All right. Good morning, everybody. My name is J.R. Weston. I'm one of the midstream analysts here at Raymond James. I'm excited to be joined by the team from Kinder Morgan here today to present with us. We've got David Michels, the CFO. Should be a really interesting discussion here. This is a unique company, with probably almost two-thirds of the business natural gas infrastructure, some other, you know, kind of smaller businesses that add a little bit of diversification. Kinder's able to turn that into a really competitive dividend yield and has some nice financial optionality from here. So, I'm excited to hear the presentation. So I'll turn it over here. Thanks.
All right. Okay, thanks, J.R. Good morning, everybody. Thanks for, for joining. As J.R. mentioned, we do have some pretty exciting, exciting things happening, exciting trends that we're facing in the U.S. And so, you know, this is probably one of the more, optimistic, presentations that we've given in some time, and we'll go through all the reasons why. First, though, we got to cover this for the legal folks. This is our forward-looking statement slide. You got to review this and our SEC filings for risks that could materially affect our expected results. All right, moving into the presentation. So we'll start with the assets. We are a very large energy infrastructure company. You know, we're the largest natural gas transmission network.
We're the largest independent transporter of refined products in the U.S. We're the largest independent terminal operator in the U.S. We're one of the largest carbon dioxide transporters, and we have a growing energy transition portfolio. So we're a very large company. We've got assets all across the country, nearly exclusively focused in the United States, a little bit in Canada and a little bit in Mexico, but nearly exclusively in the U.S. But we're mostly a natural gas company. 64% of our cash flows come from our natural gas business. We move 40% of all the natural gas molecules produced in the U.S. on a daily basis. We deliver 45% of the feed gas going to LNG facilities every day.
We produce, or we deliver 50% of the natural gas going to Mexico in, in the form of exports. And we have 15% of the natural gas storage portfolio in the U.S., so 15% of the entire storage facilities in the U.S., we own. We have enough pipeline to circle the Earth three times, which is just a fun fact. But, and then, as, as J.R. mentioned, with 26% of our portfolio is focused on refined product, transportation, and storage, and that's just viewed as, and that is, and has been a steady, slightly increasing part of our portfolio every year. It's a cash cow, low capital intense, that, that delivers us cash flow that we can redeploy, really focused in our natural gas space and a little bit, increasingly more going towards our, our, our Energy Transition Ventures group.
The very last piece of our business is that 10% carbon dioxide business is relatively small, but that comes with certain capabilities that we'll get into, that it's allowing us to participate in some of the Energy Transition Ventures like carbon capture and sequestration, for example, and we'll get into that. The bottom line is, the portfolio of assets that we own and operate is not—it can't be replicated, it can't be replaced. With population growth and increased permitting challenges, increased regulation, it means the moat around our assets is very large, and it has grown. So, how do we drive value? With that backdrop, you know, as mentioned, we're focused on natural gas.
It's a story that has legs, and we're very, you know, advantaged with regard to our physical assets that we own and operate in the natural gas space. We also combine that with a strong balance sheet. We've ended the past three years with leverage right around 4x debt-to-EBITDA, which. And we expect to end 2024 at 3.9, so slightly below four times debt-to-EBITDA. Those are levels that are near our thresholds for upgrade to BBB+. So we're in a strong balance sheet scenario. We've got ample liquidity. We benefit from a lot of the trends that we'll go through here later in the presentation that has allowed us to build up a backlog of committed projects at very strong returns.
We have about $3 billion of committed projects at build multiples of less than 5x, and we'll get into more of that later. We've got highly predictable cash flows, strong growth expected in 2024, and we aim to create, using the, the, this backdrop, this, these assets, our financial policies, our, our strong, financial position to create value and then deliver that value to our shareholders. And so, for example, in 2023, when you combine our dividend and our share repurchases, we delivered about 8% of our equity value back to shareholders, during the year, so very strong returns.
As we already mentioned, 64% of our business comes from our natural gas assets, and of that, 89% comes from the very high quality, long-term, take-or-pay type services that come from transportation and storage, not gathering and processing, but transportation and storage. Meaning 57% of our overall cash flow, Adjusted EBITDA, comes from that very high quality form of business and the services that are related to it. And so take or pay, meaning, you know, we provide our services to counterparties. Those counterparties pay us for those services, regardless of whether they use those services or not. Similar to leasing an apartment, whether or not you actually stay there and live there, you're gonna pay the landlord for the right to do so. So a very high quality form of cash flow.
So our cash flow and the composition in this transportation and storage space, which has long-term contracts, you know, 6 years for transportation, 4 years for storage, we have the largest exposure to this space relative to our overall composition of cash flows than any other midstream company in the U.S. Since 2016, we've had some pretty good performance. We've grown our EPS by 8% annual, so that's an 8% compound annual growth rate. We've reduced our leverage by 26%. Overall, and that's resulted in very strong financial performance, a strong financial position, and it's created tremendous value for our shareholders, and we think there's more to come.
