Good morning, everyone, and thanks for joining us for CF Industries Investor Day. I'm Martin Jarosick, Vice President, Treasury and Investor Relations. Before I introduce our first presenter, I'd like to cover a few points. First, statements made during this event that are not historical facts are forward-looking statements. These statements are not guarantees of future performance, involve risks, uncertainties, and assumptions that are difficult to predict. Therefore, actual outcomes and results may differ materially from what is expressed or implied in any statements. More detailed information about factors that may affect your performance may be found in our filings with the SEC, which are available on our website. Also, you'll find reconciliations between GAAP and non-GAAP measures in the presentation posted on our website. Second, a quick safety briefing and orientation.
In case of emergency, please exit the room through these doors and proceed to the emergency stairwells and descend to the ground floor and exit the building. Additionally, please silence all devices. Now for today's agenda. Presenting today are Tony Will, President and CEO; Bert Frost, Executive Vice President, Sales, Market Development, and Supply Chain; Chris Bohn, Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer; and Greg Cameron, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. After their prepared remarks, we'll have a brief break before we have a live question-and-answer session, immediately followed by a reception in the South Suite. Now we're ready to begin.
CF Industries, founded as an agriculture cooperative in 1946. Over the years, the company has evolved and grown into the world's largest producer of ammonia. This one molecule is made from two simple elements, but behind its simplicity lies extraordinary power. Ammonia and derived nitrogen products are used as fertilizers that are vital to feeding the world and for industrial applications such as emissions control. Today, ammonia is at the heart of our business. Driven by a commitment to safety and operational excellence, we deliver unmatched asset utilization, meeting our customers' needs at the right place at the right time, leveraging location-advantaged production complexes and unmatched distribution and logistics capabilities to deliver for customers in North America and the world, generating superior cash flow and creating long-term value for our shareholders.
Powered by our employees, whose success is our success, our vision extends to the role low-carbon ammonia can play in unlocking hard-to-abate industrial and agricultural decarbonization at scale. Today, we are leveraging our unique capabilities to accelerate the world's transition to clean energy by profitably decarbonizing our existing network and investing in disciplined low-carbon ammonia capacity growth with global partners. We are a global leader with a proven track record, fulfilling our mission to provide clean energy to feed and fuel the world sustainably. We are CF Industries.
Good morning. Thank you all for joining us here today. We are very excited to be able to host the 2025 CF Industries Investor Day. I'm Tony Will, President, Chief Executive Officer since 2014, and prior to that, I ran manufacturing and distribution. Before that, corporate development. CF Industries is poised at the very forefront of the global ammonia and nitrogen industry, and we are ready to move forward into the future, leading with low-carbon ammonia production. We're excited to be here and share more about our story with you today. I want to begin by recognizing the senior leadership team of CF Industries who have driven our success and continue moving the company forward. Many of you already know Bert, Chris, and Greg, and as Martin said, they'll all be presenting this morning. I also want to introduce the rest of the senior leadership team.
This is a strong team of senior leaders, many of whom I've had the privilege of working with for quite some time, and as a group, they work together extremely well. The SLT, along with some additional key leaders from CF, look forward to talking with you during the reception later this morning, and hopefully you've had a chance to meet a number of them during registration. Our story begins nearly 80 years ago in 1946, when we were founded as an agricultural cooperative called Central Farmers Fertilizer Company, with the mission to source and distribute fertilizer for our member owners. Through the decades that followed, we had ownership interests in nitrogen, phosphate, potash production, and when the company delved into barging operations and oil refining, our name was changed to CF Industries.
Over the ensuing years, many of those lines of business were shed, and the modern CF Industries began to take shape with our initial public offering 20 years ago in August of 2005. This shift from co-op to publicly listed company began a significant evolution for CF Industries. When I joined the company, we produced about 3 million tons of gross ammonia per year and still had a phosphate business, and we've certainly come a long way since then. The really key events that formed the company that we are today are shown on the timeline. Over this time and through these initiatives, we've built the premier ammonia and nitrogen company in the world. We have the highest asset utilization, leading EBITDA margins, leading free cash flow, and leading value creation for long-term shareholders.
The key themes that you'll hear about today include how we relentlessly focus on operational excellence in order to deliver superior cash flow and enable disciplined growth, all with the aim of delivering superior shareholder value. Our corporate mission is to provide clean energy to feed and fuel the world sustainably, but our success is rooted in our values. Do it right is fundamental to who we are. We put safety first with no compromises. We do it well. Our focus is on execution and results. We expect to be the best operators in our industry. We execute as a team. Our 2,800 employees have shared goals and shared incentive plan metrics that reward employees for the success of the total company, not the success of one individual or one part of the company over another. We take the long-term view.
In an industry with very long asset life and investment cycles, we know the decisions we make today need to be based on where our industry and the world in general is going the next 5, 10, 20 years and beyond. Bert will cover our advantaged production and unmatched distribution and logistics network. Chris will discuss operational excellence and the real differentiation that that creates for us. Greg will focus on our disciplined capital stewardship and how we balance growth with consistent return of capital to shareholders. All three will talk about how we invest in selected slices of our value chain where we execute better than anyone else. This includes low-carbon ammonia production and our recently announced Blue Point Joint Venture, which you will hear much more about today. We also pursue margin-enhancing projects within our existing network that often have return profiles well in excess of 30%.
This includes projects that you're likely familiar with, such as our carbon capture and sequestration project at Donaldsonville and at Yazoo City. We also pursue margin-enhancing projects that may not make front-page headlines but help drive our financial results. For example, we recently completed a project that expanded diesel exhaust fluid load-out capacity at our Donaldsonville Complex, which will allow us to ship an additional 140,000 tons of very high-margin DEF per year. We consistently evaluate accretive acquisitions. A recent example is our purchase of the Waggaman, Louisiana ammonia production facility in 2023. We remain committed to returning capital to shareholders. Last year alone, we returned $1.9 billion to shareholders through share repurchases and dividends. This has resulted in a balanced approach to capital allocation. Over the last 15 years, we have deployed $24 billion. $10 billion, or 40%, was used to fund growth.
$14 billion, or 60%, was returned to shareholders through share repurchases and dividends. This has created a strong track record of total shareholder return. Our performance particularly stands out compared to our closest industry peers, Nutrien, Yara, and Mosaic. We outperform the S&P 500 material sector and have very favorable results compared to an even broader comparison set of the S&P 500 industrial sector. Our balanced approach to capital allocation continues today. We're investing roughly $2 billion into our Blue Point Joint Venture and also have a concurrent share repurchase program for $2.6 billion. Selectively investing in the business to increase cash generation while we reduce the share count has clearly served our long-term shareholders well.
When we reach the end of this year on a pro forma basis compared to 2010, which was the year we acquired Terra Industries and issued a lot of additional shares in order to be able to fund that acquisition, we expect to have decreased the share count outstanding by 56% while increasing our production capacity 36%. As a result, shareholder participation in our assets and the cash that they generate will be three times higher than it was in 2010, which is a 7% compounded annual growth rate. Growth has consistently been a key element of our company's story and a key success factor for our shareholders. We're very proud of the track record we've built, and we're focused on how we can continue to drive superior value creation for long-term shareholders. With that, I'm going to turn it over to Bert to discuss our sustainable competitive advantages.
CF has a strategic advantage based on our production, which is focused in North America.
We're able to deliver products at the right place, at the right time to all of our customers. I think CF is unique in the industry due to our scale, the location of our assets.
From there, we have really good flexibility between choosing to keep our product domestically or also exporting.
CF delivers products primarily by rail, truck, barge, and ocean-going vessel. We also have access to a very unique asset, and it's the ammonia pipeline. We're able to switch products, switch modes to be able to deliver to our customers the way they want to receive it, but then in ways that are strategically advantaged to us as well.
We're very focused on our customers, and I think in particular we have good and open communication with them. Part of that advantage is really us being able to place product where and when they need it.
At CF, everything starts with safety and starts with our values. We do it right, we do it well, we execute as a team, and we take a long-term view. I think when you start with safety, you're able to deliver reliability.
You know, at the end of the day, it's about doing the right thing and responding in a way that's positive and proactive. We're looking to continually improve. At CF Industries, we're strategically positioned, relentlessly reliable, and unmatched in safety.
Good morning. It's great to be here and great to see everyone. I'm Bert Frost, and I joined CF Industries in 2008 to lead the company's sales and market development team. Today, my role also includes our supply chain group, which brings together everyone who is customer-facing. I spent most of my career in agriculture, having been with ADM prior to joining CF. My love for agriculture started long before I joined the corporate world. I grew up in rural Kansas, a little place on the Oklahoma-Kansas border, and my family still owns a family farm in Colorado. So I have a deep understanding and appreciation for the growers who use our product and the impact our company and companies like CF have in the agricultural value chain. Let's start first with nitrogen itself and the role it plays in agriculture.
People call nitrogen the building block of life because it is essential for plant formation and growth. For row crops, it's vital for corn, wheat, cotton, canola, and sugar. It's a commodity, but with unique characteristics. It's the only discretionary non-discretionary nutrient and has to be applied every year. Nitrogen is critical to the production of another commodity, food and fuel, that the world is always cycling through. It's applied year-round for two major growing cycles, one in the northern hemisphere and one in the southern hemisphere. The price of nitrogen is set on the global nitrogen cost curve by the marginal producer. Marginal production must be bid into the market every year at a price that allows these high-cost producers to cover their costs, the majority of which is natural gas, the most common feedstock for ammonia. The nitrogen value chain is long.
From natural gas production to end use, we use a commodity to make a commodity that is critical for the production of another commodity. There are a lot of places to participate in the value chain. For example, some ammonia producers are also in retail or in the mining and processing of other macronutrients. We at CF have chosen to focus where we can extract maximum value for capital deployed: manufacturing, distribution, and sales of ammonia and ammonia-derived products to retailers and wholesalers. We focus here because it provides the highest margin opportunity and the lowest risk, thanks to structural and operational advantages CF has developed throughout the years. Our structural advantage is rooted in our North American operations. We produce all of our ammonia here in the United States and Canada, as well as the vast majority of our upgraded products.
