Good afternoon, everyone. We're gonna get started here. Welcome to the Annual General and Special Meeting of the Shareholders of Tidewater Midstream and Infrastructure. My name is Joel MacLeod, and I am the Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Corporation, and I'll be the chairman of this meeting. In terms of our agenda today, we will deal first with the formal business of our AGM as described in the proxy materials that were sent to shareholders. Following the formal part of our meeting, I will also take you through a corporate update/presentation, as you can see on the screen, where we continue to see strong outperformance of the business and expect this to continue into 2023. The presentation I will review following the formal business of the meeting is contained within our website.
Those of you who are on the phone line, you can take this time to access our corporate presentation now. After the presentation, as always, we like to open the floor up for questions, so please don't be shy. If any of you have any questions, please bring them forward, and we'll be pleased to answer any questions you may have. With that, the meeting will now come to order, and I ask David Barva, Chief Legal Officer and Executive Vice President, Shared Services of the Corporation, to act as Secretary of the meeting and Patricia Selby of TSX Trust Company to act as Scrutineer of the meeting. I now request the Secretary to table proof of delivery of the notice of meeting, instrument of proxy, management information circular, and accompanying documents to the registered shareholders of the corporation. Thank you, David.
Proof of mailing of the notice, calling the meeting and accompanying documents has been duly filed, and I direct a copy of the notice and proof of delivery to be kept by the Secretary with the records of this meeting. I would like to take a moment to discuss voting procedures. Voting will not occur over the phone line. Voting will be in person in the meeting room or by proxy duly submitted. Unless a ballot is requested in respect of any particular matter, voting will be conducted on a show of hands. We will have a ballot on certain matters to properly document the voting at the meeting. If you are a registered shareholder and have not received a ballot, please put your hand up and the scrutineer will provide you with a ballot for completion.
Any shareholder or proxy holder wishing to speak is requested to identify themselves and, when recognized by the chair, provide his or her name before addressing the meeting. Any shareholder who is on the phone line, please hold your questions until the end of the meeting when we open the phone line for questions. The by laws of the corporation provide that a quorum of shareholders is present at a meeting of shareholders if at least two holders of not less than 25% of the shares entitled to vote at a meeting of shareholders are present in person or by proxy. I have received the scrutineer's report showing that there are in attendance at this meeting in person or by proxy 174 shareholders holding 212,972,936 common shares.
Accordingly, the total representation at this meeting by shareholders present in person and by proxy is 62.307% of the common shares of the corporation. Therefore, I declare that there is a quorum present at this meeting. I now declare that the meeting is regularly called and properly constituted for the transaction of business. The first item of business of the meeting is to receive and consider the audited financial statements of the corporation for the year ended December 31, 2021, and the report of the auditor thereon. I ask the Secretary of the meeting to present the financial statements to the meeting. Thank you, David.
Copies of the financial statements and the report of the auditor thereon have been mailed to each registered shareholder, and they have had an opportunity to review these documents, so I request a resolution dispensing with the reading of the auditor's report.
Mr. Chairman, I move that the reading of the report of the auditor of the financial statement be dispensed.
That's okay. That's okay. Tina, go ahead.
I second the motion.
Thank you, Tina. Thank you, Doug. All those in favor, please signify in the usual manner by raising your right hand. All in favor? Thank you. Any opposed? Thank you. The motion is carried. Thank you, everyone. The next item of business is the fixing of the size of the board of directors to be elected at the meeting for the forthcoming year. It is proposed that the board of directors to be elected at the meeting shall consist of seven board members. I now request a motion to fix the board of directors at seven members. Okay.
I move that the board of directors of the corporation be elected at the meeting to be fixed at seven members.
I second the motion.
Thank you, Doug. Thank you, Tina. All in favor? Thank you. Any opposed? The motion is carried. Thank you. We will now proceed to the election of directors. Seven directors will be elected at this time to hold office until the next annual meeting or until their successors are elected or appointed. Oh, sorry. Go ahead, Doug.
