Good morning. My name is Dexter, and I'll be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Enterprise Products Partners fourth quarter 2020 earnings call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speakers' remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. Mr. Randy Burkhalter, Vice President of Investor Relations, will begin your conference. Please go ahead, sir.
Thank you, Dexter. G ood morning, everyone, and welcome to the Enterprise Products Partners conference call to discuss fourth quarter 2020 earnings. Our speakers today will be Co-Chief Executive Officers of Enterprise's General Partner, Jim Teague and Randy Fowler. Other members of our senior management team are also in attendance for the call today. During this call, we will make forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, based on the beliefs of the company, as well as assumptions made by and information currently available to Enterprise's management team. Although management believes that the expectations reflected in such forward-looking statements are reasonable, it can give no assurance that such expectations will prove to be correct.
Please refer to our latest filings with the SEC for a list of factors that may cause actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements made during the call. With that, I'll turn it over to Jim.
Thank you, Randy. As we said in this morning's press release, our businesses continued to perform well throughout 2020. We reported net income attributable to common unit holders for 2020 of $3.8 billion, or $1.71 per unit, compared to $4.6 billion or $2.09 per unit on a fully diluted basis for 2019. Net income for 2020 was reduced by non-cash asset impairment charges of approximately $891 million, which Randy's going to address. Distributable cash flow was $6.4 billion for 2020 compared to $6.6 billion for 2019. DCF provided 1.6 x coverage, and we retained $2.5 billion of DCF in 2020 to reinvest in the partnership. We completed 2020 with significant financial flexibility and a strong balance sheet. We really are proud of Enterprise's employees for their dedication and perseverance in responding to the challenges during 2020 caused by the coronavirus pandemic.
The diversification of our businesses across multiple commodities, the magnitude of our transportation and storage assets, the depth of our marketing activities, and our cost control efforts enabled us to generate distributable cash flow just 3% shy of the record DCF we earned in 2019. We were able to self-fund over 75% of our $3 billion of growth capital for the year. This performance supported our 22nd consecutive year of distribution growth. There's a lot to be proud of from all our folks. We are proud of how they consistently use good judgment in both their work and personal lives, as Enterprise was one of the first work from work companies in the energy space.
There is no way our results would've been what they were in 2020 without the power of teamwork that takes place when we're all in our offices on the same schedule and pulling in the same direction. We don't believe you can Zoom your way to prosperity. We're optimistic that the combination of the vaccine and more stimulus will lead to the world emerging from this economic sudden stop in 2021. We're encouraged by the signs of a rebound in the global economy that we see through strong domestic and international demand for NGLs, ethylene and propylene, and the continuing recovery in the demand for refined products. There are still uncertainties and headwinds as we begin this year.
We've been very outspoken about the potential for significant price appreciation as soon as the second half of this year, and we're not alone in that analysis, with most energy banks and consultants seeing the same thing. Long-term, the world, with its growing population of 8 billion people, including billions living in energy poverty, is evolving, and we will continue to evolve with it. We have a successful track record of using technology to become more efficient and expanding and repurposing our assets to adapt to changes in energy market fundamentals. We believe we are in a position of financial strength to continue to prosper through this period.
Our objectives today are consistent with those when we went public in 1998: building a company that has staying power for the long term by protecting a strong balance sheet, investing in growth projects with attractive returns, and responsibly returning capital to our limited partners, including through distributions that have never been cut. We placed $2.4 billion of major growth projects into service in 2000, and we have $3.6 billion of projects under construction that will come into service over the next two years. We put into service in 2020 include two fractionators at Mont Belvieu, our Midland-to-ECHO 3 Pipeline, and petrochemical projects related to ethylene and propylene logistics, storage, and export capabilities. We developed the capability to co-load ethane and ethylene on the same ship at Morgan's Point, and propane and propylene on a VLGC at our ship channel facilities.
I don't know of anyone that has those capabilities. Projects coming in service in 2021 include a C5 hydrotreater at Mont Belvieu and our Acadian Gillis Lateral, which will move approximately 1 Bcf a day of natural gas into growing LNG markets in Louisiana. In our petrochemical sector, our PDH 2 facility remains on schedule and on budget to come online in the second quarter of 2023. We have several other petchem projects expected to be placed in service next year. We continue to focus on cost control. In total, we have reduced our planned growth capital expenditures for 2020 and 2021 by over $1.5 billion in response to changing industry conditions. We want to give a special shout-out to operations for substantially managing our costs.