Operating in North America gives us access to low-cost and plentiful natural gas. As a result, we are one of the lowest-cost producers in the world and firmly positioned on the low end of the global cost curve. North America has a highly productive agricultural sector. Because of the ideal growing conditions and weather, advanced agricultural practices, and access to global markets, North American farmers will always plant these acres and fully fertilize them. This ensures consistently strong demand where our production is. Finally, North America is an import-dependent region. This means that purchasers here have to bid in the high-cost natural or nitrogen ton to meet demand. Our margin opportunity is defined by the difference between our production costs and the production costs of the marginal producers that set the global price. For North American producers like CF, this is a significant advantage.
North America offers additional advantages as well. We are one of the only producers with direct access to low-cost natural gas and a distribution network strategically positioned near end users. Let me illustrate the margin impact this creates. For example, our Port Neal, Iowa complex and a producer in the Middle East manufacture a ton of urea for $3.50 per MMBTu in gas costs at the plant. Not all the tons of urea are created equal, even when compared with other producers with low-cost manufacturing positions. There are additional costs to transport the Middle Eastern urea ton to Iowa: ocean freight, tariffs, barge, trucking that we do not have for most of our sales from Port Neal, Iowa.
As a result, the Middle Eastern ton has a delivered natural gas cost to Iowa of nearly $10 per MMBTu, over $6 per MMBTu of margin that we retain that other low-cost producers do not. Our structural advantages are significant, but our operational advantages truly set us apart in our global industry. These have been developed over decades with investment into our network. Let's start with our production network. We have approximately 60 production units across eight sites strategically located in North America. As Chris will talk about, we operate these units at industry-leading utilization rates. Collectively, they have an average annual capacity of approximately 10.5 million metric tons of gross ammonia. Then, with that ammonia, we produce approximately 20 million product tons for sale on an annual basis. We sell all the tons we produce.
Our production sites are fully integrated into our distribution network, allowing us to move that volume efficiently, thanks to our logistics capabilities. Today, we have approximately 45 distribution terminals that we either own or lease, with a portion of the terminals distributing multiple products. The terminals primarily serve ammonia and UAN customers in key growing regions. We actively manage product flows to and from our distribution facilities to ensure our product is in the right place at the right time to achieve the highest net back. This includes leveraging nearly 3 million tons of product storage across our terminals and production sites that give us the flexibility to store product if we believe product prices are increasing. Managing our extensive network is truly a collaborative effort among our sales, demand planning, transportation, agribusiness, analytics, manufacturing, and distribution teams. What also makes us uniquely positioned is our production and distribution flexibility.
Our production flexibility is integral to how we build our order book, which is based on achieving the highest margin possible. We're able to switch between products, which we are maximizing: urea or UAN, within our network within a matter of hours, depending on which offers the highest margin opportunity. Collaboration is critical to how we make decisions. Earlier this year, for the first time in my memory, urea was selling at a premium to diesel exhaust fluid, or DEF. Both products use the same intermediary, urea liquor, so choosing to make one more than the other means less of the other. Our sales team came together, discussed the situation, and decided it would be best for the company to granulate more urea and produce less DEF.
This was the right call for the business, but one that is only possible if you have the flexibility and a culture of collaboration. In addition to production flexibility, we have unmatched distribution flexibility. Our production sites have access to multiple modes of transportation to ship products. We have two production facilities and 10 distribution terminals tied to the Sunoco ammonia pipeline, allowing us to safely and efficiently transport ammonia through our network to the highest yielding crop area in the United States. We also ship ammonia, urea, and UAN, which is ammonium nitrate, by barge throughout the United States inland water system. In 2024, we shipped over 5 million tons of product via barge, including delivery directly to customers and supply to our terminals.
All our North American production facilities are located on Class I railroads, giving us access to all key growing areas in the United States and Canada. We have truck loadout at our production and distribution terminals as well. These are typically for local sales and achieve a higher price for smaller volumes. Finally, we can export via ocean-going vessel. We have strategically developed our export business and have made tremendous inroads in Europe, Brazil, Argentina, and Australia over the last 10 years- 15 years, shipping over 2 million tons per year because of our reliability and advanced location. This set of structural and operational advantages is hard to replicate. Some would say impossible, and I would agree with that. We strongly believe that they are set for the long term.
Taken together, by operating in North America with an advantaged production and distribution network, we sell a necessary nutrient, producing a low-cost by using low-cost natural gas at a price set by the global high-cost producer for the best and most efficient farmers in the world at the lowest delivered cost in our industry. As a result, we consistently achieve the highest value for our product in the industry. Let's pull back and look at how nitrogen trades around the world. The best way to look at the global nitrogen market is through the lens of granular urea, which is produced and widely traded around the world. Approximately 55 million -60 million metric tons of urea per year are traded between continents. Net import is generally reflected where the productive croplands exist.
Some regions produce significant volumes of urea, for example, India and the United States, but consumption is higher than production. However, many other parts of the world, importing natural gas regions of the world, are disadvantaged with natural gas and have a small nitrogen industry, if any, at all. This includes Brazil, which is the largest importer of urea in the world. Their farmers have become increasingly more efficient and low-cost grain producers to meet growing demand within the country of Brazil for the consumption of corn for feed and the production of ethanol. This, in turn, has driven urea consumption, which required over 8 million metric tons of urea imports last year. Brazil imports all nitrogen products. For example, CF, we regularly ship UAN to Brazil. From 2016 to 2024, our product sales into Brazil of UAN have grown at a 22% annual compound growth rate.
We've achieved this through partnerships with Brazilian distributors. Rather than investing CF capital into building a distribution network there, an example of disciplined use of capital and securing a lower risk profile. Some exporters tend to have, or had in some cases, access to substantial natural gas, which helped their nitrogen sector develop. Most do not consume much nitrogen for domestic agriculture, such as Qatar and Saudi Arabia. In recent years, several regions with significant nitrogen production capacity have faced difficult natural gas dynamics, resulting in a growing structural constraint on global nitrogen availability. This starts with Europe, whose manufacturing industries in general have been challenged by high natural gas prices for this entire decade. Because of these high gas prices, European natural nitrogen producers face challenging production economics as the global marginal producer. This has led to capacity closures and ongoing curtailments.
Countries such as Egypt, Iran, and Trinidad face different natural gas issues, and that's availability. Declining natural gas production and, in the case of Egypt and Iran, diversions of natural gas for growing electricity and heating demands have become a chronic problem for their nitrogen producers with shutdowns. It's a challenge with no clear path to improve natural gas availability for these producers, who have been significant nitrogen exporters for decades. These structural constraints on nitrogen supply availability have been exacerbated by recent unfortunate geopolitical events. In the last few weeks, the Israel-Iran conflict has led to the complete shutdown of nitrogen production in Iran and Egypt. At full capacity, exports from both countries together total 9 million -11 million metric tons. That's 20% of the global traded urea supply. The industry is losing at least 175,000 metric tons of tradable urea production per week from these two countries.
The Ukrainian drone attacks on two nitrogen complexes in Russia have an outsized impact on another product, UAN. For those two facilities, we have 1.5 million metric tons of UAN production capacity, and total Russian UAN capacity is just over 3 million metric tons annually, of which 2 million tons are typically exported. Assuming the remaining Russian UAN production will be directed to serve domestic customers, the world is losing approximately 30,000 tons of tradable UAN, equivalent to a single UAN vessel per week. This represents approximately 25% of the global UAN seaborne trade. In the aftermath of these events, we saw global nitrogen prices rising rapidly. While the shutdown may be for a short duration, the impact on the global nitrogen supply has a longer tail.
These are tons that the world relies on, and the global industry today does not have the excess capacity or capacity to easily make up for them. There is substantial demand to be met in the second half of the year. For example, just two countries, Brazil and India, are behind in their urea imports for the growing seasons that are rapidly approaching. As a result, we expect the global nitrogen supply-demand balance to be in a tighter-than-expected position going into 2026. Some market observers believe that a significant increase in Chinese urea exports is imminent, turning a tight global urea market into a loose one. However, we believe that the approach to urea exports that we have seen over the past few years from China is now the new normal. It's important to remember that the level of Chinese urea exports is heavily influenced by government policy.
Urea exports have been on a constant, steadily declining trend since 2015, driven by large-scale capacity closures due to high costs, subsidy rollbacks, government environmental mandates, and other issues. Today, the focus is on food security in China and achieving a low price of fertilizer for the domestic market. Urea exports have been restricted. In addition, the volume of urea available for export has shrunk as urea consumption within China has risen by a significant volume over the last five years, hitting 70 million metric tons of supply and demand. We expect that the domestic market in China will be served first, and any remaining tons, tons the world does need, will be available for export, but at a significantly lower level than 10 years ago. While global supply is facing constraints, global demand for nitrogen keeps growing.
Over the next five years, we expect annual demand for nitrogen on an ammonia-equivalent basis to grow by 12 million -14 million metric tons. Demand for nitrogen grows with population and income growth, and we have to feed more people. As the world becomes wealthier, it wants to consume more protein, which relies on feed grains for cattle, pork, and poultry. Demand for nitrogen for industrial application also grows with the economy. Ammonia is a key feedstock for plastics, explosives, synthetic fibers, and other areas. A growing economy means more demand for these products. Longer term, we believe industry fundamentals will become more constructive for our business as the global nitrogen supply-demand balance tightens through the end of the decade. Today, there is not enough new capacity under construction to meet projected growth. We also expect additional ammonia capacity in Europe to permanently close by 2030.
As a result, we project that the world will need at least seven more world-scale ammonia plants in the next five years just to reach balance. Those plants are not under construction today, which should lead to a tighter and a higher, steeper global cost curve in the years ahead. We believe this will offer CF Industries an increased margin opportunity. Over time, we believe the demand for ammonia will accelerate as it is increasingly used for clean energy applications. The opportunity reminds me of what we saw in 2010 for diesel exhaust fluid. DEF demand is driven by government policy designed to reduce nitrous oxide emissions from diesel trucks. The technology solution that the diesel truck industry adopted required a product we already made, urea liquor, but that we did not sell as DEF, offering CF a capital-efficient way to pursue that business.
