Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to John Kompa, Investor Relations for Calumet. Please go ahead.
Thank you, Drew. Good morning, everyone. Thanks for joining our call today for our DOE loan closing analyst briefing. With me on today's call are Todd Borgman, CEO, David Lunin, EVP and Chief Financial Officer, Bruce Fleming, EVP, Montana Renewables and Corporate Development, and Scott Obermeier, EVP Specialties. You may now download the slides that accompany the remarks made on today's conference call, which can be accessed in the IR section of our website at calumet.com. Also, a webcast of the briefing call will be available on our site within a few hours.
Turning to the presentation, on slide two, please see our cautionary statements. I'd like to remind everyone that during the call, we may provide various forward-looking statements. Please refer to our press release in Form 8-K that was issued Friday afternoon, as well as our latest filings with the SEC for a list of factors that may affect our actual results and cause them to differ from our expectations. As we turn to slide three, I'll now pass the call to Todd.
All right. Thanks, John. And good morning, and thank you for joining today's call to discuss Calumet's recently released news regarding the closing of Montana Renewables' DOE loan. Before we get too deep into the material, let me thank the team that's worked this deal for the past three years to reach the outcome we're discussing today. This process has been a massive investment of time and energy for our Montana Renewables team, much of our Calumet team, our partners at Warburg Pincus, a host of critical third-party support, and a truly impressive team at the Department of Energy's Loan Programs Office, who is an extremely thorough, professional, and committed group. I also want to recognize the importance of the public policy support we've had at Montana Renewables.
From the beginning, this has been a journey of complete bipartisan support, spanning from local and state legislators all the way to the federal level. We believe Montana Renewables is likely the largest agricultural investment in the history of Montana, as we already buy roughly a billion and a half pounds of renewable feedstock from regional farms and ranches. And this number will roughly double to three billion pounds in the coming years on the back of this DOE loan. Montana is an agricultural state that has always been light on processing its agricultural wealth and keeping that value at home, sending raw materials across state lines for processing. Not only is this investment the largest of its kind for the state, but we also hope it will act as an economic anchor in attracting further investments in crushing and rendering.
And we're already seeing real development as farmers look at emerging opportunities like planting more local Camelina oil on fallow land. We've brought thousands of jobs, both permanent and contract, and union and non-union to Great Falls, Montana. And we launched this business immediately after COVID, at a time when the community really needed this economic activity. Today, our products enter a global supply chain of renewable diesel, renewable naphtha, and sustainable aviation fuel. They're sold throughout the Pacific Northwest, the Rocky Mountains, Canada, and more recently, Midwestern airports like Chicago and Minneapolis. We've developed and deployed advanced technology that is now fully proven, completely de-risked, and will stay right here in the United States as our country continues to be a technology and innovation leader in all fuels.
The U.S. Is also turning into a global leader in sustainable aviation fuel production, specifically, where we supply demand here in North America and also large and growing international volumes as global mandates for our industry products take off. And last, at Montana Renewables, we're positioned in the right point geographically on top of an abundant regional feedstock supply source and with access to the premier global markets for low-carbon fuels in Western North America. At Calumet, we started this journey with a stock that was about $1, and we went all in on this plan. Montana Renewables has been a first mover in sustainable aviation fuel, and as a company, we and our partners have invested roughly $1 billion to get to the point we're at today.
We've demonstrated that this is a top-tier, competitively advantaged renewable fuels business that can generate substantial cash flow from operations, which will enable us to continue to invest alongside the DOE as we expand our facility and continue to compound the value of our enterprise. Today's partnership with the DOE means this journey continues. Let's turn to slide four and go through the specifics of the loan. Many of you will notice that the details of this loan look very familiar, which is correct. As expected, there were no material changes from the conditional commitment previously released in October to Friday's closing. This is a 15-year, $1.44 billion loan with a rate of Treasury plus 3/8%. It currently puts the total cost right around 5%. The closing of the loan means the irrevocable commitment has been executed, and the loan will now be handed to Treasury to disseminate funds.