For 2020, Enterprise's overall operating costs were down approximately $400 million versus budget, and our sustaining CapEx for 2020 were approximately $100 million lower than budget. All this without sacrificing safety or reliability. Finally, I want to take a moment to address the change in administrations. Reading the news, one might think that the sun is setting on oil and gas. Enterprise has been around since 1968, and we have successfully grown our business through many administrations. Obviously, policy proposals from this new administration have been supportive of renewables. A cleaner energy future does not mean a world without fossil fuels. The reality is nothing could be further from the truth.
While the notion of energy transition, and I hate the word transition, but regardless, with the notion of energy transition often implies shifting away from traditional hydrocarbons, we still believe an all above approach will be required to meet the world's growing energy needs. A more prosperous and sustainable future for all people will require traditional sources of oil and gas that the U.S. provides in numerous forms of renewables. To deny the world's poor nations access to the abundant, low-cost energy that we have, frankly, is to tell them, you can't have what I have, and you can't afford what I have. U.S. oil and gas and petrochemicals are making a difference, not just in the U.S., but around the world. There is nothing to replace these products. Without plentiful, reliable, and low-cost fossil fuels, the world would be a very different place.
It would be one that is less advanced, much less prosperous, have much shorter life expectancies, and frankly, would be more polluted. Consider India, where 100 million homes have been converted from burning wood, dung, and coal to LPG. Or power that is being generated from natural gas exported from the U.S. versus the alternative of coal. Talk to these people and you'll really understand what U.S. hydrocarbon production has done for them. The more politicians try to limit production, the more price bullish I get. I'm sure someone on this call will ask how the cancelation of Keystone Pipeline will affect our Seaway throughput. It may have a positive effect, but it doesn't make that stroke of the pen right. Energy security is a North American issue, and limiting supply only makes Russia, OPEC, and Iran richer and more powerful.
It is saying to the 3 billion people on this planet that live in energy poverty that U.S. politicians don't care about their quality of life. Stepping off my soapbox, as shown through our results for 2020, our asset base and our people have demonstrated that our business model can sustain cycles, even one as severe as this pandemic. We are committed that Enterprise will be here in 100 years, prospering through whatever hurdles there might be. With that, I'll turn the call over to Randy Fowler.
Thank you, Jim, and good morning, everyone. I'll start by reviewing some fourth quarter income statement items. Net income attributable to common unit holders for the fourth quarter of 2020 was $337 million, or $0.15 per unit on a fully diluted basis, compared to $1.1 billion or $0.50 per unit for the fourth quarter of 2019. Net income for the fourth quarters of 2020 and 2019 were reduced by non-cash asset impairment and related charges of approximately $800 million, or $0.36 per unit for the fourth quarter of 2020, and $82 million or $0.04 per unit for the fourth quarter of 2019.
The impairment charges recorded in 2020 were primarily for goodwill associated with the partnership's natural gas pipelines and services segment, and for certain long-lived assets, including those associated with our marine business, that is our barge and pushboat business, and natural gas gathering and processing facilities. Moving on to cash flows. Cash flows from operations was $1.6 billion for the fourth quarter of 2020, compared to $1.7 billion for the fourth quarter of 2019. On a full year basis, cash flow from operations was $5.9 billion and $6.5 billion for 2020 and 2019, respectively. Cash flow from operations for 2020 and 2019 were both reduced by $768 million and $457 million, respectively, for cash used for working capital.
Free cash flow for 2020, which we define as cash flow from operations minus investing activities, less distributions to non-controlling interests, was $2.7 billion for the year, which is an 8% increase compared to free cash flow for 2019. Our payout ratio, which we define as the sum of cash distributions and buybacks as a percent of cash flow from operations, was 70% for 2020, 67% from distributions and distribution equivalent rights, and another 3% from common unit buybacks. We declared a distribution of $0.45 with regard to the fourth quarter, which will be paid February 11th. This distribution represents a 1.1% increase versus fourth quarter 2019. 2020 marked our 22nd year of consecutive annual distribution increases. During the fourth quarter of 2020, we bought back $26 million, or 1.3 million common units at an average price of $19.62.
This brought our total repurchases for 2020 to $200 million, or 9.7 million units under our buyback program. Enterprise's distribution reinvestment plan and employee unit purchase plan purchased a combined $33 million or 1.8 million common EPD units in the open market during the fourth quarter. For the full year, these programs repurchased $137 million or approximately 7 million common units on the open market. While we currently expect to generate discretionary free cash flow beginning in the second half of 2021— and what we define as discretionary free cash flow is cash flow in excess of capital investments and distributions—g iven the many uncertainties as we enter the year, we believe it would be premature to provide distribution growth and buyback guidance at this time. We will continue to think of buybacks as opportunistic as opposed to programmatic or formulaic.
