Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Enterprise Products Partners ESG and Analyst Day Q&A. At this time, all participants are in listen only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there'll be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you'll need to press star one on your telephone. If you require any further assistance, please press star then zero. I would now like to introduce today's conference call. Mr. Randy Burkhalter, you may begin.
Thank you, Kevin. Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to the Enterprise Q&A call. This is a follow-up to, as Kevin said, our ESG and Analyst Days. We have a number of members of management here today to respond to your questions. Before we start the Q&A call, I must make some forward-looking statements here. 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, they 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 that may be made during this call. Kevin, with that, we're ready to take questions from the audience.
Our first question comes from Jeremy Tonet with JPMorgan.
Hi, good afternoon.
Good afternoon, Jeremy.
Just wanted to pick up, you guys talked about your outlook for rationalizing assets across your asset base there, and just wondering if you could expand a bit on that. What feeds into the decision of retiring or also, could these plants be easily brought back if activity picks up, or could they be moved to a different basin if activity there warrants it? How do you think about asset sales in this environment for some of those just building on the part of rationalizing the asset base there?
Hey, this is Natalie Gayden. I did speak to rationalization of assets in the presentation, and we're always looking to make sure that our production profile aligns with the processing facilities that we have in service. Our processing facilities to bring back our next day type of plants, and Graham can probably expound on this, but they are quicker than what you would think of a refinery or a petrochemical complex.
Just to add to that, it's not a big effort to bring many of these plants back or in some cases, to relocate them.
Got it. That's helpful. Thanks. If I think about the pet chem side of your business, there's been expansion there, and there's a notable part of your existing program focused on pet chem complex, PDH, what have you. Just wondering how you think about how that fits into the portfolio overall. Is there a certain kind of limitation that you think it would represent within your EBITDA overall, just given how it seems it's a bit more capital intensive, some of these assets are a bit more delicate or could go offline and some of the pet chems trade at a little bit lower multiple than what midstream trades at. Just wondering how you think about that balance within your portfolio. On the other side, you do have very strong barriers to entry there.
Yeah, Jeremy, this is Chris D'Anna. I talked a little bit about our growth in the recordings, and we see a lot of growth opportunities in that. I don't know that we have a defined set or ratio on what the EBITDA will be in the future versus the rest of Enterprise. We do have a goal of over $1 billion by 2024 for the petchem segment. We see a lot of opportunities, and as long as those are good returns, we plan to continue to pursue them.
Yeah. Jeremy, this is Jim. In terms of multiples, we're not an ethylene. We don't have crackers. We don't have polyethylene, polypropylene plants. We're more of a midstream entity as it relates to petrochemicals. You look at it just like it is with crude oil or natural gas or NGLs. If you look at our PDH plant and the one we're building, those are tolling arrangements with investment-grade customers. If you look at our PGP plants, they're pretty much, I guess, Chris, pretty much all termed up.
Yeah.
We like the business, but we also like the way we can structure contracts within that business that are, I guess, those PDH plants, they're really annuities.
Got it. I'll stop there and get back in the queue. Thank you.
Our next question comes from Jean Ann Salisbury with Bernstein.
Hi, good morning. A lot of investors think Haynesville could quickly get constrained again, even after all the pipeline expansions, including yours, given the rig count there. How much more capacity out could you easily add, and how long would it take?
Hey, Jean Ann, this is Randy. Which asset were you referring to?
The Haynesville.
Oh.
The what?
The Haynesville.
Haynesville.
As far as the capacity that we've got out of the Haynesville.
You're full, aren't you?
I'm full for the next 10 years. I know there's some pipes coming on, maybe one or two more, after that, we'll see. There's been a lot of talk about more pipes in the ground. We'll see what happens. We're full for the next 10 years plus.
Okay. If you did want to add a new pipe, it'd be kind of like 18 months, 24. I guess it's much easier to build there, it seems like, than other places.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I'm from Louisiana. I guess that's why, huh?
Okay. Thank you. This is a little more near-term, I guess, than the Analyst Day, but it seems like about half of chemical plants and a lot of refineries are still starting up. I assume that any of these that are your customers are declaring force majeure and probably not paying you. Can you give a sense of how material you expect the loss from the Texas freeze to be?