The first disbursement of $782 million will occur promptly, and no servicing requirements exist until the entire MaxSAF project is complete. Montana Renewables will separately retire $535 million of existing third-party debt in order to secure all assets and collateral under the new loan. Importantly, MRL's previous capital structure required $80 million of cash annually to service it. This new loan is not serviced until the expansion project is complete, which is roughly in four years. This $80 million of annual cash savings is critical, and it ensures that Montana Renewables is a fully self-sufficient entity that, even in all-time low-margin environments we witnessed during the third quarter of last year, will generate positive free cash flow. Other activity in the sources and usage stack includes a $150 million cash investment from China, pay down of some intercompany payables, and increased cash on the MRL balance sheet.
We'll come back to a more granular look at sources, uses, and ongoing expectations shortly. Turning to slide five, we see the near-term expectations for the MaxSAF project. Montana Renewables' SAF capacity grew substantially during 2024. After we completed the 2023 sequential commissioning and shakedown of multiple new process units, MRL demonstrated a strong growth in SAF production, which reached a 30 million-gallon-per-year run rate around mid-year. This was up to 40 million gallons in Q3, and by the end of the year, we were operating at a 50 million-gallon annual run rate. From this new baseline, the MaxSAF project will allow us to increase our SAF capacity to 150 million gallons over the next two years and then grow to 300 million gallons annually. This additional SAF capacity is a game changer for Montana Renewables.
We don't disclose SAF premium under our commercial agreements, but we have said that our margin premium relative to renewable diesel is over $1 per gallon, and international SAF premiums have been reported as much as $3 per gallon. Existing and growing volume mandates around the world look to meaningfully outpace new supplies to expand production, and we expect the supply-short market to continue to demand a strong premium. This first part of our expansion could be an extremely accretive investment and an exciting next step for Montana Renewables. With that, let's spend a minute on the initial capital cost. As we previously disclosed, the first step up in capacity to 150 million gallons is expected to cost a total of $150 million-$250 million.
In 2025, we're expecting the total MaxSAF project spend to be between $40 million and $60 million, meaning that $18 million-$27 million of MRL cash flow will be invested in the project this year to meet our 45% requirement, and that will be matched with $22 million-$33 million of draws funded by the DOE. The project will continue over the next four years with a series of discreet, individually supported investments that will both increase capacity and provide for site efficiencies. Montana Renewables' entire 45% portion of the investment is expected to be generated from operating cash flow inside the business. Of course, we also have a large amount of cash on the MRL balance sheet. Let's turn to slide six and review sources and uses of this transaction a little more closely.
As we discussed earlier, the DOE is investing a new $782 million into Montana Renewables, and Calumet is investing an additional $150 million. This $932 million of sources will fund MRL's balance sheet. MRL will purchase collateral presently held by third parties at a cost of $534 million, including DOCs, and with that, eliminate $80 million per year of principal and interest payments. $193 million of cash is expected to sit on the balance sheet at MRL, and $205 million will be used to pay down to Calumet intercompany. On slide seven, we view the new balance sheet at Montana Renewables and the expected cash flow potential at the fundamental industry index margin level expected at the current RVO mandate. Previously, we've talked a lot about the market's margin-setting mechanism for renewable diesel, and we see that again on the right side of this screen.
At the current RVO of roughly 4.5 billion gallons of biomass-based diesel equivalent, large biodiesel is the market setter as shutdowns occur and imports are eliminated to balance the market. We've seen these actions happen in real time. In the third quarter, industry index margins dropped to just over $1 per gallon. From there, we saw industry adjust rapidly with biodiesel shutdowns and even some uneconomic renewable diesel exited the market. Next, we've seen the start of what most expect to total roughly 1 billion gallons of imports to be backed out of the market as new laws disadvantage these imports. We've seen industry index margins increase from the Q3 low to roughly $1.40 a gallon at the end of the year, which isn't quite to the $1.50 fundamental level, but well on its way. As we know, the cure for low margins is often low margins.
Further, we continue to expect the long-term index margin in this business to return to its historic $2 plus per gallon level as the RVO is adjusting to reflect the capacity additions made over the past two years. In the meantime, Montana Renewables was successful reaching our year-end operational expense target of $0.70 per gallon. At a $1.50 index margin and the newly demonstrated OPEX levels, we expect roughly $0.80 per gallon of cash flow before fixed charges at MRL, which is a full capture of the industry index. It's our SAF premium, offsets, transportation, and byproduct charges that typically would act as a negative to the index margin for renewable diesel producers. This $0.80 per gallon on our current run rate is $140 million annually.