I nominate the following individuals as directors of the corporation to hold office until the next annual election of directors or until their successors are elected or appointed, subject to the provisions of the Business Corporations Act and by the bylaws of the corporation. The following individuals, Joel MacLeod, Gail Yester, Douglas Fraser, Greta Raymond, Robert Colcleugh, Michael Salamon, Neil McCarron.
I second the motion.
Are there any further nominations? I now declare the nominations closed. All in favor of the election of those nominated, again, please signify in the usual manner by raising your right hand. All in favor? Thank you. Any opposed? Thank you. I now declare those nominated to be duly elected directors of the corporation to hold office until the next annual election of directors, unless their office is vacated or a successor is appointed in accordance with the bylaws of the corporation. The next item of business is the appointment of the auditor of the corporation. The information circular and the instrument of proxy prepared for the purposes of this meeting contemplated the reappointment of Deloitte LLP Chartered Accountants as auditor.
Could we have a motion with regard to the reappointment of the auditor until the next annual meeting, and could this motion provide that the auditor's remuneration be fixed by the board of directors?
Chairman, I move that Deloitte LLP Chartered Accountants be reappointed as auditor of the corporation until the next annual meeting or until a successor is appointed, and that Deloitte's remuneration be fixed by the board of directors.
I second the motion.
Thank you, Doug. Thank you, Tina. All those in favor? Thank you. Any opposed? The motion is carried. The next item of business is approve and adopt the ordinary resolution in relation to the approval of the unallocated restricted share units under the corporation's restricted share unit plan.
I move that the resolution, as more particularly set forth in the information circular prepared for the purpose of the meeting relating to the approval of the unallocated restricted share units under the corporation's restricted share unit, be approved and adopted.
I second the motion.
Thank you, Doug. Thank you. In order to record accurately the voting results of this resolution, it is necessary to conduct a vote on this resolution by ballot. Thank you, Patricia. I have received the report on the ballot from the scrutineer, and I declare that the ordinary resolution of shareholders regarding the approval of the unallocated restricted share units under the corporation's RSU plan has been duly passed. If any shareholder is interested in the exact number of votes cast in favor of or against any resolution, particulars may be obtained from the secretary of this meeting. The next item of business is the advisory non-binding shareholder vote on the corporation's approach to executive compensation.
Mr. Chairman, I move on an advisory basis that the shareholders of the corporation accept the corporation's approach to executive compensation as disclosed in the information circular.
I second the motion.
Thank you, Doug. Thank you, Tina. All those in favor? Any opposed? The motion is carried. If there is no further business to be brought forward at the meeting, I would ask for a motion to terminate this meeting.
I move to terminate the meeting.
I second the motion.
Thank you, Doug. Thank you, Tina. All those in favor? Thank you. Any opposed? The motion is carried. I declare the meeting terminated. Thank you, everyone. We appreciate your time. Now we'll take some time to run you through a business update and our corporate presentation. As always, please, if you have any questions after we're done the presentation, we're happy to answer any questions. If you're not comfortable in front of the larger group, feel free to grab us aside or even reach out to us after the meeting. Look forward to the presentation here and any questions anyone may have. With that, we'll jump right into it. To start, I think as always, we like to start by thanking our staff, our board, our customers, all our team members and all stakeholders.
Just a big thank you to everyone for all their efforts. It's been a heck of a ride through COVID. I think for us, we would be one of a very few select number of companies that delivered 12 consecutive record quarters through COVID, and it is something we're quite proud of, and that's a big thank you to our entire team for all their hard work. Again, I think to emphasize, you'll see with our Q1, we announced guidance as it relates to 2022, deconsolidated CAD 180 to CAD 190 million of EBITDA, and then on a consolidated basis, CAD 230 to CAD 245 million.
It's been great to see our business outperform, especially as crack spreads have moved up, volumes have also moved up, and just a heck of a job by the team. Don't be surprised if we would be fairly confident that we will continue to deliver that outperformance into 2023 and even to see our debt levels at this point in time to be under 3x debt to EBITDA. It's been 3+ years and sure feels good to see the outperformance of our business, our customers doing incredibly well and delivering that related cash flow. Slide five is peer comparisons. We're not gonna spend a lot of time on this slide. I think as most are aware, multiple continues to be quite attractive.