Who wants to take it? Chris, you want to take it from Petrochem?
Sure, yeah. This is Chris D'Anna again. In terms of the petchem business, we had a planned outage of our PDH going on at the time, that's not really impacted. With regard to our splitters and other businesses, we experienced downtime probably equal to our customers and have a little bit of makeup capability. I don't expect it to really be a material impact.
Okay, great. Thank you. If I could sneak in one more quick one. I had a question about the Delaware processing. I really appreciated all the color in your slides today, Natalie. Does the overbuild of capacity that you described in the Delaware put pressure on the rates that you can charge both for processing and for downstream? When you describe the contracts as take-or-pay and acreage dedication, does that imply that the rates that you're getting are locked in for at least the medium term?
Yeah. For the take or pay, definitely locked in. I sure hope that it continues to compress and get tighter for processing capacity. That's all good for us because it does exactly what you're talking about. Rates move up. As far as the take or pay that I discussed, I don't know, 70% of nameplate or more, definitely just a flat rate escalates for the next 10 years or more.
Cool. Thanks. That's all for me. Thank you.
Our next question comes from Michael Blum with Wells Fargo.
Thanks. Good afternoon, everybody. I wanted to go back to the petrochemical segment for a minute. There was a comment made that you're looking at several transformational investments or potential transformational investments, I think you said you're not going to say anything about it for another year. The question is just, can you, obviously you're not going to detail what these investments are, but can you sort of frame the size of them or how much capital you could possibly be talking about here? Just anything you could bucket for us in terms of the size of the potential opportunity.
We really can't, Michael. Not right now. These things, we're at a pretty sensitive point, and it's kind of like bass fishing with a worm. We got him bumping the worm. We still got to hook him.
Got it. Understood. Second question, I just wanted to ask about buybacks. The question is really, do you ever think you'll get to a place where you would have a more programmatic buyback approach as opposed to opportunistic? Not a fixed number per se, but maybe a percentage of discretionary cash flow or something like that. Within that, how would you think about increasing buybacks versus increasing distribution? Thanks.
Michael, I mean, you never say never, right? Could we get to the point of a programmatic buyback? We could. How we would think about it, a programmatic buyback versus distributions, some of it would depend on the facts when we get to that point. I still come back. The most efficient way to come in and return capital in an MLP is to come in and do it through distributions. Whether the distributions are regular distributions or whether distributions are special distributions, it's the most tax-efficient way to get cash in the pocket of limited partners. The nice thing about the buybacks is you're not locked into an amount like you would be with a regular distribution. Michael, it would really just have to depend on what the fact set is at the time and what the other opportunities are.
It's really fact set specific once we get to that point.
Thank you.
Our next question comes from Keith Stanley with Wolfe Research.
Afternoon. One follow-up on petrochemicals, and I know you don't want to talk to specific projects, but at a high level, can you give a sense if some of the opportunities you're seeing in the next few years are in similar areas of the petrochemicals business where you already operate, or could you look to broaden your position in petchem? I guess relatedly, are acquisitions a possibility in that business as well?
I guess acquisitions are always a possibility. We're not working any right now. If you're asking, are we going to build an ethylene plant? The answer is no. If you're asking, are we going to stay in the wheelhouse we're in? The answer is yes.
Okay. Thanks. Unrelated one on the LPG export contract data that you disclosed today. Slide 44. Can we think of the contracts from 2015 and earlier as kind of the higher priced legacy contracts that you still have? For the more recent contracts or the lighter blue bars, any sense of where rates are on those? Are they pretty close to market overall?
I'd say, so I think that's a fair way to look at it on those legacy contracts. I'm trying to get the slide.
Brad, jump in.
Yeah, I was going to say that is a good way to think about it. As we think about expansions and how they're priced and the underlying economics of those relative to as those original contracts roll off, we price it at a market-based rate, and I think we've stated in the past that we're going to stay aggressive and stay full on the export docks, and I think you'll see us continue to do that.
Great. Thank you.
