Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Rockpoint Gas Storage Fourth Fiscal Quarter and Year-End 2026 Webcast and Conference Call. I would now like to turn the call over to Rahul Pandey, Manager of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.
Thank you, Operator, and good morning, everyone. With me today are Toby McKenna, CEO, Jon Syrnyk, CFO, and other members of the senior leadership team. We will begin the call with some prepared remarks from Toby and Jon, after which we will open the call for the Q&A session. In order to accommodate as many questions as possible, we kindly request to limit your questions to one plus a single follow-up if necessary.
Our Investor Relations team will be readily available following this call for any additional follow-up questions you may have. Further, I would like to remind listeners that some of the comments and answers that we will provide 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. In addition, we will refer to some non-IFRS financial measures. For additional information on non-IFRS measures and forward-looking statements, please refer to Rockpoint's public filings available on our website or SEDAR+. With that, I'll turn the call over to Toby.
Thanks, Rahul. Good morning, everyone. Let me start by reflecting on fiscal 2026, which was another milestone year for Rockpoint as we continued to execute our commercial strategy, expand our stable fee-for-service cash flows, and delivered record financial results. Safety remains at the core of our culture. I am proud to share that for the fourth consecutive year, we achieved lost time incident frequency of zero.
From a financial perspective, we delivered record annual Adjusted EBITDA and distributable cash flow. Our stable fee-for-service annual gross margin increased 7% year-over-year, driven largely by 26% growth in our long-term take-or-pay business.
Shifting to shareholder return, sustainable competitive dividend growth continues to be one of the central pillars of our total shareholder return proposition. Today, we announced 5% quarterly dividend increase, which is at the upper end of our long-term dividend growth target of 3%-5%.
This increase is underpinned by the continued strength of our fee-for-service businesses and reflects our confidence in the quality, resilience, and long-term cash flow growth while maintaining a conservative payout ratio. In addition to the dividend, we also continue to evaluate opportunities to return additional capital to shareholders.
During the quarter, we received approval from the TSX for an NCIB, and this provides us with added flexibility within our broader capital allocation framework to opportunistically repurchase our shares to drive incremental DCF per share creation. Now, let me shift to the fiscal 2027 take-or-pay contracting season, which is now concluded.
Overall, the contract rates and terms were consistent with our expectations across both operating regions. In Alberta, take-or-pay volume growth remained robust, reflecting early-cycle strengthening in natural gas storage demand fundamentals. Meanwhile, in California, long-term natural gas fundamentals remained strong, supported by a highly constrained infrastructure environment.
California take-or-pay volumes remain in line with the past three years. While the renewal activity was healthy in California, a third consecutive mild winter prompted customers to maintain rather than increase their contracted volumes at prevailing contracted rates. Across both regions, we remained focused on contract quality and pricing discipline, prioritizing long-term value creation over exclusively pursuing take-or-pay gross margin growth.
While year-over-year contracting may exhibit some variability due to short-term market dynamics, we remain confident in delivering our take-or-pay gross margin contribution target of 60% over the medium term. Looking ahead to fiscal 2027, we anticipate another strong year supported by constructive market fundamentals and rising energy market volatility.
Let me take a minute to walk you through some near-term market dynamics that are in play. First, natural gas inventory levels remain elevated following a relatively mild winter across western North America.
This backdrop is supportive of favorable seasonal spreads for our business. Second, natural gas production growth is expected to continue, driven by ongoing oil and NGL-targeted drilling in a multi-year high oil and NGL price environment. This dynamic is putting downward pressure on near-term gas prices and in turn enhancing seasonal spreads.
Third, volatility across North American energy markets continues to rise, reinforcing the growing insurance value and strategic importance of natural gas storage infrastructure. Factors which are expected to heighten regional volatility include an anticipated Super El Niño weather pattern this coming winter, which could disrupt regional supply-demand balances and alter power load dynamics.
At the same time, elevated wildfire and drought risks across western North America could lead to temporary production shut-ins and operational disruptions. All of this supports the increasing insurance value of natural gas storage and expands the opportunity set for our optimization business.