Even our growth rates, when we look at our larger peers, obviously, our growth rates, our payout ratios are extremely low. The free cash flow generation of the business is something that we're quite excited about here in 2022 and into 2023, and we'll get into some of the details here, in a few moments. To a map, we always like to kinda step back and update our shareholders in the market on activity in our various core operating areas. I think most are aware of Pipestone and the activity around Pipestone. Some recent statistics at Pipestone would be since January, we've seen over 200 wells be licensed in the Pipestone area. Definitely, the Montney is the focus, but I believe there was 25 to 30 Charlie Lake wells that have also been licensed.
Obviously, the majority is Montney liquids and gas, and for us to have our Pipestone gas plant fully contracted, running at CAD 102, CAD 103, CAD 10 4 million cubic feet a day. Again, our operations team's done a heck of a job out there, and we're definitely one of the leaders as far as operational efficiency and runtimes at the plant. When we look at kind of our priorities here over the next couple of weeks to couple months, number one is the refinancing of our notes, which is going extremely well. We've seen support from our credit syndicate to potentially see a credit facility bump here.
A big thank you to the credit facility, the credit syndicate. It is a result of the outperformance of our business here over the last 60, 90, 120 days. Really appreciate all the support from the credit syndicate, big focus and confident we will get our notes refinanced here in the next 30 days or so. The other key piece is our Pipestone phase two. We're not committed. We do not have FID yet, but we're sure as heck pushing forward, and it's definitely a priority and are confident that we will eventually get to a Pipestone phase two FID. We definitely have some work to do on both CapEx and then a full financing plan on Pipestone phase two. The activity of Pipestone is probably as active as we've seen it.
We definitely saw activity through COVID, through Pipestone, and it being one of the most economic areas in all of Western Canada. With some of the Blueberry issues that we've seen on the BC side of the border, we've seen some of the larger producers allocate capital into Alberta and specifically around Pipestone. Just great to see the activity, the support for a Pipestone phase two and/or potential other expansions. Then also, I think markers in the market as far as valuation of gas plants in that area. The KKR & Pembina joint venture was a great marker for helping value some of our assets definitely up in that Pipestone area when the multiple was in that 11.5x to 12x range. Just very helpful as we look at options to move Pipestone phase two forward.
Maybe we'll March down into the Deep Basin. That's down kinda in the bottom corner of slide six. Deep Basin activity is probably near a record high since Tidewater's inception. I think most of you are aware we're about seven years old. To see, I think we've seen 75 or so wells spud here since January 1, 2022. Groups like Westbrick Public Data would show they had been running four rigs. They're running three right now, but definitely at maximum activity levels or highs for them as far as activity. Even to see down by Ram River, the likes of Bonavista being extremely active, where we've seen nine wells licensed and/or spud here in the last few months. Just great to see the activity. Our plants are filling up.
That's driving some of our outperformance, Brazeau in particular, but even around Ram River, to see the activity that we're seeing. When you look at the gas price environment, we would never anticipate seeing CAD 7, CAD 8, CAD 6 AECO. Even as you look through to calendar 2025, calendar 2026 gas prices, even this morning, we're still over CAD 4.50 AECO for the next four or five years. It just sets up for, I think, incredible times for Tidewater Midstream and Infrastructure, gas processing assets, gas storage assets tied to our assets as well. Then we'll also jump into the refinery. All those pieces are key pieces that are driving the outperformance of the business. Slide seven, I think most of you are aware, we've had a real push to improve our customers and contracts.
Pipestone was definitely a big part of that, to have 10-year take-or-pay agreements, to be fully contracted and continuing to work with producers as we do look at a Pipestone phase two to continue to strengthen those customers and contracts. For us to have 80%+ of our volumes with minimum volume commitments, and that does include the refinery, given we have a five year offtake there with Cenovus, previously Husky, wanna continue to push to strengthen those customers and contracts. Slide eight, we get into, again, kind of our history, 12 record consecutive quarters, while also bringing down leverage. Nice to have our leverage in that 3x to 3.5 x range around Q1.