Our next question comes from Tristan Richardson with Truist Securities.
Hey, good afternoon, guys. Just a question on the processing side. You noted in your presentation a diverse exposure between public and private producer customers in the Permian. Can you elaborate on that a little bit? I think we're generally hearing comments out there that private producers may be increasing activity at a higher rate than public peers. Can you elaborate there? Is that consistent with what you're seeing or the message you're talking about in the slide?
I think, that is consistent. We meet with obviously all these guys. I will just tell you that the public guys are, they all are talking the party line, and it doesn't feel like they are going to be active drilling. I know there's some outliers that some folks kind of made statements in their earnings calls. I'd say there is a party line for these public guys that they are not going to be active this year. On the private guys, you can just see what these. I forget what the percent is, Natalie or Tony.
45.
45%.
Yeah. When you look at the % of the pie that the private guys are increasing, and that percentage just seems to go up every week. They are taking a different approach in terms of their activity level.
Thanks, Brad. Just to follow up, Randall, in the prepared comments, you talked about evaluating repurchases through the lens of the free cash flow return opportunity. If consensus out there suggests that EPD units today represent a low to mid-teens type of free cash flow yield opportunity, can you frame that for us relative to the opportunities you're seeing out there for capital deployment, either inside the energy transition theme or not?
Tristan, one, as far as the kind of types of returns on capital that we're seeing, over time we've said pretty much midstream projects, the bell curve on midstream projects are a 10%-15% unlevered returns on capital. Once you sort of get outside that bell curve, that's where you can come in and see some better returns. I think what we're looking at is sort of in that range. As far as, obviously what we're seeing on cash flow yields is, as you cited, are sort of low double-digit, low teen type returns.
Tristan, I come back in and Chris mentioned it in his remarks, the cash yields that we did buybacks for, if you come back and if you look back over the last year and a half, have really been in that, call it 11%-18% cash return on capital. When we come back in and look at last year, with $200 million of buyback last year, the returns obviously were a little bit higher with what we saw there in the second and third quarter, just where the midstream sector was trading. The one other thing I would add, I tried to allude to it on the webcast that aired this morning as far as our willingness to do buyback. I think we've demonstrated that. We came back in.
In fact, some materials that some banks provided gave us a little bit more context that when you come in and you look at U.S. midstream companies in 2020, we represented 30% of the buyback volume that was done. I think we'll be there. We'll compare buybacks, we'll compare the organic growth capital opportunities that we have, and we'll go from there. I think we've demonstrated a willingness to come in and do buybacks.
Very helpful. Thank you guys very much.
Our next question comes from Pearce Hammond with Simmons Energy. One moment.
My question today pertains to hydrogen. While recognizing that more meaningful hydrogen adoption is deeper into the future, just curious if you're receiving inbound phone calls from either integrated oil companies or industrial gas companies or some of the newer companies targeting the hydrogen market. Just curious if they're seeking storage space to store hydrogen and/or pipeline capacity to move hydrogen. Any color you can provide would be super helpful.
Yeah, this is Jim. We got a call recently, and we haven't met with them yet, with a petrochemical company that is obviously looking at some hydrogen projects and said they need a pipeline storage company. I don't know what the hell they're talking about because we hadn't met with them yet, but we are going to meet with them.
Okay. Thank you, Jim. That's very helpful.
Our next question comes from Michael Lapides with Goldman Sachs.
Hey, guys. I actually have a couple of ones. Thank you for taking them. First of all, when you talk about transformational, that's kind of a big word, right? Should we think of it as transformational, meaning midstream related, but something that is not just a, "Hey, I'm buying a $200 million asset type thing," or is it something that's kind of outside the traditional midstream sphere?
I think it's outside the box.
How do you think about your equity currency as a source of capital to utilize to do a sizable transformational change?
I don't know about you, but I don't think much of it.
Yeah. Michael, I think, some of the things that we're looking at, we would not need to do equity financing because.
Got it.
Yeah. The way we look at equity, it's prohibitively expensive and somewhat scary.
Got it. It's something you could either finance with cash flow or finance. Is there a cap on the amount of leverage you're willing to go to do a transformational acquisition?