While these near-term dynamics are important, the constructive long-term fundamentals and our advantage market positions continue to be the cornerstone of our value proposition. The role of natural gas storage infrastructure has significantly evolved in the last decade. Historically, storage primarily served the seasonal balancing needs between summer and winter months.
Today, with growing LNG exports, increased renewable integration, rising electricity demand, and natural gas storage infrastructure is increasingly relied upon to dampen system volatility, limit price spikes, and support renewable intermittency. At the same time, there's a growing mismatch between natural gas production and storage capacity growth.
Over the last decade, the natural gas to storage to production ratio across Canada and the U.S. has shrunk by approximately 1/3. The effects of this imbalance are even more pronounced today, given tighter energy markets and increased system volatility.
Looking ahead, between 2025 and 2030, natural gas demand in the U.S. and the WCSB is projected to increase by 21% and 19%, respectively. Based on third-party projections, that growth could reach upwards of 30% when extending the outlook to 2035.
For Rockpoint specifically, we operate in two of North America's most attractive natural gas storage markets, each offering strategically complementary characteristics and meaningful portfolio diversification. In Alberta, where approximately two-thirds of our natural gas capacity is located, we believe that the market is still in the early phase of a multi-year rate expansion environment.
We continue to observe increasing system volatility driven by rising LNG exports, power demand, and the emergence of large-scale data center development. With approximately 20% of Alberta capacity under long-term take-or-pay contracts, this region has the potential to be a significant engine of take-or-pay gross margin growth for the company.
In California, rate expansion is in a more mature phase, with approximately 70% of capacity under long-term take-or-pay agreements. The state has a dual peak demand profile, highly constrained infrastructure, and is a top three consumer of natural gas, despite having virtually no in-state production.
As a result, California remains heavily dependent on imports, making storage infrastructure critical for system reliability and stability, underpinning the significant scarcity value of our assets in long-term contracted cash flows.
With limited large-scale new storage capacity additions planned, we believe these dynamics support durable multi-decade fundamentals and sustained demand for Rockpoint's services. Against this backdrop, we continue to advance a portfolio of capital-efficient brownfield growth projects. Let me highlight two of our in-flight initiatives. Today, we announced the sanctioning of our Warwick Battery Storage project.
This 11-megawatt project is expected to cost CAD 14 million, is anticipated to enter service in the second quarter of 2028. We're also advancing working gas capacity expansion at our Warwick facility. This project will add up to five BCF of incremental capacity, enhancing our ability to meet growing consumer demand.
Subject to timely approval, we expect the project to begin generating revenue in the third fiscal quarter of 2027. Finally, I want to briefly touch on the broader strategic importance of North American energy in global markets.
The importance has not only intensified in light of the ongoing geopolitical disruptions in the Middle East, which has severely constrained global energy supply chains. Countries across Asia and Europe are increasingly looking to diversify and strengthen their energy security by turning to North American supply.
At the same time, energy demand is accelerating in North America against a very constrained infrastructure system, structurally driving volatility higher. As a result, we believe the role of our assets in balancing and supporting evolving energy demand has never been more important. With that, I'll turn the call over to Jon to provide us with the financial update.
Thanks, Toby. Good morning, everyone. Before I get into the financial results, I want to start with three quick reminders related to our reporting framework. First, Rockpoint reports on a fiscal year that ends March 31st. Therefore, we are reporting and discussing our fourth fiscal quarter and year-end for the period ending March 31st, 2026.
We take this approach to align with the standard operation of the natural gas storage business, whereby injections typically occur from April to October and withdrawals typically from November through March. Second, Rockpoint's functional and reporting currency is U.S. dollars.
As such, all reported figures are presented in U.S. dollars unless otherwise noted. Third, all quoted results reflect OpCo level performance on 100% basis, of which Rockpoint Class A shareholders hold a 40% ownership interest.
With that context, I'll now turn to our fiscal 2026 results, which represent a record financial year for the business. We delivered an annual adjusted gross margin of $459 million, up from $412 million in the prior period. This strong performance was driven by higher realized storage rates, underscoring the strength of our commercial positioning.
Adjusted EBITDA for the year reached a record $386 million, compared to $339 million last year, largely reflecting an increase in adjusted gross margin. Our distributable cash flow also reached an annual record of $252 million, up from $235 million in fiscal 2025.