As it relates to fixed charges, Montana Renewables is expecting to spend $10 million-$20 million of normal maintenance in 2025, and as mentioned earlier, we expect the portion of the MaxSAF project spend funded by MRL earnings to be $18 million-$27 million in 2025. With the DOE closed now behind us, we have no third-party cash debt expenses, and MRL is expected to pay Calumet roughly $28 million of annual interest on its existing intercompany instruments. Combining these variables, at this fundamental index margin level, Montana Renewables would be expected to generate $65 million-$85 million of free cash flow. Of course, this range does not include the MaxSAF expansion, as it won't be operational this year, and it also ignores the impact of a return to the historic $2 plus per gallon industry margin index level that we expect to prevail over time.
Moving forward to slide eight, we provide a similar analysis for the rest of Calumet. Starting at the top, our company has averaged $285 million of cash flow before fixed charges since 2019, which is a time period that includes a broad mix of industry margin environments, including COVID. As many will remember, Calumet has also experienced a number of costly operational challenges during that period, which, on the back of our reliability focus, a record throughput in Q3, and similar strong operational performance in Q4, we expect to continue to improve upon. Further, in 2025, with the previously disclosed three-quarter reliability capital program of the past three years behind us, we expect to spend $50 million-$70 million of capital outside of Montana Renewables. Next, at our current debt levels, we're expecting to pay $120 million of net cash interest.
This includes $148 million of outbound interest on our recourse debt, which is offset by the $28 million of inbound interest for Montana Renewables. Of course, as we further pay down our expensive 2026 notes, this number will continue to improve. Ultimately, Calumet will use the incoming funds and free cash flow we generate to reduce debt, and given the current performance of our bonds, we can also consider a small refinancing to opportunistically reduce our cost of capital. Combining our average free cash flow before fixed charges with our 2025 expected CapEx and interest payments, we see that Calumet's business outside of MRL is expected to generate $95 million-$115 million of average free cash flow.
On a consolidated basis, using the fundamental margin levels discussed earlier for MRL and this average level for the rest of Calumet, we see $160 million-$200 million of consolidated free cash flow. For those who have followed Calumet over the past year, you've heard us talk quite a bit about the major catalysts we've been focused on to create shareholder value.
They included a C-Corp conversion that allowed us to improve our shareholder base and trading liquidity, this DOE loan to transform our cash flow profile and enable the MaxSAF expansion, and a focus on deleveraging. With the conversion done and the DOE closed, we'll now be focused on executing the MaxSAF project and deleveraging throughout the business, and the free cash flow we just analyzed will be a major enabler and huge first step in that process. With that, thank you for your time today, and I'm going to turn the call back to the operator for Q&A.
We will now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your telephone keypad. If you're using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. If at any time your question has been addressed and you would like to withdraw your question, please press star then two. At this time, we will pause momentarily to assemble our roster. The first question comes from Roger Read with Wells Fargo. Please go ahead.
Yeah, thank you. Good morning and congrats, guys, on getting this thing across the line finally.
Thanks Roger .
A lot of moving parts here. I guess what I really want to make sure I understand, as you talked about the guidance items, you've got the intercompany payable reduction coming to 205. I assume that's now all included in the $148 million of gross interest, $120 million of net going out. I want to make sure I understand what the balance sheet of Calumet looks like ex-MRL and what the process maybe of further debt reduction opportunities are.
Yeah, you bet. Let's see if David wants to chime in here, but if you look at slide eight, basically saying that pro forma that's closed, the net recourse debt to Calumet's a little over $1.5 billion, and then on an interest basis, yes, to service that, we have $148 million going outbound. Now, also, we have $322 million Calumet owns this asset, this intercompany asset that Montana Renewables will service to the tune of $28 million. So on a net basis, what we're saying is $1.582 billion of net recourse debt, $322 million of intercompany. The net of that is $1.26 billion, and the net outbound interest required to pay to service that $1.26 billion is $120 million a year.
Okay, so you're getting the—that's what I'm trying to make sure I understand. You're getting the $205 back, or that's a reduction. So $205 comes back, and then there's still this $322 that's out.
That's correct.
Is that correct? Okay. That's correct. All right. Appreciate that clarification. And then the other one, just what, if anything, do we need to pay attention to in terms of now that you've got all the funding in place, the process of bringing staff here? You laid out, obviously, the plan to 2026, the longer-term plan to 2027, 2028. Any particular, we need to really watch this from a permitting standpoint or a long lead item or just getting workers in Montana. I'm thinking that you might have a little more competition for construction people given what happened in SoCal here.