We did this because there was a compelling pathway to grow a DEF business, considering the size of the diesel truck fleet in the United States that would have to adopt this technology. DEF has been a tremendous success story for CF Industries. DEF operates with radical offtake and low working capital, and it consistently sells for a significant premium over granular urea. From a negligible production capacity in 2010, we identified the growth opportunity. We then invested in our network and grew our DEF sales volume faster than the 8% market growth rate. We now have 900,000 urea-equivalent tons of DEF capacity available, and that's the size of a world-scale urea plant. After receiving or recently completing the investment Tony mentioned earlier to increase our DEF loading capacity at Donaldsonville, this project demonstrates the strategic nature of our decision-making.
We increased DEF capacity we could bring to the market by making a relatively small investment in logistics capabilities. That was a capital-efficient choice that will drive increased cash generation. To bring the analogy back to the beginning, just like DEF, global demand for low-carbon ammonia is being driven in large part by government policies. Just like DEF, ammonia is a product we already make with the ability to adapt our existing network in a capital-efficient way to produce a low-carbon version. Just like DEF, we expect low-carbon ammonia to achieve significant premiums over conventional ammonia prices. We have several contracts in hand today with the option to sell low-carbon ammonia when it is available. We believe we will achieve at least a $25 premium over conventional ammonia.
With the European Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism, or CBAM, projected today at $100 per ton of carbon, we would expect to eventually capture much of that as a premium from the sale of our low-carbon ammonia, which we will produce at Blue Point. Just like DEF, we see a pathway for substantial long-term demand growth for low-carbon ammonia, not just for traditional applications, but for new applications as well. We believe this will be a strong growth platform for the company, as Chris will cover next.
The reason why people trust CF Industries is because of, one, our scale and our size, and also the reliability of our facilities that people are able to see publicly. If you've interacted with any of our existing customers, you're aware of how reliable we are. We are the largest producer of ammonia.
I do think it gives us a great deal of credibility. We have this technical competence. CF is contributing to global energy transition in several ways. First is that we're leading by example. We're making products by doing this that will allow the rest of the industry to decarbonize. We are willing to invest in carbon capture and similar projects that other companies could do as well, and they're not. I think that makes us a leader in the space, but it also makes me feel good as a person that what we do every day, we're trying to improve the world and advance things. What CF Industries is doing with JERA Mitsui is building the world's largest and first fully decarbonized ammonia plant. It's the first time that a purpose-built ammonia facility has been built to make low-carbon ammonia.
We began looking for partners in 2022, and CF Industries became a clear leader as a partner, both because they are the largest supplier and producer of ammonia in the world, and that is important from an operational standpoint. Most importantly, their values align with us. It sort of proves out the ability to fully decarbonize ammonia production, as well as the ability to produce the ammonia at a scale that's really necessary for the energy industry. By joining forces with CF Industries, the world's largest ammonia producer with extensive operational experience, JERA, Japan's largest power company, and Mitsui, which has strengths in global ammonia trade, logistics, and customer base centered in Asia, the project can fully leverage the unique capabilities of each partner.
Good morning. I'm Chris Bohn, CF Industries' Chief Operating Officer since last year. Prior to that, I was the company's CFO.
Before that, I led our manufacturing and distribution group, along with previous roles leading our supply chain and also our corporate finance group. Tony discussed earlier our performance and total shareholder return against a broad set of peers. Bert gave you many of the reasons why, which are grounded in our North American structural advantages and our CF operational advantages. This sets the foundation for what distinguishes CF from other companies: our safety and operational excellence, alongside disciplined capital and corporate stewardship. The CF team delivers operational excellence consistently year after year, a tremendous safety record, high asset utilization, and leading capital and operating efficiency. Applied to the world's largest ammonia production network, our operational excellence magnifies our ability to deliver growth, provide exceptional free cash flow, and create value for our long-term shareholders.
At the heart of our operational success is a culture of safety excellence we have developed and nurtured over decades. We equip employees with the proper safety knowledge, tools, and procedures, and we work across our locations to share our best practices and understand our near misses. Most importantly, we empower our employees to take action whenever they deem necessary. A good example of this happened recently. An operator on the night shift at our Port Neal complex was doing his rounds when he noticed a hot spot on a pipe. He did not have to run that information up multiple levels of management and wait for a response. He initiated a shutdown on the plant on his own, ensuring he and his coworkers remained safe and preventing what could have been a greater significant issue. That is our culture of safety excellence at work.
Individual events, like the Port Neal example, manifest themselves at a macro level over time in our company's recordable incident rate. I think back to 2011. 2011 was the first full year we had the Terra assets integrated into our network. These were assets that had a history of relatively poor safety performance. We embedded our do-it-right culture across these plants and terminals. Since then, it has been a journey of continuous safety improvement, with approximately 85% fewer incidents in 2024 compared to 2011. We're doing the same thing today at our Waggaman facility that we recently acquired. In the end, this focus results in safe workplaces, safe communities, and outstanding environmental stewardship. Alongside our culture of safety, our scale and expertise provide a critical operational advantage.
Our scale is the world's largest producer of ammonia, and our willingness to partner in areas outside our expertise, rather than organically invest, try to build the competency that is not core to CF, allows us to accumulate and develop focused expertise within our teams. This allows our teams to do what they do best: operate the plants and drive improvements, not at one plant or at one site, but across our entire network. It enables the transfer between our teams, and it supports procurement and shareable spare parts that limit our downtime. Simply put, our scale provides advantages that cannot be replicated overnight, if ever. Together, our culture and scale lead to industry-leading utilization rates. Over the past five years, we have averaged 8% greater ammonia capacity utilization than our North American peers, who have the same incentive that we do in order to operate at full capacity.
This is equivalent to saving $3.5 billion in capital that would have been required to produce that same amount of volume. This is the financial result of the operational efficiency I was speaking about earlier. Our ability to do this is a considerable advantage, and one that is the result of years of investment and culture building. Again, not something that can be replicated overnight. In 2020, we refined our corporate vision to include a commitment to decarbonization and the production of low-carbon ammonia. We established the goal to reduce our Scope 1 carbon emissions intensity per product ton by 25% by 2030. As you can see, we're well on our way to achieving that goal by 2030. This year, we'll make meaningful progress, reducing greenhouse gas emissions as we commission our Donaldsonville CCS project and complete an N2O abatement project at our Verdigris, Oklahoma, facility.
Together, these two projects will reduce greenhouse gas emissions by over 2.5 million metric tons of CO2 equivalent annually. That's equivalent to taking almost 600,000 cars off the road. We'll be the first to decarbonize our network at a measurable level. Our investments provide CF tangible benefits: long-term sustainability, a significant return profile, and a product offering to our existing and new customers. We expect to accrue both structural and market benefits. First, we'll earn structural incentives just by decarbonizing. Think tax incentives in the United States, carbon tax avoidance in Canada, and Europe. In addition, there are market-based opportunities. First and foremost, this includes selling low-carbon nitrogen products for a premium. As Bert explained earlier, demand for these products and a willingness to pay a premium exists today. We also have the opportunity to monetize decarbonization through the sale of carbon credits.
This is the approach we're taking with our Verdigris N2O abatement project. We expect this initiative to be fully funded and earn an ongoing rate of return through the sale of carbon credits generated by the project with 3Degrees Low Carbon Fertilizer Alliance. This group's goal is to link fertilizer producers with CPG companies who are focused on reducing their greenhouse gas emissions in their supply chain. We are pleased to share that our Donaldsonville CO2 Dehydration and Compression Unit is fully commissioned. This will enable us to permanently sequester 2 million metric tons of CO2 annually. When Exxon receives its Class 6 permit, which we expect to be later this year, we'll begin to move it to a Class 6 permanent sequestration wells. In addition to the Donaldsonville project, we have many opportunities to decarbonize in the years ahead.
We already have projects in motion that will sequester approximately 4.8 million metric tons of CO2 annually, and we have two additional locations that will add another 1.8 million metric tons of CO2. Again, all these projects provide long-term financial opportunities in the form of government incentives, product premiums, or sale of carbon credits. Our path to decarbonizing our existing network reflects our disciplined approach to capital investments, focused on earning rate of return well in excess of our cost of capital and mitigating risk by partnering with industry leaders. The same is true of our approach to building Greenfield low-carbon ammonia capacity. The truth is that ammonia projects are easy to announce, but difficult to commercialize. 232 low-carbon ammonia projects were announced over the past several years. The concern of an oversupplied market became a hot topic by many in this room. However, few are moving forward.
In fact, just six, that's less than 2.5% of the original announcements, have made positive FID. Why? New ammonia capacity in general has been constrained in recent years by capital cost escalation, long-term feedstock costs, and the uncertainty created by geopolitical events. Additionally, many announced projects realize the difficulty of operating a standalone plant. There are plenty of examples in the recent years of new entrants encountering challenges operating or even commissioning a single plant site. Alongside operational challenges, not having an established logistics and distribution network to move that product presents significant execution challenges. Again, it's easy to announce a project, difficult to execute on it. What makes our project different from the so many that have been announced? We start with the nitrogen industry fundamentals. As Bert explains, there is not sufficient ammonia capacity under construction to keep up with demand growth.
Tightening of the global nitrogen S&D balance will require more ammonia plants to be built. In contrast to new entrants, we have substantial expertise in building and operating ammonia plants. Choosing to build and operate in the United States gives us access to low-cost natural gas, rule of law, geopolitical stability, ample CO2 storage, and export capability to reach anywhere in the world. The final piece of our investment decision was how we leverage our partnerships. We formed a joint venture with global leaders who are committed to product offtake. We believe JERA and Mitsui are at the forefront of what will be strong global demand for low-carbon ammonia. For our portion of the product, we have a natural home at our U.K. complex, which will be facing a version of CBAM soon, allowing us to capture that opportunity.