Excess distributable cash flow will continue to be reinvested into organic capital projects, accretive strategic investments, and the potential repurchase of Class A common shares. Net earnings for the fiscal year totaled $207 million, compared with $209 million in the same period of fiscal 2025.
Excluding the compensation cost impact related to Brookfield's legacy long-term incentive plan agreements, net earnings would have been $259 million for the fiscal year. These costs were fully funded by Brookfield Infrastructure, resulting in no liquidity impact to Rockpoint or Class A shareholders.
Our stable contracted fee-for-service annual gross margin grew 7% year-over-year, supported by a record take-or-pay gross margin, which contributed 51% of our total adjusted gross margin, up from 45% last fiscal year. Now turning to our fee-for-service contracted revenue backlog.
As a result of recent contract activity, our revenue backlog increased to $947 million, up 6% year-over-year. This increase highlights the delivery of our contract execution strategy, provides strong visibility into future cash flow generation, and reinforces our long-term growth outlook. It's important to note we are achieving these results while maintaining a strong financial position.
We ended the quarter well below our long-term leverage target of three and a half times, with net debt to Adjusted EBITDA leverage of 3.1x on a trailing 12-month basis, reinforcing our commitment to financial discipline. This positions the company well to pursue and self-fund organic growth opportunities and other accretive capital allocation initiatives.
Further, we continue to reduce our cost of capital as a core component of our long-term financial strategy. Subsequent to the quarter end, we successfully repriced our $1.2 billion Term Loan B, reducing the spread by 25 basis points and delivering approximately $3 million in annual interest savings going forward.
Including the previous fiscal 2026 repricing initiatives, we have now reduced our borrowing costs by a total of 75 basis points, generating $9 million in annual recurring interest expense savings.
More broadly, this reflects strong lender confidence in Rockpoint's financial performance and ongoing credit quality enhancements. Lastly, we remain committed to delivering a competitive annual return of 15% over the long term.
Our total return profile entails three components. First, 5%-6% DCF growth driven by growing storage contract rates. Second, DCF growth of 4%-5% underpinned by continued investment in capital-efficient, high-return organic growth projects, as well as other alternative forms of return of capital. Third, an attractive dividend yield backed by conservative payout ratio. That concludes my remarks this morning. I'll now pass the call back to Toby.
Great. Thanks, Jon. We reported our record annual financial results and remain in solid financial position, giving us flexibility to deploy capital into value-accretive initiatives as opportunity arise. Rockpoint has entered fiscal 2027 with solid momentum. The macro outlook for our business environment remains very positive for three key reasons.
First, as global natural gas demand continues to grow, the role of natural gas storage in balancing supply and demand variations becomes increasingly more important. Second, our assets provide us with durable competitive advantage as they are large, strategically positioned, and fully integrated with key natural gas pipeline partners. Third, natural gas market volatility continues to grow due to the prevailing structural trends.
Looking ahead, we're excited about our journey to unlock long-term value creation for stakeholders. We're confident that our assets will continue to play an essential role enabling our customers to balance the growing and evolving energy needs of the communities in the regions where we operate.
On behalf of Rockpoint's board of directors and management team, I want to thank all of our stakeholders for their continued support and partnership. With that, I'll turn the call back over to Morgan for the Q&A session.
Thank you. We will now begin the question-and-answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star, then the number one on your telephone keypad now to raise your hand and join the queue. If you would like to withdraw your question, simply press star one again. Your first question comes from Maurice Choy with RBC Capital Markets. Your line is open.
Thank you and good morning, everyone. If I could start with the revenue backlog that you've mentioned. It's increased 6% year-over-year. I wonder if you could help us break down that by geography and maybe between TOP and SCS. How has this progressed versus your expectations and also since the IPO communication?
Thanks for the question, Maurice. I'll start with, I'll refer you to our MD&A where we do have a revenue backlog table, which does break down the backlog by region. We do show it for both California and Alberta. I'd say we are very pleased with the contract activity that we have incurred over the last 12 months, especially our fiscal 2027 take-or-pay open season.