Hey, Roger, it's Bruce. I might take that. I think I heard about four things. So let's start off with the.
Yeah, I'm the first guy asking a question, so I'm all over the place. Apologies for that. I know. It's good. I'm just really trying to understand, are there any hurdles we need to be paying attention to here?
Yeah, so that was a comprehensive question. Let me walk through the components. So the answer is not really, but let's get there with some support. So the fact that we did this once already in the very recent past gives us the practical experience with exactly how things like the permit and process work in Montana. The workforce, we were very satisfied with what Kiewit did for us last time to marshal forces into a low population density part of the country and give us effective productivity.
The fact that we have a half dozen or so, depending on how you want to count, of small discrete projects, you'll hear us talk about a modular approach. That's actually what we did last time as well. So it's not like we're doing some EPC mega project. I don't believe there's any one discrete component that itself is more than about $100 million. So we're not doing a major lift here. This is a scale that Calumet is used to operating on in our system. So we feel pretty good about all that. We have the permitting strategy laid out. It was actually one of the things the DOE was particularly interested in. And so I think we've got a very clear line of sight on how this is going to go.
All right. Appreciate that. I'll turn it back. Thanks, guys.
Thanks, Roger.
The next question comes from Neil Mehta with Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.
Thank you so much. Congratulations, Todd and team. My first question was just around how we should think about SAF premiums, sustainable aviation fuel premiums. It's a little tricky to get our head around. So how do you think about the range of outcomes there, and can you give us a sense of how those customer conversations have progressed?
Hey, Neil, Bruce again. So look, that's the 64-dollar question everybody wants to know. And we don't disclose that for a couple of reasons, but we are trying to arrange the guidance. So reasons for not disclosing include the obvious, like it's commercially sensitive to our off-taker, and we've got a signed contract that says that that's material and non-public. The pertinent fact, I think, though, for this forming industry is things are changing fast.
Anybody that figured out their 10-year SAF program two years ago has been dramatically reset by subsequent developments like volume mandates popping up in the rest of the world, like Illinois and Minnesota providing a state tax incentive, a significant one, and a couple of other details. So the space is forming very, very fast. That's a problem for the tracking services. I've seen published reports that say SAF is selling for less than diesel, and they call those people up and say, in essence, what are you doing?
That's impossible because the SAF will just be left in the diesel. It's got a floor value. And so everybody wants to know it's forming fast, it's changing fast. You're going to see waterborne movements from the U.S. Gulf to Europe. There's a lot going on there. So we're very satisfied with our premium. Todd has explained in his remarks that a floor of one and a ceiling of three are observable in the market. That's very, very strong. And apologies that we're not going to publish our contracts, but hopefully all of that sounds like what we have always consistently reported.
Okay. That is
Neil,
please go ahead.
No, I just got to pile on and a little bit more on kind of the go-forward. So I highlighted in the remarks earlier that we expect these premiums to continue to exist and potentially even grow. There's actually a fundamental reason for that. That's not just hope. When you kind of balance the market out today, we have about 300 million gallons of SAF annually produced, and it's a balanced market, actually a short market, I should say, and everyone is experiencing these premiums.
We're seeing 400 million gallons or so of new production come on from reliable producers here in the not-too-distant future. We've got Montana Renewables' first step, which is an incremental 100 million gallons. Over the next couple of years, we look at an additional 500 million gallons of volume coming on. Often we get the question of, hey, is the market going to absorb that? And the reality is there's 2 billion gallons of global mandates already made that are inching up towards 2030.
So we kind of look forward, and we think that the new production that's coming online matches the new mandates that are coming online in 2025. Those continue to creep up. It'll be perfect timing to creep up our supply right in line with them. So it's kind of a really short market over the next five years if you look at mandates that already exist. And that doesn't even include all of the voluntary supply and commitments that we're seeing from the airlines, etc. So it's very balanced. And I shouldn't say balanced. I should say balanced in the short term and extremely short in the long term. So we expect to see this premium continue to grow.