Now, in the past, on the face of it, in the past, you haven't seen our net EBITDA grow very quickly in the past. But, when you take into account the divestitures that we've achieved over this time, that have come at very high values, and we've taken those proceeds from those divestitures, and we've reduced debt, that allowed us to achieve that 26% reduction in leverage, over this timeframe. But if you exclude the about $700 million of EBITDA associated with the divested assets, if you just look at the remaining business, our EBITDA has actually grown by about 26%. So pretty good growth, especially for a company our size.
And I think that will help set the stage for why we're so confident going forward, because we think the same trends that were in place during this timeframe are going to drive our future growth, and then some. We think that the opportunity for growth is even better than what we've seen during this timeframe. And what does that look like? Well, first and foremost, we have a formal backlog that we track, that is comprised of the committed projects, the projects that we have counterparty contracts, binding contracts. In some cases, we have board approval, in other cases, some of these projects are already under construction. So we have about $3 billion of committed projects, strong returns associated with those projects. This is about the same amount as what we had about a year ago.
So at the beginning of 2023, we had about $3 billion of a backlog, growth backlog, and yet we put $1.8 billion of projects into service during 2023. So we replenished that $1.8 billion of projects during the year, and again, replenished them with very attractive return, returning projects. In 2024, the incremental EBITDA associated with the projects that we've placed in service and are expected to place in service in 2024, represents more than $400 million. So more than $400 million of additional EBITDA from these projects that we've been placing in service. So that gives you a sense for the magnitude of incremental cash flows that we are expecting from these projects.
So we were able to replenish the backlog, the projects in the backlog that went in service in 2023. Are we gonna be able to continue to do so? We think we are. We think we will be able to replenish those. Natural gas is by far the driver behind why we're so confident in being able to do so. The substantial build-out in the liquefied natural gas space is the primary driver that we're focused on there. But there are other aspects as well, and we're gonna get into some of those as we move forward through this presentation.
But I would say that the liquefied natural gas build-out is one of the most, exciting opportunities for a midstream company, that this company, and I think any company in the U.S., any midstream company in the U.S., has seen in many decades. And it's, it's going to... And we're, we're- we'll get into this, but the liquefied natural gas space has grown already to a large degree. So the question is: why is it so exciting now? We've already gotten to 12-13 BCF a day in terms of liquefied natural gas being exported, and now we're gonna grow that even further. Why is it more exciting? And it's because the existing network base is already so fully utilized, but we'll get into that. Incremental drivers include these other items for natural gas.
We'll speak more about that in a subsequent slide. Then our renewable opportunities, both renewable feedstock and fuels in our refined product business, as well as renewable natural gas, carbon capture, and other opportunities in our Energy Transition Ventures group. So these are some of the dynamics that are driving our view that we're gonna be able to continue to replenish and add to our backlog going forward. And in fact, you know, we said we've got a $3 billion backlog that's committed, and we're confident that those projects are gonna be coming into service. We're currently working on an opportunity set of between $4 billion and $10 billion, incremental to the $3 billion in the backlog.
So, it gives you an indication of why we're so confident that we're gonna continue to grow and replenish the backlog. We're not gonna get all of those, but I think we'll get our fair share. So for 2024, this is our, our budget. This is the highlight, these are the highlights of our 2024 budget. Main takeaway, is, you know, 14% EPS growth, 8% EBITDA growth, and we're not doing it at the detriment of our leverage. In fact, leverage is coming down a little bit to 3.9 times. Okay, so this is, the recent history of U.S. natural gas demand growth from 2015 to 2023, and then a forecast. We're using Wood Mackenzie for that forecast.
You can see demand growth for the natural gas space has increased 30 billion cubic feet a day during this timeframe through 2023, and it's expected to grow by an additional 20 billion cubic feet a day through the end of the decade. So it has, that growth has slowed a little bit, but we think this is going to provide even more opportunities for us as a midstream company than this recent past. And that's because the existing network has already been utilized to the largest degree available to accommodate a lot of this growth. Now, the new growth is gonna need to be met through new build pipelines, expansion projects, the extension, the expansion of existing facilities, because the existing facilities are already so fully utilized. And on this slide, we have a sense for that.
Up on the top right, you'll see those two, those two pie charts there. Our five largest pipelines in 2016 averaged utilization or throughput of 73%. In 2023, that increased to 87%, and this is average across the entire year. So you think about those shoulder months in between the summer and the winter, those are gonna be, you know— Those pipelines are gonna be less utilized. So during a peak winter, peak summer type, season, these are fully utilized assets. There's no additional molecule that you can fit through these assets. We try, and we try our best, but, this gives you a sense for what I was talking about before.