In terms of rates and term, as Toby mentioned, that execution has been in line with our expectations. I think no surprises in terms of that revenue backlog. I'd just say, keep in mind that clearly, as you can see from the continuity tables we provide, it's just the ongoing role of what is realized in the period with the added contracted revenue across all contract terms going forward. For fiscal 2027, plus storage service.
Just a quick follow-up. Across both regions and across both types of fee-for-service, all four sub-sectors have been in line?
That's right. It equates to about the 6% in both regions, inclusive of short-term storage contracts contracted into fiscal 2027, as well as the take-or-pay, which is clearly longer term.
That's great. If I could finish off with California legislation. I believe there is a legislation that is advancing in the state, called ACA 9, which requires the Utilities Commission to consider affordability when setting utility rates. I don't believe this has a direct impact to your business since you have market-based rates, but just curious how you think something like this influences your growth thesis in California.
Thanks, Maurice. Yeah, I would say we continue to evaluate anything and all things happening on the regulatory front in California. We continue to maintain that our position with competitive rates still is the most essential way to service customers during the volatility and shortfalls that they have in their energy needs.
We feel continuously that our position with competitive market rates is the best position to possibly have in order to fulfill those services at their highest level. Not much has changed from our perspective in how we view our position in California.
We really appreciate folks' interest in wondering whether or not storage rates can continue to expand in such an environment where they're so short on ways to protect against energy volatility. It's our view that our position there remains robust.
We believe we still have quite a bit of upside, and we feel that our position is simply the best position that they could possibly have in order to handle the volatility and rising prices in that region.
That's it. Thank you very much.
Your next question comes from Rob Hope with Scotiabank. Your line is open.
Morning, everyone. The commentary in the prepared remarks, you mentioned that the Alberta market is still in the early phase of a multi-year rate expansion. Can you maybe add a little bit more color there? Are you seeing rates increase or is the expectation that, in the future with the, we'll call it a tightening environment that, the increased rates are around the corner?
Thanks, Rob. No, I think you're bang on. Firstly, we are witnessing an expansion in Alberta, particularly on intrinsic values this year. That's mostly occurring as a result of what I call overproduction, which I know many of you are familiar with, where producers are seemingly producing natural gas below variable levels, at least in conventional terms, due to the value of the liquids within the natural gas stream being at a premium.
That's obviously, typically as a result of high crude values. We are seeing an intrinsic expansion there. Broadly speaking, we also would share your view that, yes, we expect the Alberta market to continue to tighten as LNG comes on stream. As LNG Phase One ramps up, we are seeing impacts in both Alberta and British Columbia by disruptions of the commissioning activities.
We're also seeing a tightening of overall supply-demand fundamentals in the WCSB as a result of them as a new demand source. Looking a little bit further and not very far on the horizon, a multitude of new LNG projects are coming on stream.
We expect, as many do as well, that there will be a favorable announcement on LNG Phase Two probably before the year-end, which will have a significant knock-on effect on tightening supply-demand balances in the WCSB. Lastly, we just remind folks that we remain to have a fairly conservative forecast on growth in Alberta, despite what could realistically happen.
The Gulf of Mexico was an analog case study for us where 10 years ago, LNG came on stream, and within about two years, it had a very quick ripple effect across the natural gas storage industry, insofar as not only were these consumers exposing the industry to international pricing, but the way that they used natural gas storage is very different than conventional users who use it for seasonal balancing.
That utilization, coupled with disruptions due to the activity of LNG, coupled with the overall inelasticity to prices due to the value chain that they're protecting in their premium markets, led to storage roughly tripling over the past decade in the Gulf of Mexico. We believe we're in early innings here in the WCSB, and therefore, our remarks regarding a multiyear expansion is our thesis.
All right. Appreciate that color. Maybe a little bit more broader, good to see some progress being made on the Warwick expansions there. Can you maybe add a little bit of color on what you're seeing for the next phase of growth, whether that is further expansions in your existing assets or potentially something on the Gulf?
Thanks, Rob. Yes, since yo u're correct. We're pleased to provide some of those updates on our brownfield expansion projects. As a reminder, we have provided some indication of that brownfield capital to be deployed over the medium term of that $50 million-$150 million. We also have communicated that that will accelerate over this next three-year period.