Yeah,
if I just support that further, the reason the market looks balanced is because it is supply short. And the second there's a drop of supply, somebody takes it up. That's kind of a circular reference, isn't it? There's a grotesque shortfall of supply versus global aspirations, and that's what everybody's talking about now. What that reinforces is the need for stable policy, and because the whole space is forming and because public policy is forming along with it, we don't think that there is going to be a particularly stable planning environment for a typical 10-year DCF model. We are doing this because we think it's a very appealing direction for Calumet to go.
We're a serial entrepreneur at heart, and we got in early. We got in relatively large. We sold more SAF than anybody else last year of 2024, and we think there's been an important learning curve, and we think that we're probably pretty well understanding how this is all playing out. I'm simply reinforcing that it's going to be very, very dynamic. You're probably going to see the same kind of volatility and uncertainty that you see in a 10-year cycle in energy commodities. You're going to see that in 10 months in SAF.
Yeah, that is helpful. And the follow-up is just sort of a corporate structure. You've got two disparate businesses at this point. You've got a specialties business, which is high margin, low volatility. And then you've got what's a rapidly growing renewables business. And so do you see business logic to have this integrated and diversified business, or does it make sense to monetize one of the two over time and become more of a pure play?
Yeah, I think it's a great question. I think over time, you should see these businesses be separated. The question is when and how, and we're going to look to the markets to guide us on the answer to that. Right now, it's quite nice. I think they fit together really, really well when you look at our general strategy. On the one hand, you have the specialty business, which has just rock solid, been around for decades, continues to grow and improve, has meaningful upside there, actually, as we generate after we accomplish the deleveraging that we want to and are able to invest cash in that business.
We have meaningful upside in that business, and we're super excited about it. It provides a really nice just cash flow floor, we think, of it to the integrated business. And it's really given us the ability to build this Montana Renewables, the growth platform that you mentioned. So, I think it creates a nice balance as you look at how sustainable fuels develops to have both of these and the stable cash flow combined with the super high ultra growth business. But in time, certainly, we would expect that as Montana Renewables continues to establish itself and grow and looking forward out into the future, potentially even acquire, that you should see these businesses separated. I just think at the current second, there's no rush. We're just going to make that decision based on whatever's best for the shareholder and look to the markets to guide us.
Okay. It sounds like a long-term plan, but nothing imminent. So thank you so much, Todd. Appreciate it.
Thank you. The next question comes from Saumya Jain with UBS. Please go ahead.
Hey, good morning. Congrats, guys. So with PTC now in, how do you see the feedstock and state credits for MRL varying? I wonder if there's a switch to PTC. I understand that this loan is supposed to double Calumet's purchase of seed oils and tallow. I guess how would that all play out with this?
You're coming through pretty blurry there, Saumya. Do you mind re-asking?
So with PTC now in, how do you see the feedstock and state credits for MRL varying? I wonder if there's a switch to PTC. I understand that this loan is supposed to double Calumet's purchase of seed oils and tallow.
Sure. Let me start, and then we'll get Bruce to jump in. So you're asking about the PTC and how's that going to impact feeds and what's the short-term outlook?
Yeah.
There's a lot of obviously, everybody in the industry is looking for that answer. We got some new guidance late last week. So we'll stay out of the day-to-day news that's the PTC and really focus on what it means big picture. I think big picture, PTC is actually pretty exciting for Montana Renewables from a competitive advantage. At its heart, what the PTC does is it rewards feedstock flexibility, geographic diversity, and product diversity. And all three of those things are advantages that Montana has.
So we can buy any sort of feedstock. We can go to a number of different credit markets, including a Canadian one, which values some of the feedstocks differently than the U.S., and we can make a broad range of products. So I think as we look at it, Montana Renewables is pretty indifferent. We maintain a competitive advantage in biodiesel or the new, I'm sorry, biodiesel. I said biodiesel. The existing, the historic BTC or the future PTC.
And we'll wait for more clarity there. I know there's a lot of rumors in the space, but either way, we're going to maintain our competitive advantage and think industry has to adjust to incentivize the marginal player. So either way, it doesn't change how we think about the market-setting mechanism and the required margin available to that market setter as you balance all the moving parts, the LCFS and the diesel price and various feedstock prices, and then ultimately the PTC or BTC. I don't know, Bruce, what would you add?