To mitigate project risks even further, we looked at Blue Point scope to determine where we could leverage best-in-class capabilities. We partnered with Oxy and their subsidiary 1PointFive to transport and sequester CO2. We brought in Topsoe for their ATR technology and Technip for engineering. As was announced yesterday, we have partnered with Linde to build and operate the air separation unit to supply nitrogen and oxygen for the ammonia production process. Where we have expertise, we retained operational control, including ownership of hydrogen and ammonia production. This ensures Blue Point remains a first quartile low-cost plant on the global ammonia cost curve. Together with our partners, we have significantly de-risked the Blue Point project for cost overruns. With the recent Linde announcement, our cost estimate for the projects is now $3.7 billion, with equivalent economics.
A substantial portion of that estimate is for fixed fee components, and we have a conservative contingency for the remaining activities. Our capital contribution for our 40% of the project is up to $1.5 billion to be spent over four to five years. We also expect to spend approximately $550 million to construct common facilities that the joint venture will pay CF to own and operate. Much of this work too is fixed fee, such as the ammonia tanks, the cooling towers, and the dock. The common facilities are also expected to have aspects that are scalable for our future growth. We feel strongly that the disciplined investment, subscribed offtake, global partnerships, and demand for low-carbon ammonia will serve our long-term shareholders very well. Blue Point will be an export-oriented facility strategically located on the Mississippi River to provide access to global markets.
Our Donaldsonville Complex is just downriver, and our Waggaman facility is nearby. This will enhance the effectiveness of all three of those sites as we leverage capabilities already in place, including engineering expertise, spare parts, and likely operators as well. This is what we're building too. The ammonia production facility will have a nameplate capacity of 1.4 million tons of ammonia on an annual basis. We expect it to be the largest ammonia plant in the world when completed, operated by the best ammonia operator in the world. Linde will locate their air separation unit on the Blue Point property, and Oxy will transport and sequester 2.3 million metric tons of CO2 annually. We'll construct three ammonia tanks that have a combined capacity of 165,000 metric tons to support radical shipping of product to the partners' global destinations. Blue Point truly is at the forefront of global low-carbon ammonia production.
We believe low carbon ammonia is the future of our industry, and CF. We chose a site that has room for growth. Over time, we have the potential to turn Blue Point into the next Donaldsonville, with room to add another four low carbon ammonia plants as global demand develops. We'll approach these future opportunities with the same discipline we have done with the Blue Point joint venture. The benefits we realize today from our operational excellence are the culmination of years of culture formation, talent acquisition, and disciplined investing, knowing where our competencies reside. The result delivers incremental improvement to our financial performance with each growth initiative we execute. Without this, we would be a mid-tier performer rather than an industry leader in safety, utilization, and cost efficiency. Without this, CF would not have the significant growth trajectory we have today.
With that, I'm going to turn it over to Greg Cameron to talk about capital allocation.
If I were to describe CF's approach to growth and innovation in one word, it would be strategic. At CF, we've embarked on a digital transformation over the last five years, where we swapped out almost every piece of technology, and we've done that without disrupting the business at all. The way we've been able to do that is with our disciplined operating model. Discipline is a very important word in our capital allocation strategy. When we look at really any projects within our network, we look at them through that capital allocation framework. The fact that we are in a position with our operational capabilities and the strength of our team to be able to move forward with a Blue Point investment is incredibly important.
In a project of this $4 billion range, there's certainly a level of de-risking that happens when you have this partnership structure that we've established with such strong players like JERA and Mitsui. The synergies and the benefits that we each bring to the table offer such a strong advantage. Yeah, the IT team is already deeply involved with Blue Point, putting in systems that both allow collaboration with our partners and prepare for the site to be under construction, as well as we've already set up Blue Point in our financial systems and our HR system so we can start paying employees and writing purchase orders today. Sustainability, yes, has benefits in terms of decarbonization and environmental aspects, but for us, sustainability really means ensuring that CF will be here for the next 100 years.
Good morning. I'm Greg Cameron.
I've been the CFO at CF Industries for a year. When I was evaluating the opportunity to join CF, there were many things that attracted me to this company: the dedication to process safety, the experience of the team, the commercial advantages, and a culture that values doing it right as a team. These were all strong positives. There were two attributes that really spoke to me. First was the mission of providing clean energy to feed and fuel the world sustainably. I was attracted to a company that positions itself as a problem solver and a change agent to improve our world profitably. For me, this was best described in 2020 when the company evolved their mission to meet the challenges of a changing world while remaining true to their core strengths. Second was the financial strength of the company.
Strong cash flows, healthy balance sheet, operational excellence enables companies to meet their mission while rewarding their shareholders. Now, throughout my career, I've seen companies with admirable visions, especially in the decarbonization space, but their path to profitability and free cash flow were challenged, and their journey was long. That's not the case at CF Industries. We're making meaningful progress today, and we're doing it profitably. At CF Industries, we deliver for our shareholders through our competitive advantages in production and distribution combined with disciplined capital allocation. As we shared in May, over the past 12 months, the company reported approximately $2.5 billion in Adjusted EBITDA, which we converted to $1.6 billion in free cash flow, a 63% conversion rate, and returned approximately $2 billion to our shareholders. This performance is not new for CF. Our last organic capacity additions were completed in 2016.
These investments, combined with our production and distribution network, have powered our financial performance. Over the past eight years, CF has recorded $19 billion in Adjusted EBITDA and generated over $12 billion in free cash flow. That is an industry-leading EBITDA to free cash flow conversion of over 62%. We've used our cash to reduce debt, acquire attractive assets like the Waggaman facility, and returned approximately $8 billion to shareholders in the form of dividends and share repurchases. Earlier, Tony shared our total shareholder performance compared to our fertilizer peers, as well as a broader set of materials and industrial companies. When you look at a key set of performance indicators over the last five years, our results on EBITDA margin and free cash flow conversion are also compelling.
We are top of our industry, top of materials, against industrials top 10% in EBITDA margin, top 40% in cash flow conversion, and top quartile in total shareholder return. Now, you can even expand this out to the entire S&P 500, where top 15 in EBITDA margin, top 40% in free cash flow conversion, and top 15 in total shareholder return. However, when you look at free cash flow, there's a free cash flow yield; there's a disconnect between our performance relative to these peers and how we're valued. When I arrived at CF Industries, I was troubled by this disconnect. While I can understand some variation between industries or companies, this valuation difference appeared inconsistent with CF Industries' demonstrated operational performance and free cash flow generation, and I believe it fundamentally underestimates the consistency of our financial performance and the growth capability of our company. Let me explain.
As we look to the future, we're doing so with a strong balance sheet and ample liquidity. We keep a low level of debt for a company of our size and maintain strong cash balances. We also have an investment-grade rating across all three rating agencies, a rating we are proud of and are committed to maintaining. This strong balance sheet enables us to be flexible and opportunistic. For example, we expect to fund our portion of the Blue Point project from our cash while we continue our share repurchases. With our financial strengths and our approach to capital allocation, we'll remain the same. Investing in our business at good returns, looking for inorganic opportunities that are tightly aligned with our strategy, and continuing to return capital to our shareholders through share repurchases and dividends.
Now, when I joined the company, I was often asked how we think about our earnings potential through a commodity pricing cycle, effectively our mid-cycle or through-the-cycle EBITDA. As our capacity is relatively fixed in the near term and we sell everything we produce, the most sensitive variables to our earnings is the input cost of natural gas and the selling price of our products. A simple way to view our mid-cycle is how we performed over past cycles. Looking back over the past eight years, we've seen cycles in both nitrogen and natural gas prices. These movements in prices naturally impacted our reported Adjusted EBITDA. If we look over the same period, we've averaged an annual EBITDA of roughly $2.4 billion.
While the early part of the cycle was impacted by historically low selling prices, the later part of the cycle has been fairly consistent, with the exception of the spike in 2022 during the Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Using a simple average over a past cycle suggests a $2.4 billion mid-cycle. Another way we look at mid-cycle is what is the market pricing that is required to incent new investment into the nitrogen space. We see three logical regions to build new urea capacity that could be imported into the U.S.: the Middle East, Nigeria, and Russia. Based on our experience with construction costs, coupled with our most recent feed studies, we know the capital required to add urea capacity. We begin with the capital cost, and then we adjust it for local labor differentials.
We then use the local natural gas cost and add the transportation cost to bring that urea to the United States. We use these input costs to calculate the price per ton required for the investor to achieve an acceptable rate of return. Based on our analysis, we calculate that the NOLA price would have to be at least $355 a short ton for urea for the producers to achieve that acceptable rate of return on their investment. Now, with our logistics and distribution capabilities, CF has consistently realized a premium in its reported annualized realized urea price of approximately $25 per ton compared to the NOLA benchmark. Adding $25 to NOLA price gives us a CF realized price of $380 a short ton of urea.
Annually, we've shared an Adjusted EBITDA sensitivity table that lays out the outcomes under our current cost structure based upon our realized pricing of natural gas versus the realized price of urea. This table can inform how our current year Adjusted EBITDA moves in relation to those two variables. Now, if we use the $380 per ton realized urea price and the $3.50 natural gas per MMBTu, our current sensitivity table yields an Adjusted EBITDA of about $2.5 billion. Using a historical average and an incentivized urea price methodology, we get roughly the same result of a $2.5 billion Adjusted EBITDA as our current through-the-cycle EBITDA, which coincidentally aligns with our past 12-month performance. Now, we have a clear roadmap to grow our mid-cycle in the coming years. First, we have decarbonization projects coming online.
We expect that Donaldsonville will begin this year to contribute a net $100 million in annual 45Q benefits. We also have a smaller project eligible for 45Q incentives at our Yazoo City plant that is targeted to begin in 2028. Together, these projects provide an annual increase of approximately $115 million by 2030. Second, we believe there will be a price premium for selling lower carbon products. As Bert discussed, we begin marketing these tons and believe a minimum of $25 per ton is highly likely. With 2 million tons of low carbon product sales earning $25-$50 per ton premium, we would conservatively generate another $50 million -$100 million of EBITDA. We estimate the total EBITDA benefit for our decarbonization projects, once fully operational, to be approximately $200 million annually.