Michael, investment-grade metrics are very important to us, and frankly, that's one of the things we retain a lot of financial flexibility with keeping leverage in that three and a half times area. That gives us a lot of leverage that you could make a sizable acquisition if we wanted to go that way and come in and frankly do it for cash and not be above four times.
Got it. Yeah, sure. You have a ton of balance sheet capacity.
Right.
A massive amount. Okay. Super helpful. One last one. You all gave a lot of detail about how much of your Delaware G&P is on take-or-pay. Can you talk about the rest of your processing? Right? Because your Permian is just one piece. How much of the rest of your processing is on take-or-pay?
Not as much as we'd like. A lot of the newer contracts that we get into, we typically try to do a take-or-pay, although acreage dedications has become very popular this year. Obviously, up in the Rockies, those are legacy. A lot of those are life of lease legacy contracts. They may have a fee base to them. Gulf of Mexico has some keep-whole type contracts, but some of them have a floor. Permian is really probably one of the basins that we have the richest take-or-pay flat fee base type contracts that we really like. We'd like to see all basins at that level, but some of them are legacy, and that's where they stand.
Got it. Thank you, guys. Much appreciated.
When you do acreage dedications, there are some good things about acreage dedications.
Oh, there's great things about acreage dedications.
At least you know if they produce, you're going to get it.
That's right.
The other thing is, if you put in there that, hey, I get the first $100 million or $200 million, you've really improved your life, even though you call it an acreage dedication.
Right. We do a lot of first dedications, meaning we get the first X out of this area. Tony's team, our fundamentals team, does a really good job of validating producer curves in the rock. We do a lot of homework before we just go sign acreage dedications in specific basins up. It needs to be a basin that we like and that we're confident that will be around for a while.
Got it. Much appreciated. Thank you.
Our next question comes from Theresa Chen with Barclays.
Hi. Actually if I could also tack on a question about the Delaware G&P portfolio. The slide indicates that the private producers are the ones who are contracted through acreage dedications. If these are the folks that are actually increasing activity while the public players are being more disciplined, would this imply that this is where upside to cash flow could materialize this year? I'm also assuming that it's any liquids that come out of the plants, you'd also be taking it all the way downstream, but if you could confirm that.
Yep, you're right. Any gas that we gather and process is connected to Enterprise pipelines and fractionators. You're absolutely right. These guys that we've exposed ourselves to on acreage dedications are drilling, and we meet with them pretty often. We're rooting for them. The same thing goes there, though. We look at their rocks, and we've done a really good job to make sure there's not a whole lot of capital spend to even get to them. Really short lays of pipe and maybe just a meter.
If you could what are the producers doing with respect to hedging, like the private players? Just because the curve is so backward dated. Are you seeing them hedge at all or is it really nothing?
Christine, this is Tony. It's really hard to know what the privates are doing. If they are in the markets, in the capital markets at all, what we hear from them is they are hedging a substantial portion of it out for three years.
If they're PE-backed, they're probably hedging.
If they're PE-backed, they're probably hedging. Frankly, the curve probably tells them kind of profitability there is at these kind of numbers, they ought to hedge.
Right.
We think we connect those dots, and that's probably what they're doing.
Okay. If I could also then move over to the Midland to ECHO capacity slide. You have a line here for optimal capacity and then another for max capacity, and appreciate you've contracted over 90% off the optimal line. To get from optimal to max, I'm assuming that's done with more pumps or DRA, and I'm guessing the marginal cost goes up when you do that. How do we think about what the spreads or the fees need to be for it to make sense to increase to that level? Am I correct in thinking that the fee needs to be higher than what the current contracted rate is?
This is Brad Motal. It's kind of difficult to answer that question because we operate those three pipelines as one. As we get different volume profiles from each of our underlying contracts, that kind of changes the fee structure or the cost across the pipes. I'll tell you hit the nail on the head right out of the gate. It's DRA and additional horsepower to get to that peak throughput. That 1.2 million barrels is kind of the, that's where the price for any incremental barrel across any one of those three pipes starts to creep up. It's hard to explain that when it really depends on the contract mix at that given time.