Yeah, thank you, Todd. I think that's perfect. And then I would point out on an operating time scale, we're a very dynamic re-optimization machine. We can access any of these feedstocks quickly because they're close to us, and we get into a lot of different regulatory product placement regimes. So the PTC is the carbon intensity sliding scale. That's great. But those are already out there. The four West Coast states and provinces each have a different version of the CI-adjusted incentive. The federal Canadian, meaning the rest of Canada outside of BC, has one. Now the PTC will be another one. These are all incrementally different.
It gives us a lot of optimization potential, which we do take advantage of now. More optimization potential is in the direction of goodness. Todd said we're actually excited about it. That's right. The other thing to note broadly is that to the extent that global industry feedstocks that are of questionable parentage or uncertain certification are going to be held out, and very specifically, imports of UCO are going to become very, very difficult. I think that's an advantage for the domestic ag industry. I think that's in the direction of goodness, and that plays through into our margin ag. So then the parting comment is, and I think this has been unappreciated, but I'm going to remind everybody, we commissioned Montana Renewables on 100% talent.
Now, it's not an issue for us if somebody says only waste. That's not a problem. The days of people running around and talking about feedstock shortages are years gone. So we're very, very happy with our optimization. We don't think we're restricted, and we're super excited to put that into additional margin ag that we can do because of our organizational capabilities.
Got it. Thank you.
The next question comes from Jason Gabelman with TD Cowen. Please go ahead.
Yeah, hey, morning. Congrats on securing the loan. I had a couple of questions. All of the financial details appreciated. Can you let us know, do you have an estimate on what CapEx will be for phase two of the MaxSAF expansion?
Hey, Jason, Bruce. Of course, we do. At the moment, we're taking the same approach we took to phase one, which is that we don't think that's the pertinent metric that we would like to focus on, and we're not going to disclose that. What I'll tell you, though, let's go back over the elements. The half dozen or eight, depending on how you want to count, of discrete projects, there's not one that itself is over $100 million. We're optimizing how we bundle those and sequence them. In addition, we've placed, and this is part of the partnership with the LPO that we've just established, a significant contingency amount on top of the base estimates that we have in hand.
And so I think the real answer to your question is let's see how each of these is discretely justified and advanced. The sooner we do them, the less we've got risk of supply chain disruptions or inflation. And so there's actually an optimization of the CapEx itself. We are signaling that short-term, it's quite modest. We're not spending heavily. Todd covered that. That's important to note. And if we get half the SAF in the next one or two years, half of the expansion SAF, half of the increase in the next one or two years for a very modest capital outlay, then what that's telling you is the rest of the program, which we are going to discretely justify step by step by step, is opportunistic. And we're going to make those decisions jointly with the LPO as we go forward.
I think that last point that Bruce made, Jason, I can just reinforce it, is an important one. What we're providing for the next two years is really what we have in the direct line of sight. So when we said $150 million-$250 million, and Montana Renewables, 45% of which is like $65 million-$115 million, that's what we're seeing going out the door over the next two years. And we said $40 million-$60 million of that $150 million-$200 million in total is a 2025 number. So I don't think that you should expect that number to go up. And then from there, Bruce highlighted well all of the discrete projects that we'll have to kind of add on on top of that base.
Got it. So I guess it sounds like there's potential that increase from 150 million-gallon SAF to 300 million could be more drawn out. The ultimate level could maybe be lower depending on the discrete increases of the projects that you execute. Is that fair?
I think in today's economics, they'd all be great. They'd all be great projects, and you'd want to move forward all with them. And like Bruce said, we're going to do them discretely. So I think you've got it.
Okay. And then the other modeling type question is just once the project is up and running, either the 150 million-gallon expansion or the full 300, do you have an estimate of what the interest expense would be at MRL once you have to start to pay cash interest?
Hey, Jason, Bruce. So yeah, I think let's frame that. So immediately, we're going to draw $782 million of the total loan. And as Todd covered, that's at today's Treasury interest rates, that would be about 5% to us. So in the future at run rate, when we start servicing that four years from now, then you're looking at 5% of that. Now, in the interim four years, we're also going to draw, and we're pointing to the loan headroom, the additional $658 million, I think it was. Well, that's including all of the contingency and so on.