Today with our outperformance to see us around or slightly under 3x is again something we should be pretty proud of and don't wanna be back up in that 4x range. That's a hard guardrail for us today, 4x debt to EBITDA. Great again to be under 3x or right around 3x today with the outperformance of our business and looking forward to exploring some high rate of return capital projects. Slide nine, this is a new slide we put in. We thought it was important to just lay out the growth that we've delivered from inception through to Q1, and then with Q2 likely being another record quarter with our outperformance and just reflecting on what we've delivered over the last seven years.
Definitely, probably one of the highest growth rates in the industry and with consecutive quarters of growth, even in lower commodity price environments like COVID. We've seen some impressive numbers over the last seven years and do expect this to continue. Our renewables subsidiary, we won't spend a lot of time. I think just the key messages from our renewables subsidiary that we own 69% of, key markers would be we're also seeing outperformance down in the renewables side of the business. What's driving that? It would be diesel prices have been higher, so our canola co-processing that occurs within Tidewater Renewables. Our diesel prices have definitely increased more than we anticipated. BCLCFS values have also increased more than we anticipated, and great to see the outperformance within Tidewater Renewables.
The other key piece would be the used cooking oil collection acquisition is also outperforming and the renewables team is focused on more of those partnerships like we announced with Rimrock on RNG, but also Tallow Feedstock. Slide 11. I think most of you have seen this slide. It just reflects what is the value of that ownership in Tidewater Renewables, and you'll see it equates to roughly CAD 0.87 per share, CAD 300 million. Just trying to show it is a fairly significant portion of Tidewater Midstream as a whole and don't feel that that's being reflected in our share price. Again, this is more renewables. We're not gonna spend a ton of time on the renewables side of the business.
Our key pillars are renewable diesel project or RNG partnership and related project, and then hydrogen would be lower on the priority list. We probably will just spend a little bit of time given the size and scale of the renewable diesel project and given our 69% ownership in the entity. That project, I think most of you are aware, is CAD 235 million in gross capital. Key piece there is the government support. We received 275,000 BCLCFS credits. If valued at our IPO back in the summer, kinda roughly at CAD 375 a credit, that equates to about CAD 100 million. What we've seen since the IPO is credit values have gone up. You'll see publicly disclosed forward sales at CAD 425, CAD 478, and more recently, CAD 490.
That takes the value of that grant from CAD 100 million up to that CAD 120+ million-dollar range. Very helpful to have net CapEx of CAD 120 million on a project of that size and scale that we would be confident today would deliver CAD 100 million of EBITDA. Definitely the strongest economic project of size that I've ever been involved in my career. We have seen BCLCFS credit values be high, diesel prices be high, and then feedstock prices, even over the last few weeks, have come down. Our margins on that renewable diesel project have definitely improved since the IPO. The other piece would be the new Canadian Clean Fuel Standard credit, which we do expect to roll out in the coming months, which is another added piece of value to Tidewater Renewables.
Let's get back and focus on Tidewater Midstream, our core business, the volumes we're seeing, crack spreads, et cetera. Just wanted to kinda touch on Tidewater Renewables there quickly. Back to Tidewater Midstream, our core business, I think most of you are aware, natural gas processing, NGLs, and then crude and condensate with our refinery, where we continue to see, I would say, outperformance across all pieces of the business. What's driving the majority or the largest chunk of outperformance? It would definitely today be our Prince George Refinery. We continue to see record throughputs even through COVID, and then we'll get into the crack spreads, which have definitely exceeded our expectations here over the last 60, 90 days and will reflect some related charts. This is also a new slide.
Slide 18, we do feel we're approaching payout of the Prince George acquisition. We closed the acquisition back in November 2019, so we're about 2.5 years in, closing in on three years. The cash flow generation, especially in the last few months, is getting to a position where we're near payout, which we're pretty proud of. Main reason being we did take quite a bit of pushback when we announced the transaction. We do feel strongly it fits within our strategy. It offers an outlet for Montney C5 and light sweet crude, and even obviously, the economics, I think, speak for themselves and what the assets delivered. Here, as we get into crack spreads, you'll see our cash flow generation from the asset is way ahead of what we anticipated when we acquired the asset.