Now, I've talked a lot about Blue Point today, and we also expect Blue Point to be accretive to our EBITDA as well. I do want to spend some time on the returns we expect to generate when we begin operating the plant and selling our share of production. When we did the analysis of the Blue Point facility for senior management and the board of directors, we performed a conservative analysis with a few key elements. As Chris showed, we have approximately $500 million in contingency included in our now $3.7 billion of project cost. Reducing our capital cost by not spending that contingency would improve our returns. We've also assumed that the plant would produce at its nameplate design of approximately 1.4 million metric tons annually. Our ammonia 6 plant in Donaldsonville produces 10% greater than nameplate on a daily basis.
At Blue Point, we expect similar performance, and that performance will contribute to our expected EBITDA and returns. Lastly, we assumed we'd sell our tons at conventional ammonia prices, so no premiums for CBAM or other incentives. They were not included. Achieving the premium Bert described will also increase the project's EBITDA and further improve the returns. When you're thinking about the returns from Blue Point, we have an underwriting case, and we have an expected case. Our underwriting case is a conservative approach, but it is our expected case: the lower capital cost, the higher operating rates, and the price premium where this management team fully anticipates the returns. Under the expected case, the run rate when the plant is fully operating is roughly $300 million of annual EBITDA with a mid-teens rate of return.
Let's return to our current mid-cycle EBITDA of approximately $2.5 billion, then include $200 million from our expected decarbonization projects, as well as our expected outcome of Blue Point for an additional $300 million. With that, we would expect our mid-cycle EBITDA to increase to $3 billion annually by 2030. In addition, given the list of projects we have and initiatives, we believe we can continue to grow that mid-cycle at a similar growth rate in 2030 and beyond, growth that I believe is not currently reflected in our valuation. Now, applying our historically Adjusted EBITDA to free cash flow conversion, adjusted for the tax-free nature of these incentives, we would expect the $3 billion in EBITDA to result in a 33% increase in our free cash flow and should result in an increased enterprise value.
Historically, we have often traded in the free cash flow yield of 8%-10%. Applying this yield would suggest a market capitalization approaching $25 billion. Coupling the increase in our market cap with a continued reduction in our share count through our share repurchase program, you can see a significant opportunity to increase on our value on a per-share basis. Clearly, CF Industries is positioned to deliver growth at what I believe is a very attractive valuation, and I'm excited to be part of the team that executes this vision. Thank you.
Thank you all for being with us here today, including all of those watching online. I hope you can sense how proud the team is of our global leadership and how excited we are for the opportunities ahead. I also want to thank very broadly every member of the CF Industries team.
Their commitment and dedication help drive everything that we achieve. Okay, I want to quickly recap what we talked about today. Bert shared the numerous structural and operational advantages that our company has. These advantages are enduring and underpin the significant margins and cash generation that we achieve. He also provided an overview of the global nitrogen industry. It's an industry that is set to tighten substantially through the end of the decade, which we expect will provide enhanced margin opportunities for our network. Chris talked about really the foundation of our business: safety and operational excellence. These capabilities have been developed very purposefully, enabling us to extract more value from our assets than any other producer anywhere in the world. He also laid out the significant opportunity we have to grow free cash flow through decarbonization projects within our existing network, but also our investment in Blue Point.
Greg highlighted our strong balance sheet, our view of CF's mid-cycle. He then showed why we expect mid-cycle EBITDA to grow substantially over the next five years, including the cash generation that goes with that. Greg also pointed out what we believe to be a valuation disconnect compared to peers that we have consistently outperformed. Over a long time frame, we have dramatically superior margins, free cash flow, total shareholder return. All of this, I believe, points to significant upside opportunities for long-term CF shareholders. Yes, we are a commodity company, but because of our significant structural and operational advantages, we're a commodity company with a consistent track record of delivering outstanding financial performance and growth.
As I pointed out earlier, since 2015, sorry, since 2010, 15 years ago, we have grown shareholder participation in our assets and cash generation at a rate of 7% on a compounded annual growth rate. We have a roadmap in place today that will continue that consistent growth CF Industries has delivered for shareholders. We are investing to increase cash generation and also reducing share count. We are also investing into a marketplace that we expect there to be a tightening on the supply-demand balance for nitrogen products. We have $2.6 billion allocated to share repurchase, and we will further reduce our share count. This approach on a pro forma basis will add an incremental 25% growth to our shareholders by 2030. This continues our 7% compounded annual growth rate in shareholder participation in the cash that we generate.
As Greg mentioned, the cash that we generate is supposed to increase more than that due to the fact that some of that cash has tax-advantage nature to it. We have an advantaged high-margin business where we consistently execute at the highest level of our industry. We have substantial financial strength and flexibility. We generate significant free cash flow even during periods when we invest in growth. We have an emerging clean energy business that is a growth platform for the future. Taken together, we are well-positioned to continue creating significant value for long-term shareholders. Thank you all for being here. Now, before we move into the live Q&A session, we are going to give everyone a short 10-minute break to stretch your legs, get a refreshment, come back in. We will see you in 10 minutes, and we will get to the questions that exist out there in the audience.
Thank you.
Ladies and gentlemen, if you could please make your way to your seats. Our program will begin in a few minutes.
All right, welcome back, everybody. Before we start Q&A, just a housekeeping note. We do have folks with a microphone. If you have a question, please raise your hand. If you can introduce yourself and your affiliation and ask your question, we will be happy to take questions.
Chris Parkinson, Wolfe Research. First of all, good morning. Thanks for the event. In your assessment of the European closures, could you just give us some insights on your expectations for natural gas costs given pipelines, LNG availability, everything towards the end of the decade, versus your assumptions on CBAM, CapEx walls, and some of the hurdles that these facilities are facing over the next couple of years? Thank you.
Morning, Chris. I'll just start off, then I'll hand it over to Chris Bohn here, who is weighing the details on this. From a very high-level perspective, most of the ammonia capacity in Europe tends to be on the older side. Most of it did not go through a lot of the kind of energy retrofits that the U.S. had to go through during the 1990s and early 2000s because gas costs in Europe at that time were actually below that in the U.S. A lot of that capacity is running at 35 MMBTus -40 MMBTus. First of all, it tends to be relatively inefficient from the standpoint of what a modern plant runs at.
The second issue is—honestly, we saw this in both Inns and Billingham in the U.K.—which is when you need to bump up against a turnaround, you're looking at EUR 50 million-EUR 60 million. A lot of those plants today are—even at today's prices, given what Bert talked about in terms of geopolitical challenges—just barely above water. To think about putting another EUR 60 million in is a really challenging proposition unless you are in a very isolated, protected area or you're not at threat from imports. In general, we went through a detailed evaluation of every single ammonia plant. We hired an international consulting agency that went and took people out for dinner and interviewed them and built a very detailed cost structure for each one of these.
It is on the basis of that that informs our view of what is still to be retired.
Yeah, just on top of what Tony said, I think it is also the timing of when that gas that you are talking about does come back and you see sort of a convergence versus Henry Hub. If that takes a year or two years, a lot of the situation that Tony mentioned is going to play out. We have layered it by almost years as to what we think will occur. We do expect that there will probably be a little bit of a convergence from where we are today in TTF.
I would not call it convergence. I would just say a little bit of softening of the spread, but.
Okay. Between TTF and Henry Hub. You're also seeing so much of that European gas is brought in, is imported in, and that creates a lot of volatility, which plays right back to what Tony said about the cycling of these plants and building inventory that may not be sold for six months. A lot of these owners who are not state-owned have to make that decision: are they willing to put that money out? It even goes beyond the turnaround capital that Tony mentioned.
The last thing I would mention, which is—and I am sure this is a topic we are going to talk about in a minute—but once we announced the Blue Point project and even, in fact, the decarbonization at D'ville, we have had a lot of outreach from European producers that are looking at bringing in low-carbon ammonia because it will slide underneath the CBAM, and that is a real cost that ultimately some of that production is going to face.
The gas spreads today, when you are at $3.50 in Henry Hub for the United States and you are at$ 13.50, or let us say $ 12-%14 today, it is where is that gas going to come in the future? Where is that LNG going to be shipped from? Will Russia come back up? Will Nord Stream 2?
We would say those are challenged positions with the growth of energy demand that's taking place not only with AI and data centers, but just overall conversions from coal to gas. Just the cost to build these new LNG facilities with the cost escalation that's taking place, I think it's a challenged position to say that that compresses too much.
Hi, Lucas Beaumont from UBS. Just on the $2.5 billion mid-cycle assumption that you've got there with the $355 short-ton urea, what's your assumption that's built in there on the cost curve for energy? Are you including any tariff assumption in that, or would that be upside if that was sustained in the medium ter m?
Yeah, this is kind of based on what I would just call sort of fundamental economic principle.
There are a couple of things that underpin it, right? The first one is, do we believe that demand for nitrogen products consistently grows? Our view is absolutely yes, right? Population grows. As you see the burgeoning of middle class in certain regions, you end up with increased protein consumption. As Bert mentioned, as you are looking deeper and deeper into the earth for copper and rare earth metals and other things that are required in order to electrify sort of the world, you have all of that demand. Plus, given the challenges from an environmental and a climate change perspective, there are emissions abatements and other products. We absolutely believe that the historical rate of somewhere around 1.2% plus or minus a little bit per year continues to hold going forward. That is the first principle.
The second one is, as you look around the world, right, are there enough projects under development that actually satisfy that requirement by the end of the decade? We would say absolutely not. The third one is, in the analysis that I think Bert showed, where there was 3 million tons of capacity coming offline in Europe, we would argue that probably understates what's going on globally. We have a half interest in a plant in Trinidad. I will tell you the economics of doing the next turnaround there for $60 million are also very challenged. I think the notion that the existing asset base continues to operate unimpeded is probably a little bit of an aggressive assumption.
Our view is, when you look at the projects that are under construction, when you look at the growth that Bert laid out, when you look at the contraction that's going to happen, there is absolutely a deficit situation going on in the U.S. or in the world. Okay, the question is, back to your point, where are you at in energy price and what's going on in the way of where's marginal capacity or do you have to bid in new? Assuming you have to bid in new, then as Greg walked through, anyone who is building and sponsoring one of these projects in low gas costs, low labor costs portions of the world has got to expect a reasonable rate of return or they're not going to dedicate that capital.