For 2021 and 2022, we currently anticipate growth capital investments to be approximately $1.6 billion and $800 million, respectively. These figures are based on sanctioned capital projects and exclude the growth capital investments related to our proposed SPOT offshore crude oil terminal that is pending government approvals. While we have several projects in the development phase, we currently do not expect our 2021 growth capital expenditures to exceed $2 billion, even if some of these projects are underwritten and sanctioned this year. We currently expect sustaining capital expenditures for 2021 to be approximately $440 million, which includes $115 million of expenditures associated with scheduled turnarounds of our PDH, propane dehydrogenation facility, and our octane enhancement facilities. Turning to capitalization, our total debt principal outstanding was approximately $30 billion as of December 31, 2020.
Assuming the first call date for our hybrids and the maturity date, the average life of our debt portfolio was 16.3 years, and again, based on final maturity, 20.4 years, respectively. Our effective average cost of debt is 4.4%. Adjusted EBITDA for 2020 was $8.1 billion, and our consolidated leverage ratio was 3.5 x after adjusting debt for the equity treatment of the hybrid debt securities, and also reducing debt for unrestricted cash on-hand. Our consolidated liquidity was approximately $6.1 billion at year end, including availability under our existing credit facilities and approximately $1.1 billion of unrestricted cash on-hand. Much of this cash on-hand was sourced from our $1.25 billion debt offering that we did in August 2020. Going into 2020, we believed it was responsible to raise capital through debt offerings well in advance of our needs to fund maturing debt and capital expenditures.
We issued a total of $4.25 billion in debt in 2020, $3 billion in the January offering and $1.25 billion in our August offering. Our maturities in 2020 were only $1.5 billion. Throughout most of 2020, including at year end, we carried more than $1 billion of unrestricted cash on our balance sheet to provide liquidity in addition to our bank credit facilities. This compares with our historical practice of maintaining unrestricted cash balance of $200 million-$300 million. In 2021, we have a total of $1.325 billion of notes maturing. These maturities will ultimately be satisfied with unrestricted cash on the balance sheet, largely from our $1.25 billion August 2020 debt offering and 2021 cash flow from operations. At this time, we do not foresee the need to access the debt capital markets in 2021.
However, depending on market conditions and other factors, we may elect to approach the debt capital markets in 2021 to fund our 2022 debt maturities. Before we turn it over to questions, I want to remind everyone that we have two virtual events that will take place on February 22nd and February 23rd. On the 22nd, we will feature the discussion of ESG and other related topics. On the 23rd, we will focus on traditional Analyst Day topics. The webcast will be available through our website starting at 8:00 A.M. Central Time both days, with speaker sessions followed by live Q&A on each day. With that, Randy, I think we're ready for questions.
Okay. Thank you, Randy. Dexter, we're ready to take questions now from our listeners.
Thank you. As a reminder, to ask a question, you'll need to press star one on your telephone. To withdraw your question, press the pound key. Again, that's star one to ask a question. We will limit to one question and one follow-up question per participant. Please stand by, we will compile a Q&A roster. Your first question comes from the line of Jeremy Tonet. Your line is open.
Hi. Good morning.
Good morning.
Just want to start off on the supply side, if I could. Maybe this is a question for Tony and Jim here. Just wondering what your latest thoughts are, given producer conversations on the outlook for supply growth. From what we can see, it looks like the Permian will continue to grow. Other basins could decline, and the Permian kind of take share here. Just wondering what your thoughts are for supply, G&P supply, going forward. Also with federal land issues there kind of encroaching on the Permian, thoughts on that and how this all kind of impacts EPD.
Jeremy, we're going to produce a new supply forecast at the Analyst Day. The long and the short of it is, if you look at what public producers are saying and what they're telling us, they plan on remaining flat in 2021. Flat being, most of them couch it as where they exited 2020 and where they plan on exiting 2021. You are correct that the Permian's going to be the lion's share of the activity. That said, we are seeing some increase in activity and production in the Eagle Ford that we like to see. I guess then I'll move to the federal acreage comment. It's early on to this. Brent may want to chime in. It's early on to this pronouncement from the Biden administration, kind of two weeks into it.
When we look at the Permian acreage, we back up and look at what we consider active acreage, it's nearly 15 million acres. Only about 12% of that, as we gauge it, is on federal land. On that federal land, there's some approximately 2,000 permits, probably more as we speak, and 600 or 700 DUCs. What we're hearing from producers, I think— Brent, let me know if you feel differently— some are actually speeding up. Most are saying at this point, no change. I would say few, if any, at this point have said, I'm laying a rig or two down. Because they're well-permitted. They saw that it might come, that's where they're headed. There's a lot of political pushback. This is big for the state of New Mexico.