Here's some crack spread charts. We never wanna focus on a moment in time. What is our crack spread? We get a lot of questions from analysts, and the Canaccord team I know is in the room, great supporters. We get a lot of questions on what's your crack spread today versus yesterday, the day after. The crack spreads are getting to a level where we probably you'll see us focus on a range over a 30-, 60-day period. When we bought the asset, it was a CAD 43 to CAD 45 crack, would deliver 75 million of EBITDA. And that was back in 2019. To see crack spreads definitely north of CAD 100 a barrel or even if we sit in that $100 a barrel range on a 90-day average, resulting in.
I think you saw a small amount of that. You'll see in March is where we started to see crack spreads move up. Q1 definitely didn't have three full quarters of crack spreads moving up. Q2, the majority of Q2 has seen that move. As we look into Q3, we continue to see highs on crack spreads. Again, we're not planning for that, but we'll definitely take it and look at ways to continue to debottleneck the refinery and have those sub three, sub two-year payout type projects. Again, this is just another crack spread chart. Main thing we want you to focus on here is the lows, not the highs. Let's focus on kinda what happened in COVID. We announced the transaction November 2019. How did the market view that? I think there was a lot of questions.
COVID came three, four, five months after closing. COVID hit us, and that is definitely the best way to stress test the Prince George Refinery. You'll see we felt the crack spreads would hold in almost any scenario. We definitely didn't know what COVID would come and hit us, but you'll see that our margins held in that CAD 45+ range. We do view the Prince George asset as more of an infrastructure asset. I think it's shown what happens to margins when we get hit by COVID, and it definitely held versus Gulf Coast cracks. They went down into single digits. Then what we've seen, we did not expect. We definitely thought we'd see it move up, but definitely not to CAD 100+ a barrel.
Again, you'll see the biggest moves are really in the last 60 or so days. That'll impact Q2 and likely also be helpful and result in outperformance throughout 2022. We're even seeing that crack spread on forward curves in calendar 2023 and even into calendar 2024 start to get to near highs, which is quite exciting. It sets a path for the next 12, 24 months, a very strong free cash flow from our Prince George asset. Slide 21 is more activity, kind of Montney. What are we seeing within the Montney activity-wise? You'll see color-coded kinda last 12 months versus 2022, and we've definitely seen activity pick up. As you can see, it looks like a dartboard, and it's extremely active around our Pipestone asset.
Again, a big credit to our commercial and field teams to see how well we're operating and definitely leading and having run times of essentially 98%, 99%, 100% has been extremely helpful to receive customer support for future expansions. Slide 22, again, is just more of a zoom in. Again, just reflecting activity. Majority is Montney, but we continue to see Charlie Lake activity pick up as well. Slide 23, I think it's important to touch on the Deep Basin. This again is activity where historically Ram River, we would admit, had been pretty quiet. You'll see there's definitely more activity around Ram River than we've seen in a long time, and likely within even greater than the last seven years, and continue to see land sales, and material prices being played for land, but then also drilling activity.
Our core asset, the first plant we ever bought, at Brazeau River, built a fractionation facility, is definitely getting near being full, both the frac and the gas plant, where we are tied into our own storage as well. I think I missed that at Pipestone as well. One of the key pieces and attractive components of Pipestone is we have our own gas storage. We have a large storage pool there that Pipestone is directly connected to and offers essentially guaranteed egress for producers as it's also connected to both Alliance and TransCanada. Slide 24. Some would say our Edmonton asset's been fairly non-core and small, but it's always an asset that we are excited about around the next five, 10 years.
450 acres of land on CN Rail, where we have a rail facility. We have a licensed fractionation facility. We haven't built that, do not have FID, but are in a great position to expand if the market and/or if our customers wanted us to in an existing sour gas plant with carbon capture. We do have acid gas injection at Acheson, where we inject carbon today. Similar to Pipestone, we have acid gas injection where we do inject CO2 today. Our team, again, not a big focus on carbon capture, but we definitely have some of the best expertise probably in North America on operating amine units and stripping CO2 out of natural gas.