We're very excited about the brownfield capital project advancement as it relates to our battery, as well as the Warwick expansion. We continue to target that four to six build multiple range. Battery being in that five to six for our business, for which we have a strong incumbent advantage with our in-place infrastructure we can leverage. The Warwick expansion, that's a really interesting one.
This is a great indication of just how accretive and quick to market some of these smaller capital-like brownfield projects can be, whereby a couple of CAD million of capital can turn a EBITDA revenue generation equivalent to about a one-year payback.
Again, we're excited to continue our advancement of our project pipeline of these brownfield projects. That remains our core focus as well as look to broader initiatives to, again, ultimately reinvest in the business in the most risk-adjusted, accretive way, as well as contemplating incremental returns of capital to shareholders.
Great. That's great. Thank you.
Your next question comes from Jeremy Tonet with JP Morgan. Your line is open.
Hi. Good morning.
Hi, Jeremy Tonet.
Just wanted to touch on some of the points you've made during the call with regards to the value of insurance moving higher. I was just wondering if you could walk us through, I guess, some of the data points that you see that support that or views on volatility. I guess, what are your models spitting out now versus where it was before that gives you the sense for insurance values moving higher?
Yeah. You're bang on, Jeremy Tonet. We continue to believe that volatility will continue to grow in the North American market. Our models are very similar to others. You have errors. When you're looking at volatility, there's two sort of data points that we mentioned to folks to potentially look at. Implied volatility being one, and then actualized cash volatility being the other.
Our assets are uniquely able to protect consumers against actual cash volatility, which is a very unique position. It's something that most people can't hedge, and therefore, the value of insurance tends to be in and around people's view of that cash volatility.
Ultimately, consumers are trying to protect against outsized or out-reasoned price movements. This winter was another reminder of what can happen in the North American market that now is connected to international markets.
The winter storm that came across the Midwest led to prices rising upwards as much as $70 per dekatherm. That was, in my career, an impossibility, given how much pipeline connectivity there was focused on the Midwest. Now, you look at what had to happen for those prices to only get to $70.
You ultimately had to effectuate movements from the Permian north to the Midwest, which meant you had to get to a point where LNG would shut in so that those folks could get the gas that was otherwise destined for Europe.
That's just one example of something that's new in the market. We continue to see more and more frequency of these events happening. A reminder of what happened in California, Oklahoma, Texas, two winters ago, and now we have this event in the Midwest.
Of course, with just continued international volatility, and now with LNG being physically impacted due to attacks in the Middle East, we just become more and more increasingly vulnerable as a continent towards price shocks.
Any time that we're going to get cold weather events or other operational events in North America is going to result in us having to compete in some form with supply chains in non-North American markets.
Therefore, it's our view that without meaningful storage expansion, with continued demand increases across North America, with lower than normal infrastructure servicing all of this demand, the tightening of the overall supply-demand balance will ultimately result in nothing except increased volatility. The way to protect against that increased volatility on a physical perspective, if you're a consumer of natural gas, is only through natural gas storage. Rockpoint, in our view, is well-positioned to be a leader in that regard.
Maybe just to add, in terms of our recontracting execution for our fiscal 2027, in California, we have seen broadly the same implied insurance value premium come through that we've seen over the last couple of years, which is very encouraging.
In Alberta, we have seen over the last couple of years that insurance premiums start to increase. We think that is an indication consistent with Toby's comments of a broader view from customers and participants of increasing gas demand and increasing volatility in the WCSB.
That's an encouraging indicator, as well as the fact that we are seeing new customers enter both regions, some of which being more operational in their use of storage, which again, compared to our customer base in California, as well as what we've seen in the U.S. Gulf Coast, those operational-focused storage customers who are looking to protect a much larger value chain and business, ultimately with storage services, are much more willing to pay that premium insurance component.
Got it. Yeah, that kind of gets to my second question here, just with these insurance values moving higher here and specifically as it regards to LNG Canada ramping up and the potential for future expansion there. Wondering how that has been impacting customer views here, and do you see this kind of trend continuing in the right direction?