This is Brent. I'll just add, look, we have a graph, and we can tell you to the penny what barrel 1 million to 1,005,000 cost us to move. We look at that every single day, and if there's economics to move the barrel, then that barrel gets moved. Obviously, as that pump curve goes up, the costs go up, and you're right, it's DRA, and it's running pumps harder, and those are the things that we're looking at on the expense side.
DRA is not cheap.
Okay. Then I guess just given the overcapacity in the Permian, what would make you feel like you have the opportunity to go to the max capacity levels?
Something materially would have to change for that spread to widen now, whether that's some pipeline or pipelines get repurposed or whether these guys go back in the basin in a big way and start drilling. It's hard for me to see a point in time anytime soon where that does happen.
Okay. Just wanted to make sure. Okay, great. Thank you.
Our next question comes from Timm Schneider with Citi.
Hey, good afternoon, and thanks for all the information. A two-part question here. First of all, look, I think a couple of the buzzwords that we heard, transformational, and then Jim, I think you just said outside the box. How do we think about Enterprise five years from now? I'm not looking for numbers, guidance, or anything like that. Just, it seems like it's a continued shift away from the wellhead. How would you kind of describe that?
Well, Timm, I've already made myself a note never to say transformational and never to say outside the box again. I think you're going to see us continuing to do what we've always done in my mind. We're going to continue with this midstream model. More of that midstream model may be directed at petrochemicals, we're not going to lose sight of where it all starts, which is at the wellhead. I don't know. You probably just see us getting a little bigger in what we do. What do you think, Randy? You're not going to see us producing polyethylene or polypropylene. Well, I guess you said never say never, right? Not in my lifetime, which could mean five years from now.
Got it. Maybe as a follow-up to that, and the reason I'm asking this is because it's come up on calls with some of your peers. Does this, and I don't want to say transformational, I'm not going to use it, but does this shift have any impact on your structure down the road, right? What I'm specifically referring to is obviously as a bellwether here, a shift potentially to a C corp. Sounds like you guys have a lot more CapEx opportunities than some of your peers, which could help on the tax side. How do you guys think about that? Especially if it is attracting a little bit more of a newer investor base that's looking at infrastructure in general.
Okay. Yeah, Timm, I think within Enterprise and MLP, we have a great deal of flexibility. Treasury came in over a two-year time period and revisited the definition of qualified earnings. I want to say that was probably 2017, 2018. Frankly, came in and when they came back in to review the definition, broadened the definition as a result. If anything, and again, Jim said never say how far we would go on the petchem side, but frankly, that gave Westlake more flexibility, and Williams, at the time, more flexibility with some of their petrochemical operations that they had. That is qualified earnings in the 7704(c). When you come in and then if you look at how large we are and what our gross margin is, MLPs are allowed to have up to 10% of their gross margin be non-qualified type activities.
You never want to get near the 10%, but still, even if we were 5% in that type number, that is a big number as far as what the implied EBITDA or gross operating margin would be associated with those non-qualified earnings.
Yeah. Everything we're looking at doing, it's qualifying income.
Qualified.
Everything. Which is, I want to be careful because we might have customers on the line. We have no intention of going beyond primary petrochemicals.
Okay, got it. How do you look at the structure, though, in terms of just attracting a much larger pool of capital as a potential C corp versus an MLP, given your size, especially?
Timm, I think that's still a function of where is the equity market appetite for the energy sector at the macro level. When you come in and you look at how we've traded, how the midstream has traded, we really trade in parallel with the XLE, with the S&P energy sector. Now, we have a better return than that sector, but we really trade in step with that. Certainly, you've seen that since the election in November. You've seen the rally in the XLE, you've seen the rally in midstream, and you've seen the rally in Enterprise.
As far as doing a capital raise, I think some of the activity that we saw in 2020 that a really popular C corp had to come in and pay a big discount to last trade just to get $1 billion done. I don't know if that's that much deeper of an equity market than what we have in the equity market. Again, I think a lot of it just comes back into how attractive is the energy sector macro to the equity capital markets.
Okay, got it. Thank you, guys.
