter specifically and the record results. Can you provide more context to what percent of that business is take or pay, more reminder on that? Was it mostly the railing that created a bit of juice in the quarter?
Thanks, Ben. I would say our take-or-pay, the way we've disclosed it is as a total, including marketing and when marketing is outperforming. Of our realized margin, our take-or-pay is in that 40% range of our overall realized margin. Certainly in the liquids infrastructure segment on its own, that percentage is much higher. As we bring on KAPS where the contracts are 75% take-or-pay, again, that overall take-or-pay on an absolute basis just continues to grow.
Okay. All right. Thank you.
Thank you.
Your next question comes from Andrew Kuske from Credit Suisse. Andrew, please go ahead.
Thanks. Good morning. If maybe we could just do a little bit of a refresh on your rail business because the logistics element of what you do is so important. And maybe just give a perspective of, you know, where you are on movements today, utilization, and then prospects for the future because you've had a number of land acquisitions over the years that gives you a lot more flexibility for potential expansions.
Yeah. Andrew, it's Jamie. Thanks for the question. Yeah, like as Dean alluded to earlier in the call, our logistics, our rail fleets, our relationships with third parties, and the flexibility that creates for us is really integral to our execution on the marketing side of our business. I can share with you, we actually had record rail movements in Q1. I think to Ben's previous question is that's one of the reasons why the LI fee for service outperformed was that we saw significant rail movement, not only exporting primarily propane that we would traditionally see in Q1, but also railing in condensate into Alberta and taking advantage of our Alberta Diluent Terminal that we have up in the Edmonton area.
You know, the way we look at it from a rail perspective is, it creates the most flexibility to hit the highest value market. You know, last year with propane, for instance, you know, we see opportunities to hit markets in North America rather than the West Coast, which, you know, was lagging, opportunities that were driven out of Europe. You know, it's a great observation, is that our rail fleet is, and the terminals that we have, and have access to in markets, that we don't necessarily need to own, but we have, either a commercial contracts with or relationship, really does set us apart from some of our competitors.
Yeah. Maybe if I can just add to Jamie's comments, again, rail is very important, probably more important, in our basin than people recognize. We all know that Alberta or Western Canada is a supply-based basin. We're very rich in resources, but we have to export our volumes. A lot of them have to actually leave the province. You need to have a very efficient logistics, you know, capabilities to be able to export that on a cost-effective basis. We have 5 rail terminals that are pipeline interconnected. You know, at times when you might have an issue because of a strike or something may happen at one facility, might be on CN or CP.
We have the ability to, you know, move those volumes down one of our pipes to a different facility so that we can continue to move volumes on an uninterrupted basis. That's the flexibility that we have in our system and which is also why it's an advantage from a logistics perspective.
Appreciate that color. Maybe just as a follow-up, your business has really been conventional hydrocarbons. You know, to what degree do you see opportunities in clean fuels?
I mean, that's a really great question. I mean, the way we look at our business, the services that we provide to the conventional hydrocarbon business. You need the same kind of services to enable, you know, low carbon products as well. You know, low carbon fuels or products would need feedstocks, they would need pipeline transportation, they need truck and rail logistics. They would need above ground, below ground storage, all services that we have core assets and capabilities. We believe that our business is very sort of transferable and translatable to the energy transition. We'll certainly play our part in helping to enable those projects here in Alberta.
Okay. Appreciate the time. Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Ladies and gentlemen, as a reminder, should you wish to ask a question, please press star followed by one. Your next question comes from Patrick Kenny from National Bank Financial. Patrick, please go ahead.
Thank you. Good morning. Just looking at where forward AECO prices are settling here through the summer. Not sure where you're at in terms of renegotiating some of your processing contracts across your Deep Basin plants. Just curious if you're still able to claw back some of those higher fees that you'd lost through the pandemic just based on liquids content. Have you experienced somewhat of a pause in resetting those rates for now, at least until gas prices firm up again, you know, perhaps in the back half of the year?
Thanks for the question, Pat. It's a good question. I mean, obviously, we've seen AECO prices fall from the highs of last year that we saw last year that, you know, broke CAD 7. Overall, we are recontracting volumes. We continue to recontract volumes, particularly in Central Alberta. If you look at our volume profile there, a lot of our gas plants are pretty full, so much higher utilization. I'd also point out that, you know, if you look at our AIF, you know, the nameplate capacity that some of those facilities aren't what the, you know, what they can actually run at because it's a different composition of gas than they're originally designed for. We're operating at very high utilizations.
Again, you know, there's high demand in that area. What I'd say is that what's different about today versus, you know, 3 or 4 years ago, is that producers are in a much stronger position. Their balance sheets are very strong. The economics in the Deep Basin in particular, are still very strong CAD 2 natural gas prices. They can still make a very high return in that area. You know, what we see is maybe a moderation of growth, but we certainly don't see, you know, big declines in the Deep Basin like we saw, like I say, a few years ago.
When you think about the medium to the long term, you know, as I said before, we're very confident about growth in the basin. Personally, I think that it's more sustainable if that growth happens, you know, maybe in a more linear fashion as opposed to everybody drilling their brains out for a 6-month period and driving service costs through the roof. It's more sustainable for our business and the amount of, you know, skilled laborers that we have to drive that growth in our basin. Overall, I don't think it's a bad thing that, you know, we have a bit of a pause in terms of the high nat gas prices. Again, we still see continued growth through our facilities.
Okay. That's great color. Thanks for that, Dean. Maybe just back to the wildfires, might be too early to say, but just wondering if the situation could put the timing of your Pipestone expansion coming into service later this year at risk, or if there could be any other slippage across your capital plan, either growth or maintenance activity that was planned here for Q2.
Yeah, thanks for the question, Pat. It's Jarrod here, and we're not seeing anything like that. You know, it's certainly been a very unfortunate circumstance. As you've seen, some of our plants have been affected, but the Pipestone area hasn't been. There's nothing so far that's impacted the timing on that expansion. We're still on track to start that up in Q1 2024. Nothing else that materially affects our remaining capital plans either. We're in good shape.
Maybe just to add on to Jarrod's comment. I mean, our only facility in the north that we shut down, again, as a precaution, was our Wapiti facility, and it is back up and running today. It's almost back up at, you know, the rates before we shut it down a few days ago.
Okay, great. Thanks for that. glad to hear everybody's safe. Thank you.
Thank you, Pat.
There are no further questions at this time. I'll turn it back to you.
Thank you all once again for joining us today. Please feel free to reach out to our investor relations team with any additional questions you may have. Thanks.
Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes your conference call for today. We thank you for participating and ask that you please disconnect your line.