Yeah. I mean, broadly, there's going to be short-term things that happen in the market, of course, that we acknowledge. This year, we look to be in an oversupply situation. Interestingly, that seems to be having an even bigger impact on natural gas storage than we maybe initially expected, where we're able to inject, for instance, even when we're near full at extremely low prices.
Bigger picture, just broadly, the competition for natural gas storage continues to grow. Operational users continue to come into the market. We really haven't touched much on AI data center demand, but there is an enormous amount of interest in data center demand in the WCSB, particularly Alberta, which is a jurisdiction that's been doing all that it can to attract those types of consumers.
We expect continued announcements in that sector, which will also increase natural gas demand, given that the reliability needed for power to supply AI data centers needs in part to come from natural gas, of course, in a region where natural gas is abundant. Yeah, LNG continues to grow.
The volatility that LNG creates in the market continues to have an impact on a multitude of consumers. LNG consumers themselves continue to have interest in expanding their storage capacity. You've seen some of those announcements by some of our competitors, for example.
One other thing that's happening in the market that is a little bit new to us, which I find really interesting, just based on my own experience, Jeremy is that we're seeing new consumers come from other regions into Alberta. As many folks know, the WCSB isn't just balancing supply-demand in its own region.
It's really balancing supply-demand in both the West and the Midwest, in addition to the East. With those markets also constrained, we're now seeing utilities, for example, in two cases this year, coming into Alberta and getting contracts from us to protect them downstream. That's a new trend that we're witnessing as well, that further reinforces our view that natural gas storage rates will continue to expand.
Got it. That's helpful. I'll leave it there. Thank you.
Thanks, Jeremy.
Our next question comes from Aaron MacNeil with TD Cowen. Your line is open.
Hey, good morning, all. Thanks for taking my questions. In the disclosures, you've highlighted a constructive setup for optimization with elevated inventories and wider spreads. I get that you can't really forecast all of this in advance, given its nature, but for the benefit of all of us here that are newer to the story, how do you think about the conditions that are currently in place for optimization versus prior years?
Again, I'd reinforce, optimization, again, as a reminder to folks on the line, and thanks for that, Aaron, is really only a small portion of our business. Roughly 15% is what we anticipate to generate in our optimization as a total amount of our revenue bucket. We don't typically offer any guidance there.
It's for our shareholders to determine whether or not they view enhanced volatility coming into the market. With that enhanced volatility, are we able to overshoot sort of conservative expectations? This year, I'm witnessing two or three nuances that, in my 30-year career, are new. That overproduction scenario that I speak of is one that we witnessed in Q3 of last year, where producers, in our view, produced below variable cost for a sustained period of time.
Models would indicate to us that they were near or even below variable cost. That led us to obviously believe that there has to be something else going on, which meant either they were benefiting immensely from the value of the NGLs within the natural gas stream, or is it even possible that those Montney and Duvernay wells are operationally very difficult to shut in due to the long-term impacts of that physical infrastructure.
This begs to the question for me is, this year where we witnessed already in early summer, we're only in June today, natural gas prices again below variable cost and in some cases on the forecasted curve for a sustained period of time.
Our view is that, typically, producers would shut in below variable cost, and that's a phenomenon that we witnessed and really was a competitor to natural gas storage for 20 or so years, especially during dry gas proliferation, the old days of Chesapeake, drill, baby, drill. They shut off as quickly as they drilled and acted in effect, as a competitive source against natural gas storage.
Today, we see sustained production coming on, and that production is less elastic, and it's less elastic mostly because of the NGL streams that it's targeting or the reality that it's associated gas from oil. Therefore, we're seeing potentially lower for longer phenomenons, and that is really interesting to us and something that we haven't forecasted. That's one nuance I would point to folks to try to understand a little bit better. We ourselves are doing the same.
In the meantime, LNG consumers, don't forget oil sands consumers, AI, data center demand, just enormous growth in the power network. The reality that reliability in power is becoming a critical importance to most regions that are trying to attract AI data center development, meaning partnerships are occurring between large scalers and even producers of natural gas in order to have stability in their power consumption.