Our next question comes from Ujjwal Pradhan with Bank of America.
Good afternoon, everyone. Appreciate all the color you have provided so far today. Wanted to first ask, on CapEx. In your presentation this morning, you had talked about potentially sanctioning energy evolution type of projects in 2021. I think previously you had mentioned 2021 CapEx could move from the current $1.2 billion up to $2 billion. Is that going to be contingent on the size of discretionary free cash flow this year, or independent of it?
No. As far as the size of our CapEx program, whether it's again, we try to put bookends on it at between $1.6 and $2 billion. Really, that's independent of where our discretionary cash flow is.
Got it.
That just really came in to the timing of projects that are in the developmental phase.
Got it. Thanks for clarifying that. Second question on the ESG presentation from yesterday. You shared EPD's achievements in terms of emissions reduction, CO2 emissions reduction per BOE, but we did not see any specific targets. Is there additional thoughts you could share on how much further reduction you could achieve? Whether carbon dioxide sequestration could be part of that? Maybe as part of your direct business or through partnerships, or maybe even purchase of carbon dioxide offset credits like some other energy peers have done.
Okay. Let me try to take the first part of that, and then on the carbon sequestration, I guess Graham will pick up on that. We've not set any objectives, or the objective that we set on lowering emissions and emissions intensity is really that they're economic.
We didn't want to come out there and put an artificial number out there. Our view is let's do it economically where it makes sense for everyone. I mean, that's what we're focused on. At this point in time, we've not put a subjective goal out there.
As far as the sequestration we're looking at, we do evaluate projects. At this point, we don't have anything specifically developed in terms of sequestration. We continue to evaluate the technology and monitor advances in technology. There's a few smaller areas where we're looking at some CO2 capture for other industrial uses. At this point, that's a relatively minor area, but one we continue to work at and develop and look for opportunities that might be right.
Got it. Thank you.
I will say.
Sorry.
There are a couple of initiatives that we're working on this year that would come in and both accomplish lower emissions and emissions intensity. We just need to progress a little bit further on that.
Thanks for that. Very helpful. Maybe a quick one on your crude exports business. You had the helpful summary slide on LPG export contracts on page 44. Could you discuss your latest contract profile for your crude exports business as well?
This is Brad Motal again. I think actually on page 23, I apologize. I think you rationalized a different page number, but we're contracted out through 2023. We've got a pretty good portfolio of long-range agreements. In near term, we're looking pretty good.
Got it. Thanks for all the answers.
Our next question comes from Yves Siegel with Siegel Asset Management Partners.
Yeah. Good afternoon, everybody. Just a quick question. Given the power outages in February, will that impact any changes in terms of operations or how you contract for power going forward?
I think one of the things we'll look at, obviously, in the Texas power markets, there's a lot up in the air right now from how ERCOT responds, potential legislative action. We'll have to watch that and see exactly how we respond to that and how that might impact our contracting mix as far as power goes.
Operationally, any impact or any tweaks that you might make given the power?
From an operational impact, it was really the operational impacts were all driven by price and not reliability in terms of our use of electrical power.
Great. All right. Thank you.
Our next question comes from Michael Cusimano with Heikkinen Energy Advisors.
Hi, good afternoon, everyone. I wanted to go back to the Permian and the asset optimizations that y'all are talking about. In terms of timeline, do you see us having to wait for MVCs to roll off over the next three to five years for midstream operators to be forced to do something? Or do you think there's more proactive projects that we could see over the next year or two that could improve that environment?
I mean, I think as these contracts roll off, people are going to have to take a hard look at their assets, and we've done it on some of our assets that Natalie alluded to, and figure out whether they are truly profitable assets or whether they need to be in some other service.
Somebody else's hand.
Right. Can somebody else do something else with it that the person that owns it right now can't? In my personal opinion, it's going to take time for this whole thing to shake out. You can look at what pipelines are flowing or what plants are flowing, or most cases not flowing, and figure out who's exposed in this environment.
Got it. Maybe staying there, you said that it could be more valuable in someone else's hands. We've seen some activity in M&A with G&P business maybe catching a bid to fill more downstream assets. Is that something that you see like a trend continuing as maybe there's less growth at the upstream level than what we expected a year or two ago?