Exciting times definitely over the next five, 10 years, and exciting times for all of Western Canada as it relates to carbon capture. With that, I think we can wrap up and open it up for questions. Brian, Kent, David, any updates over the last little bit? Okay, Kent just gave us the thumbs up. We did get our press release out here in the last five or 10 minutes. There's nothing overly material, but I do think for the shareholders on the line and in the room, they probably appreciate just a quick summary of our press release. Our credit syndicate's been incredibly supportive, obviously working through a credit facility increase, which we continue to work through, and that's noted in the related press release.
We did get a waiver, so a 30-day extension on our related credit due to the note refinancing. I think the key messages in that press release are, one, outperformance of our business, which we walked you through, and two, the likelihood of a credit facility increase. I do wanna thank our credit syndicate again for all their support and excited to get through this refinancing and move towards a Pipestone FID. With that, I think I'll open it up for questions, and thank you everyone for making time today.
There are no questions at this time.
How are you? Good.
There are no questions at this time.
Sorry, we have a question in the room. Go ahead, sir.
Sorry, is that better?
I can hear you. I can hear you. You're good.
Are we going to be taxable?
Today, no. Mr. Beamer is in the room. I'll give you my best guess as to when we're taxable. I would say we're at least two, three years out. As to your point, as we see crack spreads where they are, definitely that's accelerated. I don't believe, Doug, what's our horizon? I'd say two to three years, depending on how much capital we deploy as well. If there was a Pipestone phase two in six months or one year, that would provide more pools. Then we're probably four, five years to be taxable. The negative of outperformance is we're generating cash and we're bringing in that taxable horizon. We're still, Doug, I think worst case scenario, two years out, likely case we'd be three, four years out. Really good question.
Okay. The next question is, are the producers going into Pipestone currently? Do they want phase two?
Yep. It's been crystal clear. If Reed was here and our commercial team was here, you'd say his phone's ringing every day for even 1 million cubic feet a day of space. There's definitely a lack of sour gas processing up at Pipestone, and there's definitely a need for sour gas processing up there. The customers, if Reed and team feel free to have a chat with some of the team members while you're here after. I think they'll tell you there's definitely a need for sour gas processing up at Pipestone right now.
One other question.
Yep.
Can we capture the liquids out of Pipestone and feed them into Prince George? Yeah. I think you touched on that.
Yeah, it's a great question. We can definitely capture the liquids. I know you're aware of this, but just for the broader group and those on the phone, we definitely strip liquids. Today we're close to recovering 18,000 to 20,000 barrels a day at Pipestone. That's our condensate and then our ethane, our propane and our butane. It's definitely one of the highest liquids recovery plants in all of Western Canada as far as barrels per million of liquids. Your question is, can we send that condensate to Prince George? We definitely have. Jarvis and Brant are in the room. They run the downstream side of the business.
We have done that at times, but because we have a pipeline in BC that goes all the way up to Taylor, our preference is to just put those volumes that are in BC on the pipe and come down rather than truck every molecule over. Longer term, there's potential for a pipeline to connect Pipestone into BC. That could be a little bit of a stretch, but we definitely have run volumes, and they've run incredibly well. We've seen good yields, which has been great to see.
One last question.
Yep.
Did renewables buy a part of Prince George?
Yeah, really good question. Yes. There was CAD 32 million of EBITDA that was dropped down from midstream into renewables. There was a portion. Examples would be our existing biodiesel, ethanol tankage, existing renewable diesel tankage. Our hydrogen plant was dropped down into renewables as well. A portion of our cash flow was dropped down. The incremental crack you're seeing is all Tidewater Midstream. Tidewater Renewables does not get to participate in the petroleum-based crack spread, which has moved up. That's where you'll see outperformance in Q2 and Q3 and potentially for the next 12, 24 months would be definitely Prince George will be a big driver of that.
Thank you.
Good question. Thank you. Any other questions? Well, thank you, everyone. Thanks for your time today. Thank you for all your support, and please don't hesitate to reach out to us if anyone has any questions. Thank you.