Stay tuned. W hen we look at it holistically, this is how we feel. Brent, did I miss anything?
No, I think you covered it, Tony. In terms of some green shoots, we are seeing some private guys be more active out there with putting more rigs in play. I think the simple answer is we don't know what's going to happen, but when we talk to our customers, it feels like they have a timeline to go ahead and execute the permits that they have, and it's not a rush to go out there and get it done. It's kind of a case-by-case basis, depending on the producer. I haven't sensed panic from talking to our customers.
Got it. That's helpful. Thanks. Maybe kind of building off that supply impact as you see it for 2021 here. Just wondering if you couple that with, I guess, the turnarounds in the petchem segment. Does this mean that you expect 2021 EBITDA would step down from 2020? Are there any other kind of big moving pieces there we should be thinking about?
Jeremy, I'd say based on what we see thus far, we think we can hold it flat. Could it be soft $100 million, $200 million? Could be. I'll tell you what, never doubt the resolve of this organization to come in and capture opportunities. We'll see. I think we're in good shape going into the year.
That's very helpful. I'll stop there. Thank you.
Your next question comes from the line of Colton Bean from Tudor, Pickering, Holt . Thank you very much. You may ask your question.
Morning. With the total capital down nearly 40% for this upcoming year and leverage effectively at your long-term target, can you just update us on how you're thinking about payout ratio for 2021?
I'd really refer back to the comments that I had in the conference call script. I think, we do expect to start generating discretionary free cash flow in the second half of the year. A good bit of our CapEx is skewed more towards the beginning of the year. We think we'll be discretionary free cash flow positive. At this point in time, we really don't want to provide any guidance on payout. I mean, payout's still gonna be pretty lofty. Just given where our distribution is, since the distribution makes up a substantial amount of the cash that we return to our investors. It's still gonna be fairly high just based on that. As far as what we do on buyback, I think we'd like to get a little bit farther into the year.
Again, a lot of uncertainties as we enter the beginning of this year, and we'd just like to get better visibility before we provide any guidance on that front.
Randy, just to follow up on that, do you see any benefit to going materially below that 3.5x leverage target?
We said on 3.5x , our definition of 3.5x EBITDA is 3.5 ± a quarter turn. That's our target. We've been talking about that being our target for two or three years now, and we're still comfortable with that range.
Understood. Then just on the propylene operations, with the spread between PGP and RGP widening further year to date, any potential for the fracs to offset the PDH downtime here, with Q1 upcoming?
Where's Chris? Do you wanna answer?
Sure. Wi th the spreads the way they are, obviously we're running as hard as we can, so I think we're expecting to do as much as we can with that.
This is Jim. The spreads are wide, but we don't have exposure to the total. I think we got exposure to about 30% of our-
That's right.
... capacity of that spread. To the extent we have exposure, we'll benefit. I'm not sure how much it'll make up.
Appreciate that. Just a quick final one. The ethylene storage capacity, I don't think that was online until almost the end of December. Can you just update us on what you've seen there, and how you're expecting exports to turn over the course of the year? Appreciate it.
Our storage hub was actually online the prior year, but we finished our storage tank at the export terminal at the end of the year. We were operating at pretty high rates before the tank was in service. Having that tank just allows us to optimize dock loadings and to load at higher rates. Really at this point, we have contracts in place. It's really going to be determined by the global arbitrage.
We're sold out.
We're sold out. With some opportunity for spot business.
Your next question comes from the line of Kyle May from Capital One Securities. Your line is open.
Hey, good morning, guys. I just wanted to maybe go into a little bit, in the release you talked about analyzing renewable project opportunities. Just want to get a feel for maybe what you're looking at and how that would fit with the business.
It wasn't really renewable opportunities. What we said, we've got some growth projects that we're looking at that are, if you would, consistent with the energy evolution, not necessarily specifically renewable projects.
Okay, got it. I appreciate that. Can you maybe go into a little bit more details on what those projects would be?
Not really.
Okay. Fair enough. Second question would be, I believe you mentioned that your growth CapEx could move a little bit higher to around $2 billion this year. Any more details around what would push you to that upper end?
The previous question.
All right. Fair enough. Thanks, guys.
Okay.
We have a question from Jean Ann Salisbury from Bernstein. Your line is open.
Hi. Good morning. Ethane storage in the U.S. is at record levels. Frankly, more ethane storage than I knew existed. Can you comment on if that's mostly your inventory? And perhaps your view on, if this high storage will dampen ethane prices in 2021?
Brent?