Our view is based on sort of some very fundamental economic principles that build us to a place that says $380 urea in the U.S. is kind of what we would expect, not every day, but sort of through the cycle or as a mid-cycle kind of number in order to justify new capacity being built. By the way, as capital costs continue to rise, which they have dramatically, that $380 continues to ratchet up. Relative to energy costs other places, Bert mentioned AI and data centers, but you've also got sort of just increased electrification in parts of the world and a reduction of coal generation, power generation in favor of cleaner fuels, of which natural gas is one.
The fact that liquefaction capacity capital continues to rise like crazy, and those people expect for their shareholders a reasonable rate of return on that, that means the gap, which used to be about $3 MMBTu roughly between Henry Hub and destination markets, is closer to $4.50. When you build all of that stuff in along with transport costs, even before you get to tariffs, we are very comfortable with the $3.80 number that Greg laid out and believe that Blue Point is going to be a fantastic project.
Joel?
You get to mine. All right.
Hi, thanks. Two questions. I think your commentary today is that you expect at least a low-carbon ammonia premium of $25 a ton that you have laid out where it can get high over time.
Can you talk about that number a little more, how squishy or firm that is based on, is it stuff in your contracts that you have from the first tons at a D'ville? Are they take or pay? Are they committed? What percents committed? That's the first question. Second question, maybe it's for Bert, is just on the near term here, what is this fill season? If there's going to be a summer fill, what does this near term look like in the world and nitrogen in a very unique time?
Yeah, thanks, Joel. Second question first. It's going to be great. We're doing very well. The world is what Tony articulated in terms of the demands for our product, what's being called for the needs of the world and where we are today price-wise, close to $500 a metric ton FOB Middle East, FOB North Africa.
That's going to moderate down over time, probably. Where we are in North America for fill season and for forward demand is demand is solid. We're coming out of a very good planting season, application season, Q2 with very low inventories. It sets us up for a fill season with high demand and preparation for next year, but a condensed season because we're going to have applications going through July. We don't expect to announce a fill program for our UAN until probably August sometime, which is the latest we've ever done. Ammonia is also in very good position. If you're going to bid in those tons, again, we've talked about we're an import-dependent location. We need to bid in that marginal ton, which today is at $500. We'll see, I would say, how that rolls, but the back half looks very positive.
I'd also add to that, sorry. As Bert mentioned in his materials around geopolitical turmoil, the Ukrainian drone bombings of the two EuroChem facilities has taken a big slug of UAN capacity off the market in the near term. We do not know how long it's going to take for that to kind of get back up and running again. If that's gone from the globally traded UAN tons, you may not see a historical fill program the way that it's run in the past, just given where the tightness is in the market. Sorry.
Regarding premiums for low-carbon product, we're expecting that low-carbon product to be available in the back half of this year. Chris can comment more on the workings that we are or the position we're in today.
We have been actively at work over the last several years with customers regarding contracts, both domestic and international. In Europe, we already have contracts in place for when that product is available, already communicated that what we're expecting for a premium over and above what the global price structure is. With the domestic market in the United States and Canada, we're working, this is a value chain issue. We represent the production side and the product side of nitrogen. We work with our retail customers, predominantly in that area. It's the co-ops and a few independents. Then it's the farmers and what price they're going to receive for a premium for a low-carbon product. Then it's the POETs, ADMs, and the processing group, as well as the CPGs.
Each of these groups we're working with in conversation, the contractual side of that will come with the retail partners, as I articulated. We sell to retailers and wholesalers. We don't sell to farmers. As we work together to decarbonize the system, we represent a very attractive position for the end user who's marketing the starches, the wheats, the flours, and using those in the packaged products that they'll sell to the consumer. The $25 premium that we have communicated to you and we've also discussed with them is being received very well. We'll see that as we move forward.
I will just add that we don't do a lot of ag as take or pay and long-term contracts. The market provides a lot of premium for in-market and available when it's needed in the near term.
Most of our take or pay kind of ratable stuff tends to be more industrial. Some of that, there's a level of interest, but a lot of what Bert's talking about is very specific announcements we've made relative to POET, CHS for decarbonized ethanol, and CPG companies.
The other thing I would just add to that is initially here, there's just not a lot of volume that's going to be low carbon outside of what our volume take is. Even pre-post Blue Point will be similar. I think to get that type of premium based on not only what Bert mentioned here is happening domestically, but what Tony said earlier about the interest that we received about low carbon ammonia product and low carbon product in Europe, given the CBAM coming, I think that just builds on top of that as well.
Second row, Ben?
Yeah, good morning.
Ben Theurer from Barclays. Just coming back to the shortfall on the demand growth side, can you maybe put that into perspective what the last five years of growth was versus what your expectation is, that 12 million-14 million metric tons? If there is such a shortfall, why does that not trigger in low-cost environments, like for example, the U.S., more capacity expansion, including you guys, if there is such an opportunity given the shutdowns that you expect to see in Europe and other regions like Trinidad, etc.?
Yeah, Ben, thanks for the question. I would just say a lot of this has to do with the factors that Chris laid out. You've seen capital costs go almost on a hockey stick basis. You have to be willing to bite off that level of capital.
If you do it with partners the way that we did, where there is already committed offtake and you are not looking at a potential situation that you are overloading the marketplace, that is a fundamentally different place than if you are doing it on a spec basis where you are just expecting the market to absorb it. The second thing is, if you build $4 billion or $4.5 billion for a greenfield facility, and that is just ammonia, and you want to sell it as urea, you are talking about at least another $1 billion-$1.5 billion for urea load-out or the urea plant to go along with it. The quantum of capital starts becoming significant for those that are not already nitrogen producers and do not have an established distribution network and logistics operations like Bert walked through.
For us, because it is still a significant capital bite, but we've got all of the things in place where we can go ahead and move the product and get the best price realization for it. We're already in this business, and this is not something brand new. I think it is difficult for a lot of people to want to do that. You have a lot of geopolitical uncertainty. I think all of those things weigh on people's willingness to put new capital into the ground. Other?
No, I would agree.
All right.
Let's go with Edlain.
Thanks. Good morning, Edlain. Edlain Rodriguez, Mizuho. As demand grows over time for blue ammonia, is CF still or will still be in the best position to add capacity to meet that demand, or do you expect to see significant competition in the market over time?
I think there's always going to be competition, right? The numbers don't lie, right? Our ability to get more tons of production out of a nameplate asset compared to anybody else in the world says that we are going to be the low-cost producer relative to how other people run their assets. The larger our network gets and the bigger that we have from an engineering capability, spare parts, being able to leverage the core competencies and learnings that we have across the whole system, the harder it is, as both Chris and Bert pointed out in their presentations, the harder it is for somebody to catch up. There is a huge scale advantage in this industry. Our intent is to continue to leverage that to deliver more tons, more cash flow out of the same kind of capital investment.
Therefore, we are very much the logical company to add capacity.
Who else? When you look across the world with back to the geopolitical issues, back to the balance sheet issues, back to the capability and the geological understanding of the class six wells that exist and our core capabilities that Tony just outlined, when you structure those all together, where else, who else, and what else, this is the place to be. You can go east, you can go west from NOLA and loading out a vessel. You have substantial flexibility. You're not going to invest in a place that you're unsure of in 5, 10, 15 years if your contract's good, if your gas contract's good, if you can get money out of the country. You can do all that. We can do that, and we are doing that.
I think the first mover status is very important.
Back row, far right, Jeff?
Jeff Zekauskas from JPMorgan. On slide 69, you lay out the benefits that you'll get from the 45Q tax credit. What you say is that it's $115 million. I think on slide 47, you say that there's 6.6 million tons of carbon dioxide you can sequester. If you do the calculation, it's about $17.50 per ton as your benefit from the 45Q credit.
Oh, yeah. I think you're misreading the two slides. The 6.6 million tons is the total opportunity across the network for things that are already happening or are in the pipeline to happen. The $115 million is only for the first two, which is D'ville and Yazoo City.
We have not reached FID on the other projects that are displayed there, which would include Waggaman and Medicine Hat. Medicine Hat and
Our share of Blue Point.
Our share of Blue Point, we have reached FID there, but that is still to come. The near-term $115 million is just D'ville and Yazoo.
The Blue Point benefit is embedded
Is embedded in the $300 million. It is embedded in the $300 million. That is why as EBITDA rises to mid-cycle to $3 billion, the cash flow generation actually goes up a little higher because the 2.4 million metric tons of CO2 coming out of Blue Point is a tax-advantaged set of cash generation that comes out of that. That is why cash flow coming out of Blue Point is higher than the historical rest of the asset base.
Maybe if I could just rephrase it then.
How much do you think you'll benefit per ton from sequestering carbon dioxide after you pay for the carbon dioxide to be concentrated and you pay Occidental or Exxon to put it in the ground? What will you net?
Yeah. $115 million is what we expect to net out of Donaldsonville and Yazoo City. That's on a basis of about $280 million of capital investment. Again, the $115 million is tax-advantaged because that's a tax incentive. That's not EBITDA, that's cash. The return profile on that for the next 12 years looks awesome, to use a birdism. Good job. Relative to Blue Point, we have not made the commercial terms of the agreement with Oxy public, but we are very happy with the partnership that we have developed there. The team did a lot of hard work. It's going to be somewhere in that range.
Thank you.
Let's go front row, Vincent.
Hi. Thank you. Vincent Andrews from Morgan Stanley. Just a quick housekeeping question, then I've got another question. What's the rate of return? There's been a lot of conversation about people getting a rate of return. And on your mid-cycle and that incentive price, what rate of return are you assuming is needed to move people forward at that price?
Yeah. Go ahead.
Yeah. It's a little bit different based on the region, but it's double digits, 10%-12%.
Okay. Very good. And then I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about China. If you look at some of the consultant reports, they'll show an awful lot of capacity coming, particularly in urea in 2027 plus. What do you think their strategy is there? Clearly, right now, they are very focused on local supply and low prices.
They're keeping product off the market, which has obviously been beneficial to prices in the rest of the world. They are also building a lot of inventory. They are supposedly adding all this capacity. What is the end game there? What are they actually looking to achieve?