I think you're talking about Energy Transfer and Enable.
Yes, sir.
Yeah, it's a good question. We've looked at should we do something like that. Frankly, at this point, what we believe is that our downstream system is a pretty good magnet for getting product in our pipelines upstream. Price matters. I'm not going to say we won't do it, but we won't do it at what these people expect to get today.
Sure. Yeah, that's helpful. Okay. If I could ask one more on Seaway specifically. I appreciate the details y'all laid out in the slide, but I guess could you provide, I guess, your high-level expectation on Canadian production or maybe what you're hearing from your partner in that pipeline? A couple more specific questions to follow up.
This is Tony. It's hard to make a case at this point that Canadian production's going to go down, even with the Keystone XL ruling. Yeah, pipelines incrementally to take more of that production away are getting tougher. Clearly, that bar continues to get raised. Don't forget, the Canadians are masters at taking crude out by rail if they need to. At these kind of numbers, their economics are very good. Their economics are good for growth. It's in the hands of people at this point that that's what they do. That's their sandbox.
Sure. Okay.
they're not huge numbers, but it's hard to make a case those numbers are gonna go down.
Got it. Specifically on this slide, y'all said that there's a 90% utilization on that 950. I found the heavy volume increasing over time interesting. Should we expect 90% utilization today, and then it's just a shift moving to heavy as Canadian production grows? Is that the right way to read that slide?
Yeah. That's fair. This is Tug Hanley speaking. The Canadian or heavy has offset some of the throughput that we lost on light, so it's backfilling it.
You just got to think about how much capacity that there's out of the Permian Basin going to Houston or going to Corpus. Historically, the pipelines that delivered a lot of those light barrels into Cushing were Midland origin. That movement, it's just unnecessary now.
Got it. Okay. That's all I had. Thank you all again for the time.
Our next question comes from Shneur Gershuni with UBS.
Hi, good afternoon, everyone. Most of my questions have been asked and answered. I just wanted to return back to the buyback question for a second. Have there been any thoughts or discussions around returning to the target that you had for 2020, about 2% of CFFO being directed towards buybacks or even potentially a higher number? Is it really just going to be market-dependent as to how things flow for this year?
Yeah, Shneur, this is Randy. Thank you for that question. I just won a seafood platter off Burkhalter.
You didn't say from where.
Yeah. Shneur, we really came into this year not setting a target intentionally. A little bit what we talked about on our earnings call for fourth quarter, that really we wanted to come in and see how this year developed. Certainly the first half of this year, because it could go several different ways. We've really been encouraged with what we've seen as far as just, I think, broad economy, and what we're seeing from just, if you would, GDP and some of the prospects for GDP. Certainly where commodity prices have been. Getting off to a better start this year. Really wanted to come in and save that for a little bit later in the year before we come in and try to provide any kind of update as far as what our thinking is this year.
Yeah, that makes perfect sense and happy that I got you a free platter of seafood. Maybe as a quick follow-up question. I was just wondering if you can talk about the potential working capital release that you sort of talked about earlier in the prepared remarks earlier today. What kind of scale and size should we be thinking about in terms of a working capital release?
Yeah. Shneur.
Yeah, Shneur. This is Chris D'Anna. As we talked about during the fourth quarter earnings call, we had about $750 million, $800 million of working capital utilized in 2020. Again, as we talked about, we mentioned earlier that as we get to the back half of 2021, we'll be more in a discretionary, free cash flow positive area. I think that's when you could probably assume that we see a lot of that working capital come back towards us. Again, it is going to be dependent upon markets because we look at those opportunities on a day in, a day out basis, and we're able to shift that working capital around as necessary. Generally, when we're using that working capital, it has very high margins associated with it.
Yeah, that makes perfect sense. Hopefully, Chris, I won you a platter as well too.
No, no luck there.
Thank you very much, guys. Really appreciate the color today, and thanks for the update.
The next question is a follow-up question from Jeremy Tonet with JPMorgan.