We saw ethane storage peak in the fourth quarter. We're seeing it roll off as crackers came back online. Ethane was a little bit challenged during the fourth quarter as ethane's trying to clean up. I think we're fundamentally bullish a lot of things as it relates to hydrocarbons. I think in terms of an outright price on ethane, I still think you have to have some sort of baseline gas call. If you look at how this market balances with demand and supply on ethane, and if you look at the demand coming online, you hear what Tony says about supply from talking to our customers. Ultimately, ethane, and you're seeing it happen, we've seen it happen the last several weeks, ethane has to work and go to work to go price to get back into the NGL stream.
Whether that means coming from further away or whether that means that people have to adjust prices in the Permian Basin, we believe that these markets need to balance. I think fundamentally— I don't know, and I've read your reports, Jean Ann, and I don't know if we're going to see some numbers that I'd read from you a month or two months back —but I think we're aligned that we're fairly bullish ethane.
Thank you. That's helpful. Asia propane prices were quite high for much of December and January. Can you comment if you were able to capture a material amount of marketing margin there, or did most of that go to the shipping company?
I think-
One of you.
This is Brent again. We have a massive presence in NGLs. When price goes to work in NGLs, I think it's fair to assume that somehow Enterprise participated in it.
Got it. Thanks a lot, Brent. That's all for me.
Your next question comes from the line of Pearce Hammond from Simmons Energy. The line is open.
Thank you. Good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. My first question is, what are your expectations for crude oil export volumes for 2021, and what are the puts and takes around that view?
Okay, we're going to keep this as the Brent Secret's show. Brent? Now, go to your answer that you gave earlier.
If you look at our volumes, I can speak specifically to Enterprise. Our volumes for crude exports have gone down. The pandemic has taught us a lot of things. One thing that it has taught us is something that we've preached for the last several years, is that Houston truly is a market. I understand, and I see the numbers too, that there's a lot of barrels going out of Corpus. Recognize the fact is, once the train leaves the station in Midland and it heads to Corpus, it has to go to the water. What we offer in Houston is truly a market, and the domestic price that our customers achieve in Houston is higher than a price than they can achieve on the water. That's the reason they've elected to not take the barrel across the water.
As Enterprise, from a profitability standpoint, I'd say we're somewhat agnostic to it. We can provide the service. We have no problem providing the service, but the domestic price in Houston is higher than Corpus. At some point, the market's going to require that barrel to go across the water once the global market needs that barrel. Right now, our customers are achieving a higher net back in Houston.
What about your revenue?
You can see the volumes decline, but when it comes to revenue, frankly, our revenue stays flat. It will continue to stay flat for quite some time. When we have to export, frankly, there is additional expenses that you undertake from exporting.
Okay, that's super helpful. Thank you. My follow-up is, can you elaborate on the drivers of the current strength in the NGL market and how sustainable you think those are for 2021? That's following up on some of the earlier questions.
T his is Justin Kleiderer. I think it's all chemical-driven. The demand for plastics as a function of what we've been experiencing throughout 2020, I think we expect to continue, and that's supporting the entire NGL value chain.
What about your exports to Asia?
On the export front, we continue to seem to set records on volume every quarter. We did in the fourth quarter as well, I think we expect volumes to remain robust through 2021.
Thank you very much.
Your next question comes from the line of Michael Blum from Wells Fargo. Your line is open.
Thanks. Good morning, everyone. I wanted to get your thoughts on what's been going on at the Panama Canal and how that impacts or could impact in the future LPG movements kind of more on a long-term basis.
This is Justin again. I'll take a stab at it. I think what you saw and what you continue to see with congestion could potentially change trade flows. I don't think that we expect it to materially do so in which that would impact volumes across Gulf Coast docks. At the end of the day, barrels need to clear, the demand needs it, and they'll continue to pay the price to get it there.
Got it. Thank you. Do you have a line in the press release that your goal, I guess, is to source 25% of your power from renewable sources by 2025? Can you just elaborate a little bit on that? Is that primarily replacing compressors along the pipelines, or are there other areas where you think you're going to source that power?
I think the power sourcing is from a wide variety of areas. Over the last number of years, if you look 10+ years , we've been going more and more to electrical drivers at our new facilities. Power is really sourced both from opportunistic, b eing able to go out and acquire solar power, as well as the ERCOT grid provides a significant amount of renewable power.
Great. Thank you so much.
We have a question from Shneur Gershuni from UBS. Your line is open.
Hi, good morning, everyone. I wanted to start off with a question on the Permian. There's been a lot of talk over the last year and a half or so about the Permian overbuild thesis. I was just wondering if I can get your broader thoughts on it. Is the industry really discussing it correctly? I'm kind of wondering along the lines of how we look at the egress out of the Permian. Is there a way to think about it in terms of egress to Cushing versus egress to demand centers? You were just talking about how great Houston is as kind of a demand center for a market.