These are all just really interesting trends to us. Really, given that we're in two really interesting regions, let's not forget, we're going to grow roughly up to 20% of new demand in the WCSB from LNG demand alone. We're also seeing expansions, as many of you are aware, in Fort Saskatchewan. ATCO and TransCanada have announced a variety of looping expansions on their networks. AI data center demand, from our perspective, is in early days.
We expect new announcements coming this year that are going to further reinforce the long-term price environment for natural gas storage. All of these things are adding up. Down south, let's keep in mind Costa Azul, a really interesting new project on the West Coast of Mexico that's competing with the very gas that services Southern California, further reinforcing demand for natural gas, in that part of the state, which we're directly connected to.
Just broadly speaking, without the ability of natural gas expansion to occur on a meaningful scale for many reasons that we've discussed in the past. We envision that the pool of natural gas storage relative to the North American supply chain will continue to shrink, and therefore, our long-term view of volatility is very high. In the short term, it's mostly impacted by weather.
Right now we're seeing, obviously, really strong storage inventory levels in North America. We're witnessing this new Super El Niño event that's coming into the west that could drive forest fires and drought and other factors. All of this is just ultimately enhanced volatility, and we're really just the best place to protect against it. We love our position, Aaron, and if these prices lower for longer, if that's actually something that's sustainable, Rockpoint's well positioned to benefit.
Aaron, specifically on the optimization piece, we have carried over higher inventory than historical years, so about 27 million dekatherms of owned inventory carried forward into fiscal 2027. You can think of that as a positive because we now have ultimately more flexibility and optionality as it relates to either taking advantage of bullish or bearish factors in the gas price environment. As long as we have that withdrawal or injection rate available and gas in the ground, that's a valuable option for us to transact around and lock in incremental gross margin.
Appreciate all the detail there. That was great. Maybe switching gears a bit, and to sort of piggyback on one of Rob's questions. You've hinted at potential M&A in the past, as well as interest in the U.S. Gulf Coast.
As a pure-play public storage company, you're potentially an exit strategy for a lot of private storage players. Have you had inbound interest? Do you have a sense of what buyer and seller expectations are, and do you see a path to something that sort of checks the accretive strategic boxes and that is thematically relevant as well?
Yeah, I would say it's still early days, Aaron. Appreciate that. We have had a lot of inbounds and we've come across a lot of interesting opportunities. Natural gas storage tends to be owned by strategics, large integrated, in some cases regulated entities. To find low-hanging fruit that's accretive is reasonably challenging.
As you're aware, we still feel that most greenfield development in natural gas storage is very challenging, especially in depleted reservoirs, which is the prolific amount of storage in the WCSB and really across the northern part of North America.
Why we feel that the Gulf could be a place where there could be some storage development, like we guide you to someone like a Black Bayou, for example. There's an abundance of salt in that region.
That region also has a number of pipelines that have been announced as far as expansions go. Two of those attributes are critical in natural gas storage development. The fact that salt is way too small, but really offers high rate is a very great opportunity for LNG development specifically, where they're mostly looking for high rates of injection.
That's different behavior than a depleted reservoir that offers a large amount of working gas to balance supply demand on a broader scale. We think that the Gulf could have opportunities for us at some point. We like the region. It's a really favorable region to expand and develop. There's a lot of sophisticated consumers of natural gas.
Now that the pipeline development has started, and with AI data center expansion competing directly with LNG expansion, there could be a favorable environment there for us to participate in at some point. As far as overall M&A, we keep our eyes open.
We're excited about some of the opportunities that we're witnessing, but we'd offer no guidance there. It has to be the right situation. Extremely accretive and extremely low risk, and something that we'll keep an eye on, but it's just not top priority when these brownfield expansions have such a great rate of return.
Gotcha. Thanks, everybody. I'll turn it back.
Your next question comes from Patrick Kenny with National Bank Capital Markets. Your line is open.
Thank you. Good morning, guys. Toby, you stole most of my thunder on the data center front, but maybe you could just expand on perhaps some of the commercial milestones you might be looking to achieve on the back of phase I proponents sanctioning their projects here over the near term.
Also, if Phase Two is launched through the back half of the year, if you could just confirm, does that help you backfill up to the 60% take-or-pay contracting level, or is that perhaps an opportunity for you to exceed that 60% threshold?