If we draw all of that, now you need to tell me what the 15-year Treasury rates are each month over the next four years because each of those draws is priced on that day that we draw. Does that make sense? So if market stays the way it is, and we go to the maximum expenditure, and we build everything that we've been able to envision, and for whatever reason, we need to tap all the contingency, that's the maximum maximum case that we don't think we'll get to, then 5% of the $1.44 billion. Yeah. Starting in four years.
Yeah, starting later.
That's right. Thank you, Todd.
Okay. That makes sense. Thanks.
The next question comes from Amit Dayal with H.C. Wainwright. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Good morning, guys. Solid start to the year. Congratulations. With respect to this $160 million-200 million consolidated cash flows, are you using sort of recent prices and margins for this estimate? Then the sort of adjacent question to that is, is that a number for 2025, or is that a run rate number that you hope to achieve by the end of this year?
No, we think it's a—and it takes your question, Todd. We're trying to pick more of just a representative kind of fundamental conservative defendable number, right? So let's start with MRL, and then we'll go to the Calumet side. We said $1.50 a gallon of index margin is the basis for that. We do think that that is the fundamental index margin right now. And like I said, at the end of the year, we were creeping pretty closely to that at $1.40 a gallon plus. But over time, we expect that to reach the $2 a gallon historic level that it's been. So we expect that we're not giving specific guidance for 2025.
We're saying that on a fundamentally driven level, where the RVO is set right now, the market-setting mechanism for renewable diesel is large biodiesel, and that's $1.50 a gallon, and we should be making $0.80 a gallon from there. From that starting point, we're going to see index margins increase to historic levels, and we're going to see an incremental 100 million gallons of SAF with an additional premium come online. So we're not trying to give long-term guidance here. We're trying to give a kind of fundamental conservative level that's based in something that you can latch onto from which we'll grow to kind of our long-term outlook. On the Calumet basis, we're simply taking an average EBITDA over the last six years. And again, we think that's a pretty conservative way to look at it as well.
So we're not making a call on specialty margins in that number, which we've seen improve dramatically over the last five years. We're not taking credit for the improved operations that we're expecting as we've seen that uptick over the last couple of years. There were a couple of pretty rotten margin environments with COVID. Of course, we had a pretty strong 2022 in there as well. So we're trying to give just an average number based in some sort of conservatism that then we can kind of build on from the future, not specifically give 2025 guidance and not specifically build in all of the operational bets improvements that we've seen in the business.
Understood. No, that's very helpful. Thank you for that. And then maybe just the last one from me. For this new capacity coming online, are you expecting to undertake new offtake agreements, or do you think your existing customers can pick up all this new supply that's coming online?
Thanks, Bruce. The existing customer can certainly pick up the new supply that's coming online. We've got about 0.1% of the global jet market replaced by renewables as we speak. Anybody can take all of the output. So the question is, there's sort of a natural trade-off between value maximization. We can sell SAF for the maximum $ per gallon every day in the spot market, or we can establish a partnership that's stable for the longer term and probably conveys other synergies and advantages. So we're one step down the partnership road. We think that's a naturally preferred position.
As we bring more physical SAF production online, we're going to do that jointly with the DOE partner, which is partner number one, and with the SAF offtake partner, which is partner number two. If we do this well and we use all of our experience with partnering that Calumet has over generations, we're going to have a very, very stable and competitive winner here. Maybe I can just tie that a little bit to our strategy as well. Earlier, Neil talked about complete separation of the business, and we said that we'll take our time and figure out when the right time to have complete separation of Montana Renewables and our specialty business is. As we look at the expanded SAF volume, we think there's a real opportunity there to partner that with equity investors in Montana Renewables in the short term.
Because while it may take us a while to get to complete separation, we're absolutely focused on monetizing a minority portion as soon as possible or as soon as practical to complete the deleveraging of Calumet. So we kind of look at that increased SAF volume as a lever there. Obviously, a lot of the strategics that would be interested to come in are quite interested in the SAF. Some people have said, "Hey, why haven't you already gone out and contracted all of that future SAF?" And the reason is twofold. One, we'll get the better price for it when it's closer. But two, the equity investor in Montana Renewables most likely wants that SAF, and we're not wanting to go out and contract it all up before we give them that opportunity.
Yes, makes sense. Understood. Thank you, guys. That's all I have.
This concludes our question and answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to John Kompa for any closing remarks.
Thank you, Drew. Thank you to our shareholders for joining us today and your continued interest and support. Have a great rest of the day.
The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.