As we sort of think about it over time, when pipelines come up for recontracting and so forth, is there going to be a different price for pipelines that evacuate crude to Houston, Corpus, and to the demand centers versus towards Cushing? Should there be kind of a dual market that sort of emerges over time? Just kind of thinking about your thoughts on how that entirely plays itself out.
This is Jim. Brent's pointing his finger to me. I got more high points than him. Brent, you want to answer that question? I think what we're seeing flowing to Cushing, you guys can see the arbs between Midland and the overcapacity build that's coming out of Midland. I think there's some barrels that those refining complexes are going to want to go from Midland to Cushing. If you looked at volumes and what they've done month-over-month, they continue to go down. Much like most areas in this country, I would say there's too much pipeline capacity going to Cushing. How that pipeline capacity gets rationalized and how it gets repurposed or what direction it flows, that remains to be seen.
As far as Corpus and Houston, I'd argue, hey, they all work great when barrels are flowing and going straight to the water and there's no decision to make. There's a bunch of plays that worked 15 months ago. But, Brent, speak to the magnitude building.
In terms of what we offer to Houston, in terms of the refining capacity, the access to it from pipeline connectivity. If you look at the amount of storage of the Houston Gulf Coast versus Corpus, you're talking hundreds of millions of capacity. It can weather storms like we saw in 2020 versus what they offer at Corpus. When you look at grades, what people can do with different grades, what the export customers want with different grades. If you look at, frankly, our announcement last week with Magellan, and working on a pricing point that works, frankly, for everybody. It works for producers, it should work for refiners, it should work for consumers. The fact there's transparency for people to go out and conduct their business long term.
Whether that's a hedge that they buy or whether that's a hedge that they sell, they can decide to execute on that or they take it across the water or not, they don't have to take it across the water. They can go sell it back in the market if the arb doesn't work. Versus other ports where frankly, you have vessels floating around out there hoping the phone rings. Because once that phone rings and say, hey, I need you, frankly, the people, all they have to do is go beat the price of Midland. I think that gets old after a while.
Okay. Bottom line, the evacuation to the Gulf Coast should be more valuable than the evacuation to Cushing.
This is going to work over time as contracts roll off. You got some sticky contracts that people have. Markets evolve over time and people learn lessons. In terms of our presence on barrels going from Midland to Cushing is very small. You can sit there and probably look at pipeline flows that are going from Midland to Cushing and say, that is something that is incredibly overbuilt.
Got it. Pe rfect. Maybe to pivot a little bit here. Randy, in your prepared remarks, you'd mentioned the word, you don't want to use the word programmatic, and I definitely appreciate not wanting to say that with respect to buybacks, but you do have a target of 2% of CFFO, which is kind of programmatic in nature. Enterprise did buy back 3% of their stock last year. Have there been any internal discussions around raising that target to 5% or even 10% before greenlighting growth capital? As part of the larger discussion around buybacks, just given where your debt is trading at, any thoughts on tolerating a quarter turn extra leverage just to use the opportunity to take out some units given where they're trading? It would help obviously reduce the distribution claim on cash flows. I think you put in your slides at 67%.
Just wondering if you can give us an expanded discussion on that, on your thought process there.
Shneur, I put that statement in there about opportunistic versus programmatic just to head off this question. I guess it didn't work. You asked a number of them there. The 2% target that we talked about for buybacks was really with respect to 2020. Coming in this year, again, we're getting into new territory in the second half of this year as far as what we see now, based on current expectations, where we'll be discretionary free cash flow positive. We've just come back in. This has really been 2020, and even coming in here to 2021, has been a very dynamic environment with a lot of uncertainties. Boy, you can go down the list of sort of what the uncertainties are as we enter into this year. We're just not at a place.
We think it's premature to come in and provide any guidance on what we're going to do with returning capital buybacks or distributions at this point in time. The distribution that we announced in January, I don't think that should've been a surprise to anybody. We've been increasing distributions 22 years in a row. That shouldn't have been a surprise, and we talked about trying to keep purchase power parity on our distribution. We don't have a lot of inflation. We wanted to come in and go ahead and bump the distribution. When it comes to the buyback, we'd just like to get a little bit more visibility for 2021.
All right. That makes sense. Appreciate the color today, guys. Thank you very much, and stay safe.
We have a question from Keith Stanley from Wolfe Research. Your line is open.