Yeah. Thanks, Pat. Look, hard to know. Firstly, yes. The priority with LNG expansion is for us to continue to enter into long-term take-or-pay contracts for the majority of our storage services. That remains a priority. Should prices get to a point where it's better off for us to contract than participate through shorter-term services, certainly we would contemplate going beyond that.
Such has been the case at times, especially in our California portfolio. Broadly speaking, our target remains the same, getting to the 60% target. Broadly speaking, we do believe that the WCSB is the best-positioned basin for that expansion to occur, given the backdrop that we've mentioned, especially around LNG development. I think we can all agree that the recent acquisition of ARC by Shell reinforces the likelihood that a positive phase II sanctioning will occur imminently.
Beyond that, we are very keen to understand what AI data center demand will occur in the region and what type of demand it will create. We've noticed so far that the majority of AI data center demand has focused on natural gas-fired generation as a key contributor to servicing it due to the reliability of natural gas.
Even if we had five or eight or ten small-scale developments in Alberta, and even if they weren't connected to natural gas, ultimately the natural gas network is going to have to backstop the renewable network that continues to expand, not just here, but across other regions. Big picture, we're really excited about what this all means for storage rate expansions.
To the extent that folks are willing to pay a premium to enter into long-term contracts, we're certainly open for business, and we are obviously having those conversations today, as we've had over the past year or so. The pace of those discussions continues to ramp up with LNG development, particularly.
Okay, got it. Thanks. If I could just double-click on your comments around lower gas prices this summer, setting up for wider seasonal spreads. That all makes sense. I guess just in the context of the higher oil and liquids pricing environment, if you could just give us your thoughts on how discussions are going with the hedging community.
Are the producers still willing to layer on hedges like they had in the past or perhaps more willing to take a bit more of an open position given the rise in consolidated net backs? Just wanted to get your thoughts there.
Yeah, I wouldn't say I'm the expert on that one, Pat. We speak to producers, of course, because we're in the industry, but we're typically not a counterparty in any of their hedging activities. Similar to yourself, I get most of my knowledge really from what I read from your reports. I'd be just throwing it back at you, to be honest.
Big picture, we are witnessing a unique trend, and it's hard to deny. It's super interesting to me. I just don't know. The part that puzzles me a little bit isn't the economic piece, because I've always understood how supply-demand acts from an economic perspective. It's the physical part of the operations that's the puzzling part.
Will producers actually not shut in some of these wells, even if they're out of the money due to the physical characteristics of the well and the likelihood of either degrading or damaging the well, and can that contribute to overproduction beyond an economic case? That's an interesting one to me.
Big picture, it's hard to envision a bearish oil environment in the short term. There's been a lot of damage that's been done across the international markets for the obvious reasons that we all know.
It's our view that oil will probably stay higher for a while. NGL demand continues to grow similar to natural gas demand. With those NGL targets and with NGL exports also expanding in North America, that value chain continues to grow, putting ultimately downward pressure potentially on natural gas as producers aim for oil or NGL targets.
Associated gas is another one that we're attuned to. It's our belief that dry gas production is out of the money. Oil-associated gas seems to be a bit of a throwaway product that's impacting volatility on the downside of the equation.
What all this means to us is that typically in natural gas storage, we would expect volatility to occur mostly around cold weather events or operational disruptions that affect spiking natural gas prices. What's really interesting to us is that we're seeing an increasing frequency of events that are impacting volatility to the downside of natural gas.
We're seeing, at times, negative natural gas prices, and certainly when you're below $1 for a sustained period of time, that to us represents an interesting nuance in our markets and an opportunity, and one that we haven't forecasted to necessarily win from.
If you're a real big bear on natural gas, my view would be that Rockpoint is well-positioned to benefit from it. It's not an actual forecast that we ourselves would put together, but it's one that we can benefit from.
Okay, that's great, Toby. I appreciate all the comment.
Thanks, Pat.
There are no further questions at this time. I would like to turn the call back over to Rahul Pandey for any closing remarks.
Thank you all once again for your time, your interest, and for joining us today. We encourage you to contact our investor relations team with any additional questions you may have. We wish you a great rest of the day.
Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes your conference call for today. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect and have a wonderful rest of your day.