I'm going to start with one thing. I'll turn it over to Bert, who tends to be much more embedded in what's going on real-time in China. From the standpoint of energy, urea is basically just a different form of energy. They are big LNG or gas pipeline buyers, so they're not long that. They are long coal, but coal-derived urea, or the other way around, urea derived from coal, tends to be high particular matter emissions and very large users of freshwater.
From a policy perspective, when they removed a lot of the incentives that were allocated toward coal and towards chemical companies and even freight movement of that stuff, the goal was to get rid of a lot of those zombie industries. Our belief is that China is not focused on trying to export energy in the form of urea over the long term, that they may be trying to upgrade the fleet or make it more efficient or lower cost, but it is not meant to flood the world with urea the way that they did back in 2015.
Yeah. I think just to comment on top of that, and that is how we do see it, is the capacity additions coupled with closures and coupled with a sometimes inefficient position on the cost curve positions China to supply the Chinese market.
The amazing thing to me, though, has been the growth in Chinese consumption for ag and industry for urea, which has been in the low 50 million ton range to today, almost 70 million tons. You have growth. Yes, you have growth of capacity, but we see capacity coming offline as well. That capacity is still high cost, high polluting. I do not see that coming into the world market to the degree that Tony mentioned. I think even today, with how they have limited with restrictions, with import inspections, with timing, we are seeing a couple hundred thousand tons per month right now. That is de minimis to what the world needs,
Especially given what is offline from historically significant urea exporters.
Sal? Second row.
Thank you. Salvator Tiano from Bank of America.
If we can go to slide 70 on the EBITDA for the Blue Point project, where you have the bridge to 300, can you unpack a little bit some of the base components? Obviously, you have the decarbonization, you have the price premium. When you go to the base EBITDA, how much of that comes from the infrastructure payment you are going to get from your partners? How should we think about essentially the base EBITDA per ammonia ton you are getting on this project?
Yeah. I will start. Some of those numbers we have released publicly before. We have talked about an ammonia price at $450 a metric ton is where we start there on a production standpoint. We have included all of the 45Q benefits associated with production of the CO2 also included in our economics going forward.
We have built into it the capital cost that you've seen and a gas cost similar to what we showed you in our mid-cycle of the $3.50. Those are the basic components of the model that we've run.
Again, there's a big piece of this that tends to the operational efficiency, tends to be more the 10% above nameplate than it does reduced capital because we're still early on in the project and there's all kinds of things that can happen. We are protecting the $500 million that is the contingency right now, even though some would argue that's fairly conservative. The benefit that we expect to get on the price premium is based on CBAM for our portion
of the project, which has not been built into the base.
Yeah, which isn't built into the base economics.
We did build in all of the capital costs for the common infrastructure, the $550 million, which we're receiving a healthy targeted return from the joint venture for them to leverage those facilities. That is a quarter of our total invested at $2 billion.
Kristen? Fourth row.
Hi. Thank you. Kristen Owen from Oppenheimer. I do want to dig into the capital cost assumptions because a lot has changed just in the last few weeks from when the $4 billion number came out. We have the announcement yesterday with Linde. We have had steel tariffs go into place. I am wondering if you can help us unpack some of the scenario analysis that is embedded in that $500 million of contingency. Related, your free cash flow outlook, I believe, implies about a 10% improvement in free cash flow conversion by 2030, going from 60% to 66%.
Aside from the tax-advantaged assets that are going into that, any additional upside to that free cash flow that we should be considering?
Why do you not handle the capital piece?
I'll do the capital cash piece. I'll start with the Linde announcement and just say that we are extremely excited to have Linde be part of the Blue Point project. The capital that we looked at when we were evaluating whether to do this internal or to go with an outside partner was the $300 million that we had built into the project. That is what you have seen from the $4 billion down to the $3.7 billion. Part of the reason we did go with Linde, I'll just touch on that, is really their high utilization and their commitment to what we want from a utilization standard, given they are the industry experts in this.
It was an opportunity where we felt, from a capital standpoint, we could make that trade-off fairly easily there. Related to tariffs and how much of that's going into contingencies, I think I would start with there's a lot of uncertainty still, right? We are not certain where things are really going to fall in the end. A lot of the componentry, about a third of it, is what would be somewhat tariffable. That probably is not going to be delivered for two to three years' timeframe. In that, we are working with our partners because there are certain areas globally that have the same quality where we could go to that have lower tariff maybe than where they have used different yards elsewhere. Working with our partners on that, that has not been necessarily defined 100% yet.
I would say, given that it's the 35% and where we are scoping to go, really the tariffs don't go that material into the contingency that we have set aside.
On the free cash flow conversion, the last eight years, it's been 62%. We got it in our go forward estimate at 65%, maybe 66% on the round. Now, remember the tax incentives. So when I talk about the $115 million, that's on a net basis. The actual free cash flow coming off that will be non-taxed is greater than that because it'll also have the cost in the $115 million. If you get a 200 or 300 basis points just from the 45Q credits, we'll get you there. We'll get you that 300 basis points.
Then the other piece of that is the same sort of roughly $100 million associated with Blue Point that's going to be tax-advantaged cash flow for the exact same reason.
Third row, Richard.
Thanks. Richard Garchitorena of Wells Fargo. First question on Blue Point. You showed 80% of volumes essentially subscribed. Obviously, you have the off-take partners taking a chunk of that. Can you talk about the remaining 20%, how you expect to get that signed up over the next couple of years? Obviously, you have a lot of time to do that. A broader question. In the past, you've talked about, on some of the parts basis, the cost per ton of capacity and comparing that to present transactions. I was wondering if you could talk about that in relation to your distribution assets where you have a broad distribution network.
Obviously, you're investing on the $550 million in the Blue Point. How does that reflect compared to your current distribution network as well?
You want to start off?
On the distribution facility with the $550 million, I would say that the return profile that we get out of our distribution facility is what Greg sort of presented by having in-market distribution and our ability to do that. On the Blue Point project, given that's going to be a set established $550 million return profile that we'll get from our partners on that, that CF will own and operate, that's sort of, as Greg mentioned, at a healthy return in the, I would say, mid-teens area.
Relative to the 80%, which was the other part of your question, our equity partners, JERA and Mitsui, own 60% of the off-take. Those tons are our expectation going to Asia.
Then half of our remaining 40% are earmarked currently for the U.K. because the U.K. is going to face their own version of the European CBAM. We will be able to upgrade that into nitric acid, ammonium nitrate, either for consumption within the U.K. or exporting into Europe, which should be tax-advantaged given the ultra-low carbon nature of that product. We have an additional, call it 350,000 tons or roughly 20% that Bert is in conversations to begin to think about where the best options for. I'll tell you, once we announced this project with partners like JERA and Mitsui, so this was clearly a project that was going ahead, we've had more inbound inquiries about capacity than we have capacity left to allocate. We're not worried about finding a home for it.
All right. More questions? Oh, we got a follow-up from Vincent.
Sorry, thanks.
It's Vincent Andrews again. Just following up on that Blue Point, you had the slide where you showed it could be Blue Point 2, 3, and 4. Could you talk about the sort of the timeframe at which you'd start contemplating a second one? And do JERA and Mitsui have a right of first refusal to participate in that, or would you have other options or other ways to go forward with that?
Yeah. I mean, I would just say we are really happy with the partners that we've selected.
If it comes to building another one, we would be delighted to have the same kind of partnership structure because they really, it was mentioned in one of the video clips there, that not only do we align in terms of how we view the world and the importance of decarbonized ammonia going forward, but from a values and a focus on safety and environmental integrity, I think all of those things line up really well to make us feel very comfortable with them. Chris, you want to talk about timeframe and how we're thinking about if there is Blue Point 2 and beyond?
I want to get through Blue Point 1 a little bit, at least the initial phases here. Just to go on what Tony said, we do believe the underlying nitrogen market is tightening.
By 2030, it's going to be something that, when the Blue Point site's coming on, that we believe is going to be coming into a very tight market. Additionally, because of that, I don't believe we're the only ones seeing that. We're getting a lot of inbound interest that's saying, if we were to look at a second plant, would they be able to participate from an equity standpoint? That goes beyond our partners. Now, like I said, we're focused on Blue Point 1 right now and ensuring that we execute that like we've done on our past expansion projects. I would say there's definitely an interest, given as Tony mentioned earlier, not many people are making the decision to move forward. Having an already established infrastructure that moves the molecule, whether it's low-carbon or conventional today, is a huge point.
As I mentioned in my remarks, I think people are starting to do the math on what it means. Okay, I have a plant. Now I have to move it someplace and realize they have to add in a whole other component that we do not talk about, and we do not talk about it even in the mid-cycle of bidding in new plants.
You want to talk about the Korean regulatory environment for hydrogen and how that has changed and why that also looks like a very attractive market for us?
I do now. What we were seeing is Korea was more restricted with what I would say their specs of low-carbon ammonia would be compared to Japan. I think what they realized is, just beyond some of the promises of what technology could deliver them cannot be delivered.
They are realizing what we had been saying all along about what is the amount of sequestration of CO2 and the hydrogen content was probably more accurate and where Japan was headed with METI and their specifications. We have seen Korea now move to a similar spec with that, which is opening up additional conversations with some of those parties that we had had earlier back in 2022 and such, now that those government, I would say, specifications have been more defined.
Vincent, we are not announcing Blue Point 2 or Blue Point 3 right now. There is a lot of global interest out there, and we just want to kind of make progress here, and then we will evaluate as we go.
Some of that goes into the extra 20% of the product that has not been spoken to from a markup, given this kind of demand for people who not only want to have the product, but in equity position, it would probably transition first with product.
Follow-up, Sal?
Thank you, Savator Tiano again. If this investor day was one or two years ago, probably the energy market in Northeast Asia would have been much more prominent than the crops and ethanol and other demand uses now for low-carbon ammonia. Can you refresh a little bit on where things stand in Japan when it comes to the fuel market? Also, if you can talk a little bit about the maritime opportunity as a fuel.
Yeah.