Hi, good morning. I wanted to follow up on the 2021 outlook. In the past, you've alluded to, I think, $500 million - $600 million of sort of outsized spread market-based opportunities was Permian crude spreads in 2019, contango trades in 2020. I'm wondering how you think about kind of what we're seeing in NGL and petchem markets so far in Q1, and if this is potentially the next thing to backfill what you saw in 2020 on contango. Tying that into, I think earlier, I just want to confirm, you made a comment about 2021 maybe being flattish overall to 2020, just how all that ties together. Thanks.
Randy said it was going to be flat, and I endorse that. It makes Justin Kleiderer nervous, so we'll turn it over to him.
T his is Justin. I think you hit on what I'm about to say for the reasons that I'm going to say it, which is the opportunities that we see are certainly going to be different than the past and most certainly going to be different than 2020. I think we firmly believe that they're going to be there. It could be on NGLs and petchem, like you allude to. I think we feel good about the opportunity set there. The future holds opportunities that we can't forecast, but we do forecast them to be there. We're geared up to meet Jim's target.
Great. Just one cleanup item. Just thinking about the working capital, I wouldn't normally ask this, but it's kind of large. You referenced it was over $700 million use of cash in 2020 for working capital items. It was almost $500 million in 2019. That's over $1 billion. I'm assuming that's just related to greater storage and marketing, but when would you expect to get this cash back, and just how should we think about that going forward?
Keith, this is Chris Nelly. A lot of that working capital use is just, if you look at the forward curve, should be coming back over the next couple of quarters. Again, going back to what Justin just stated, that a lot of that is going to be dependent upon what market opportunities are out there, and what working capital utilization will then be as a result. Again, those are self-liquidating short-term deals that have high returns.
Thanks.
Your next question comes from Ujjwal Pradhan from Bank of America. Your line is open.
Good morning, everyone. Thanks for taking my question. Just wanted to ask first on the growth projects that are going to service in 2021 that you noted in the press release. Could you talk about the cost associated with these with respect to the 2021 budget and perhaps return expectations for the three projects in the press release?
W e typically don't talk about capital costs of specific projects. I will say this, that the projects that are coming online were all on time, on budget. We also don't talk about returns of specific projects a little bit for the same reason that we don't come in, and our reluctance to talk about projects under development is we've got a lot of competitors on these calls, and we'd just as soon not get into too much detail. In the earnings support slides, we do provide a list of projects under development. Jackie, what page?
It's on page six of the earnings support.
Got it. I see it in page six. My question was about each of these projects, how much do they contribute to that 2021 budget versus the PDH 2? Which I know is a big-ticket item in the budget still.
Bear with me just a minute. When you come in and you look at the $1.6 billion that we expect to invest in capital projects in 2021, probably the PDH 2 represents about a 1/3 of it.
Got it. That's helpful. Thanks for that. A quick follow-up with regards to the planned increase in renewable power uses. Could you comment on whether that would be neutral to your current power costs or a reduction to it? Thank you.
Could you repeat the question, please?
The cost of the additional renewable power uses, will that be neutral to your current power costs or a reduction to it?
It will be neutral to our current power costs.
Got it. Thank you.
Your next question comes from the line of Michael Lapides from Goldman Sachs. Your line is open.
Hey, guys. Thank you for taking my question. I actually have a couple, several that are short-term, kind of 2021- focused, and then one longer-term one. On 2021, can you talk about the cadence of CapEx during the year? Meaning, is it very front-end loaded when I think about the [bill six ] of growth CapEx? That's the first question. The second is, the $400 million or so of cost savings that you realized in 2020, does some of that come back in 2021? When you refer to flattish EBITDA, is there cost pressure or are there incremental OpEx savings? The last one is probably for Brent or Tony. When Wink-to- Webster fully comes online, how do you think that impacts the battle between Houston and Corpus for crude and crude exports?
Mike, I'll take that first one. Probably, as far as CapEx, there's a little bit more in the first half of the year compared to the second half, but not a lot. Brent?
As far as the operating cost, a big driver for us in 2021 compared to 2020 will be the turnarounds that we have primarily at PDH and [iBDH]. That's kind of an outlier compared to 2020. In 2020, we did a lot of focus on cost. We got some of our base cost structure down, part through supply chain negotiations that enabled us to lower cost. We've also focused very much on data. Data is driving how we manage our cost a lot on our power utilization in one area. Those are going to be sustainable costs.
Frac optimization.
Frac optimization. Sometimes when we look at cost savings, we really look at overall value. Sometimes, particularly on the optimization of our fractionators, we're using a lot of data to drive that, and sometimes that's cost reduction, sometimes that's just overall value optimization. I feel good about going into 2021 and our cost management that we did in 2020. We'll continue that on in 2021.