Hi, good afternoon. You spoke a good deal amount about the world's need for LPG imports in Asia, and I was just wondering what that means for the U.S. How much export capacity, LPG export capacity, will be needed over time? Any sense on scale, timing, and Enterprise's, I guess, large role in that?
We've got an expansion sitting on the shelf, if I'm not mistaken, Bob?
Yes, sir. That's correct.
We haven't pulled the trigger on it. I will say our LPG exports stayed pretty much full all through this past year in the midst of a pandemic. I really think it probably depends on production growth, doesn't it? Anything?
This is Brent. We, Enterprise, and a bunch of companies were traveling all over the world showing what the production forecast was going to be from the United States and
Tony was out there saying, "This is what's going to happen," and there was another producer right behind us saying, "This is what was going to happen." If you looked, there was a lot of investment made overseas in anticipation for what was going to happen over here. From a demand side, I think a lot of our customers, frankly, are trying to figure out where all the NGLs are going to come from, because they need them.
Jeremy, this is Tony. I'll add to that. You already see that in the relationship between LPG and crude and how it's moved up, and that's how bad they want it and need it.
Got it. That makes sense. Oh, sorry.
This is Bob Sanders. It doesn't necessarily have to be an expansion that we make. The Port of Houston has got an approved widening project to expand the width of the Houston Ship Channel, which will allow for incremental vessels to come in so you can increase the efficiency of the assets you've got.
Got it. That's helpful. Thanks. Maybe just kind of a housekeeping question for Analyst Day. Wondering, for your overall business, what level of take or pay does EBITDA represent now? Any ballpark figures there? Just EBITDA breakdown by basin. Just trying to get broad strokes of how Enterprise stands these days.
Jeremy, I tell you what, we'll follow back up with you because we actually have that number in a slide deck that we did in March a year ago.
Yeah.
I'm just drawing a blank right now as far as what it is.
I'll follow up with you, Jeremy. This is Randy.
Got it. I'll stop there. Thank you.
Thank you.
Our next question comes from Becca Followill with U.S. Capital Advisors.
Hi, guys. Thanks for taking my question. One big picture, one minutia. On your ESG day yesterday, I appreciate all the comments there. One area where I've asked before is just on the G portion that you don't have an elected board. Do you have any thoughts on potentially transitioning to an elected board?
This is Jim, I think no. Secondly, I think we have as good a governance as anybody in the business. When your GP owns 32% of the common units, that's called alignment and good governance.
Well, that was emphatic. Thank you. The second one is on NGL inventories. When I look on your balance sheet, you've got about $1.9 billion of NGL in inventories versus $840 million in the second quarter. I assume part of that was because of just the build with the hurricanes. Was part of it just building in anticipation, maybe in a run-up of NGL prices where you guys might get some windfall this year on that?
If we had that much, we had it so forward, Becca. We're not going to build inventory and take price risk. Is that right, Brent?
Mm-hmm. That's correct.
The last one is, do you guys have the technical ability when we have disruptions like we had a couple of weeks ago to sell ethane in the market as methane?
We have a lot of technical ability, Becca.
Okay, do you have the ability to sell ethane as methane?
To some extent.
Okay, perfect. Thank you, guys.
Hey, Becca, one thing I will add on the governance deal. We went back in and looked at Magellan's ownership and before Buckeye announced their strategic alternatives, and we looked at their ownership. They had independently elected directors for quite a few years, 10, 15 years. Really our ownership and their ownership, probably there was 85%, 90% overlap with their top 20 investors and our top 20 investors. It doesn't appear that governance or MLP structure, certainly the governance piece of it is making any kind of difference as far as ownership goes, just when we look at that group.
That's fair.
Becca, you see who gives the soft answer and who gives the hard answer, huh?
Both are valuable. Thank you. Bye, guys.
All right. Kevin, this is Randy. With that, I think we will conclude our call today. We'd like to thank our participants for your interest for dialing in for our ESG Day, and we'll stay and follow up with Q&A, and we're hoping maybe next year we can do this in person. Again, thank you, and that concludes our call today. Have a good day. Goodbye now.
Well, ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's presentation. You may now disconnect, and have a wonderful day.