Let me start where the process is, maybe with the METI and the submission that JERA and Mitsui have made for their applications. The applications were due in March of this particular year, in 2025, where the submission was, what was the ammonia going to be used for? Who was going to be the partner that was building it? How was it going to be transported? All that. A lot of information had gone to METI. The original decision was supposed to be made in the October timeframe. It looks like that is going to move back to something later in Q4, maybe even possibly Q1 for some of the larger projects. More to come on that. All the submissions have been in. I know both the government's third party has been asking questions of our partners about their submissions.
We'll have more that comes that way. Related to maritime, I think maritime, originally, if I go back to 2020, I think we were a little bit more optimistic that that would move faster than it has. You are seeing ammonia vessels being contracted and built along with a lot of testing on ammonia engines. We're part of the Maersk Mc-Kinney Moller Foundation to help with the safety aspects of using ammonia as a maritime. I still think that is a little bit longer dated. Some of the other things that may have moved in is like low-carbon ethanol-based SAF and having SAF be more of a, I would say, a demand center than what we've seen before.
By the way, we think Europe is probably going to be leading the way on SAF, and having a decarbonized fertilizer product will go into the calculation around the carbon intensity of SAF. That is setting up very nicely for when our product becomes available.
All right. I have Edlain, and then we will go with Jeff.
Thanks again. Edlain Rodriguez from Mizuho. You have talked about the trading discount of CF versus the fertilizer tiers. Tony, why do you think that discount exists? What do you think investors are missing? What do you need to do to now eliminate that discount?
Yeah. I mean, I will start, then I am happy to open it up to the group here. I think historically, people are still Bill-Doyalized, where the best product in the world was potash and nitrogen was the cyclical beast that you could not count on.
The fact that China came out in 2015 and 2016 and sort of flooded the market kind of, I think, just reinforced that notion that said anyone could build one of these plants, and the market is not as consistent or sustainable as the other nutrients. I think what you are seeing today is, and Bert mentioned this, nitrogen is the only non-discretionary nutrient. When grower margins start getting tight, they tend to mine the soil for P & K, but they fully apply N. Being from a production center in North America with access to some of the lowest-cost natural gas, being an import-dependent region, having in-market production assets in the distribution network that we have, our belief is, even though, yes, there is some volatility, it is much lower than historically it has been in the past.
There is much more consistency in terms of what our cash gen is. I think what we do about it is we just continue to buy shares up at what look like discounted prices until the market finally wakes up and realizes that, wow, this is a great stock with a long history of terrific cash generation.
Yeah. When I was doing my underwriting, and it is truth, I looked at the EBITDA multiples across the industry. A little bit broader than that, we are very tightly bound together, even though the free cash flow was dramatically different from each of the businesses. That free cash flow has a lot to do with the operational excellence, I think, of this company and where it is positioned in the value chain and how it delivers EBITDA that is really tightly correlated to the cash flow generation.
The other part that I think people fundamentally underestimate using an EBITDA multiple is the growth trajectory of the company. As we grow from a $2.5 billion to $3 billion, the story does not end there. Now, whether or not we choose to continue to build at Blue Point or we build and look at other opportunities, we have that optionality ahead of us because the free cash flow that is coming off of the company gives us the optionality to really look to where we can create the most value for our shareholders long term. I think those two points, as I did my underwriting, I felt like some of the investment theses that are out there are missing those points.
Jeff?
Jeff Zekauskas from JPMorgan. Two questions. Can you speak a little bit about the tariff situation and that tariffs on Nigeria and Algeria are more elevated?
I think Russian product is carrying no tariffs. Can you talk about how much sort of tariff confusion and changes in shipments might have affected the urea price or the UAN price and how you expect that to evolve for next year?
I'll start, and then I'll hand it over to Bert, who manages logistics on an integrated and global basis. Jeff, you're absolutely right. As crazy as it sounds, Russian product flows here unimpeded by any sort of tariff in the world. Yet, countries for whom we would view much more closely politically allied have tariffs associated with the product that they're sending here. That, from my perspective anyway, makes no sense at all. I think the tariff regime is a lot like if you're playing golf in Scotland. If you don't like what it is today, wait 10 minutes and it'll change tomorrow.
It's really hard for us to kind of think about where the natural evolution of this is. I will say my belief is, and our belief is, that the tariff regime that's in place now is not the end in itself. It is a mechanism to try to get to a different pathway around what trade looks like holistically. It's impossible for us to have great visibility into where that's headed. I think, in general, anything that increases cost of movement of this kind of product creates friction and just costs the farmer at the end of the day. Does it help us in the current environment? Maybe a little bit. Our thinking is we're better off in an environment where there is relatively free trade and open access.
The tariffs that came in or were applied were at the beginning of Q2.
is fairly late for the American growing season to put that product on a vessel, arrive to NOLA or a U.S. port, move that to the interior. The impact for the growing season that is ending now was fairly de minimis. However, going forward, if a trader or a producer is going to take a position at 10%-14% or however percent of tariff, that is a tough choice to make against zero-tariffed Russian product. You are seeing more Russian UAN, more Russian urea to the United States and less from the countries you mentioned, and specifically Trinidad. Trinidad has 1.4 million tons of UAN capacity, which probably will not make its way to the U.S. as much as it will go to Europe or other destinations.
We have been tariffed American product into Europe and to the U.K., which we think that should come off as well as they need these tons and they are tariffing Russian product. There was a lot of put and takes going on in the world. We're participating in all the major markets. We're monitoring those things on how to best position our products and to achieve that net back that we've been talking about and that improvement over the world-denominated marginal producer price.
There was a second question that I did not get to quickly ask. For Chris, when you think about sending ammonia over to Japan or to Korea, and what they're going to do is they're not going to burn coal. Of course, we use natural gas, and there's natural gas leakage in the United States as it goes into the atmosphere.
What is the carbon dioxide savings for Japan or Korea in using ammonia as a fuel relative to burning coal, if there is one?
I think there is a significant one when it is relative to coal. If it was relative to LNG or some of the other, or natural gas, LNG, you could see your argument a little bit. The fact is, especially on the Blue Point project, we are going to be sequestering 98% of the CO2 that comes off of that system. The reason why we are going with an ATR is to get that higher CO2 sequestration. Additionally, the natural gas in which we are bringing in, we have looked at ways to have lower slip methane, and we are seeing a lot of that development by the E&P companies, even the two of which we have the CO2 sequestration projects with as well.
I do not think it is that even going to Japan and doing the coal firing at the 20%, Jeff, is going to be significantly lower than burning coal.
We already have in place an agreement with BP where we are buying low slip methane, natural gas. It is not a substantial increase in cost, and it is certified by MIQ to ensure that it is, I think, less tha n 10% or
I think it is a 90%.
Ninety percent improvement over the standard tons that are MMBTus that are moving through the pipeline network. Jeff, I thought you were going to ask about carbon capture and sequestration.
I was disappointed when you said my name. I was already.
You can ask it of yourself.
Chris, Jeff would like to know about carbon capture and sequestration.
Let me start with we are extremely excited that the CO2 or the CCS dehydration and compression unit at Donaldsonville is commissioned and ready to flow gas. Exxon has submitted their permit where the CO2 will be going. The expectation is that they will receive that later this year. One of the things that we are looking at, because we want to start flowing gas and to earn money, but to do a lot of different other things from a market development, is potentially going to 45Q compliant enhanced oil recovery in the interim period. That's the one thing that we're in discussions with right now, if we would do that until they got the Class 6 later this year.
I would certainly expect gas to flow for sequestration in that manner within the next six weeks, if not sooner.
We expect to begin actually being able to bank 45Q credits in the near term, definitely in Q3.
Thanks for not disappointing, Jeff.
Darla, do we have a question from the web?
Okay. First of all, first couple of questions on Blue Point, but one being separate from that, Air Products is looking for a partner at their project down in Louisiana. Is this something that CF would consider?
Yeah. Let me just step back from that specific question and talk about some of the other projects in the U.S. that are under development currently. Air Products is also developing the Gulf Coast ammonia project. They are producing the hydrogen in a more traditional kind of gray fashion.
They're not capturing it or sequestering the CO2 that comes off of that, and then selling that hydrogen into the back-end ammonia plant at Gulf Coast at something in the neighborhood of $8-$10 per MMBTu equivalent for natural gas cost. Immediately that takes that plant that is a U.S. -based asset, at least on the ammonia side, and turns it into a third or fourth quartile asset on the cost curve. Gulf Coast is paying sort of their piece of the capital, and then they've got to take or pay on the hydrogen that's coming their direction. That is a position that we don't want to be in. Now, let's talk about the other kind of significant project that is similar, which is the Woodside project. Again, they've partnered with Linde.
Linde is at some point going to be, at least as we understand it, capturing the CO2 coming off of the ATR that they're going to be providing the hydrogen across the fence to Woodside in order to make a decarbonized ammonia product. Again, that hydrogen is going to flow with the equivalent of somewhere in the $8-$10 per MMBTu cost structure. Again, Woodside paid over $2 billion for an asset that's deep in the third quartile from a cost curve perspective. It's also a take or pay contract. If there's any sort of sloppiness in the market, they got to continue to produce because they're paying for those molecules anyway. In that instance, Linde, because they're the ones that are running the ATR, get to capture and claim the 45Q benefit.
Now I'm going to take those two examples and compare it to our Blue Point project, which is, as Chris mentioned, we own the ATR along with our partners. We're going to be producing the hydrogen at $3.50-ish, Henry Hub-ish kind of gas cost. We're going to be capturing all the CO2 that comes off of it so that stays within the partnership economics. We are going to be a first quartile asset from a cost structure perspective. Yeah, the capital is a little more, but if you look at the incremental benefit that you get from the standpoint of cash flow coming off that asset versus the incremental capital, this one's a no-brainer. It's a long way of saying to whoever asked that question, no, we have no interest in getting into that kind of situation with Air Products in Louisiana.
We don't think it makes economic sense. All it does is it provides a reasonable rate of return to the upstream hydrogen producer and puts all of the risk downstream and puts you deep in the third quartile, if not fourth quartile of production cost. So not no, but hell no.
All right. Last call for questions in the room. All right. Thanks, everyone, for joining us.
Thank you.
We're now going to have a reception in the south salon directly behind us.