This is Brent. I think when Wink-to- Webster is up, it's going to continue to ramp up over the next several months. We've seen this before. Corpus' pipelines came on, took barrels from Houston. You look at the people involved with Wink-to- Webster, they're obviously going to go take barrels from pipelines that go to Corpus. All this stuff, when the tide starts rolling out, we'll find out who has contracts and who doesn't, and what's sticky and what's not. I would expect barrels to decrease that are flowing to Corpus and roll over to Wink-to- Webster. There may be some pipelines that frankly don't have contracts that are going to Houston that they may take from those pipelines. We've seen this happen over the last couple of years.
What's your pipeline? What's your contract position?
To Jim's question, what's our contract position. Brad Motal is going to go into this at our analyst meeting. We got about 1 million bbl a day of committed contracts for crude oil that'll last till out to 2028 and beyond. It's hard for me to say that we're going to have a bunch of discretionary barrels until the Permian Basin recovers and that's going to take years. I feel when it comes to weathering this storm, we'll be okay.
Do you think there's an opportunity for other owners or even yourself to repurpose pipes to kind of hopefully tighten the crude pipeline market? If so, what kind of opportunities are out there? Do you see the NGL pipe market getting tighter as well, or do you think that's as oversupplied as the crude side?
I fundamentally believe that capacity has to be rationalized. There's different ways to do that. You can be repurposed or inefficient operators can frankly figure out something else to do. Those assets shut down. The industry as a whole has to probably figure this out.
As far as the details that we look at, we're not going to go into it, but I think it's naive to assume that we don't look at figuring out how to solve some of these capacity issues that are existing in the market.
Got it. Thank you, guys. Much appreciated.
Dexter, we have time for one more question from our audience.
Your last question comes from Yves Siegel from Siegel Asset Management. Your line is open.
Thank you. Good morning, everybody. My question really relates to growth. The underlying premise, I think, of most of the questions today goes back to what Jim sort of laid out, that fossil fuels are going to disappear. It's more playing defense than playing offense. The question really relates to how do you folks think about the long-term opportunities for growth? How much operating leverage is there right now? What are the longer-term opportunities, perhaps, that you see going forward? If I could, just one editorial real quick. In terms of leverage and stock buybacks, I totally appreciate Shneur's question. The other aspect of that is that you lever up, you have to live with the consequences. I think being conservative has really held you in pretty good position for a very long time. Thanks, guys.
Let me take that. Hi, Yves. T his is Jim. I'm not sure we can spell defense. We're always on the offense, and we're working on some pretty exciting projects, recognizing that we need to be responsible about it. We're looking at some pretty exciting things, and [Cliff] said it takes years in the Permian. I'm a firm believer that price heals all ills. Tony is bullish on hydrocarbon prices in the future, but not as bullish as I am. Prices create supply, and I think you're going to see— I'm a believer in the Permian. I'm a believer in the Eagle Ford. If you have federal land issues in New Mexico, we've got a hell of a position in Eagle Ford. Maybe rigs go down there.
I feel pretty good about things, and I feel good about the things we're working on that we said earlier we're not going to talk about.
Yves, appreciate your comment on that. If you come back in and you look at the midstream over time, we went through a couple of periods where whether it was investor-driven or whether it was general partners with IDR-driven, it was distribution growth. You heard the request for that, and you saw a lot of that. A little bit, we were conservative in that. We tried to do something that would —Again w e're trying to build a partnership that's durable for the long term and a little bit of the tortoise and hare. You had a lot of midstream companies that got too far out over their skis on distribution growth, and you've seen them come back in and cut. A little bit when we think about returning capital, again, we're trying to build a durable partnership.
We have a proven track record of returning capital back to our investors, I mean, 70% last year. I think we're going to be deliberate in what we do, and again, a lot of uncertainties, and we'll continue to return capital to our investors. The other thing, I think, with some of the mantra that you hear on buyback, hey, look, some of these companies better watch out. You get too aggressive on buybacks, and that can come in and bite you in the future, too. That's a little bit why we're being deliberate, but I appreciate your comment.
Well, thanks, guys.
Thank you, Yves. That ends our call today. The management team here at Enterprise really thanks you for joining us. We're going to leave the call now. Dexter, would you please give our listeners the replay information? Thank you all again for joining us.
A replay of today's call will be available today at 1:00 P.M. Eastern Time. To access, please dial 800-585-8367 or 404-537-3406 and enter the conference ID number 6088764. Again, a replay of today's call will be available at 1:00 P.M. Eastern Time. To access, please dial 800-585-8367 or 404-537-3406 and enter the conference ID number 0688764. And this concludes today's conference call. Thanks for joining. You may now disconnect.