The new demand for natural gas coming to the market, the incremental supply coming to the market, the incremental demand for the, the supply being produced in the US, will have to be, in most cases, accommodated via new projects, new infrastructure build-out, both pipelines and storage. All right, so, we'll get to demand in a minute, but where is all the new supply coming from to meet the new demand for natural gas for US molecules being produced? You know, this is a Wood Mackenzie-based forecast, and we're, well, I'll point out some of the areas where we may have slight disagreements or different views. But largely, Haynesville, so the number one right there, that's Haynesville. That's gonna be...
It's expected to be one of the largest contributors of supply, of incremental supply coming to the market, to the tune of 9 billion cubic feet a day of additional supply coming out of the Haynesville. 7 Bcf a day coming out of the Permian, which is number 2 in West Texas. 5 Bcf a day coming out of Marcellus and Utica, up in number 3, up in the north. We view that as probably a little bit aggressive, but we'll see. 4, the Haynesville and the Bak, excuse me, the Rockies and the Bakken area, Altamont in Utah, and 5, Eagle Ford. All of those are gonna contribute to some degree to the new supply. So how does Kinder Morgan's asset footprint align with those supply areas? In Haynesville, we have our KinderHawk gathering asset. It's running at record levels.
In 2023, we broke the record multiple times and continue to break the record in terms of the total throughput going through that asset. We've expanded that asset, and we're still at capacity. So we're looking at ways to continue to build that asset out and deliver additional supplies to the market. In the Permian, we have multiple pipelines that extract molecules out of the Permian and deliver it to the market. We've built 2 new pipelines recently, within the last few years, to bring the Permian gas to the Gulf Coast. Our PHP and GCX projects, which were both greenfield pipeline projects coming to the Gulf Coast. We've expanded our PHP project. We have a project to expand our GCX project, which takes about 18 months to come to market.
We hope that we'll have some type of an agreement on that in the near term. We also have our NGPL pipeline that takes Permian molecules north, and our EPNG pipeline, which takes Permian molecules west. So we're very well situated. We have a great footprint around the Permian build-out, not only for brownfield expansion opportunities, we have one on our NGPL project. We've had a couple on our EPNG pipeline, but also for greenfield pipeline projects. So we have another greenfield pipeline project that we're working on to bring additional Permian gas to the Gulf Coast, which is really where the producers wanna go. So very well situated around the Permian growth.
In the Northeast, we have our TGP pipeline that runs right through that corridor, delivering gas up into the Northeast and New England and Boston markets. Because of the challenging and permitting new energy infrastructure in that part of the country, the expansion opportunities there for us are likely to be more brownfield projects than greenfield projects. For example, we just put in service an East 300 expansion project, expanding some of the capacity on our northern legs of the TGP pipeline. Those are the types of opportunities that we would expect to continue to build out as the Utica and Marcellus basin continues to grow.
Going into the Rockies area, we have our Bakken gathering assets up in the top of the country there, and then we have our Altamont gathering assets, plus long-haul pipelines in the Rockies area and the Front Range of Colorado. Looking at the Bakken and Altamont gathering assets, those are assets that are also running full and require additional projects in order to debottleneck them, bring additional molecules to the market. So opportunity set is high in both of those areas, and we're working with counterparties right now to try to expand our capacity and bring additional molecules out of them, out of those basins to the market. This is an interesting one. Number five is the Eagle Ford, and it's, per WoodMac, is not expected to grow very much. We disagree with that somewhat.
We think it's gonna grow more than what WoodMac does, and that's because we have a nice footprint there, and we're talking to our counterparties and our producer customers in that basin. And we understand that in some parts of the lean Eagle Ford system, the economics are competitive with some of the best parts of the Haynesville. And so we think that there's gonna be good growth there, and we're positioning ourselves there to take advantage of some of that growth. So supply can come from many areas across the country. We expect it will come from many areas of the country, and we have a nice part to play in bringing that supply, that incremental supply to the market. Okay, now moving to the demand part of the picture.
First and foremost is LNG, but we got a whole slide dedicated to that, so we'll table it for a moment. Mexico exports, so Mexico exports, number two down there, both in South Texas and the West. This is really mostly driven by power generation and industrial demand. There is some incremental LNG demand down there, but in the nearer term, you know, we're expecting to see that mostly driven by power and industrial demand. Very little incremental production, if any, from Mexico, in state Mexico, so all of that additional demand is expected to come from the United States.
And so 3 BCF a day of expected incremental exports from the U.S. to Mexico through the end of the decade, and we have, as I said before, we deliver 50% of all of the gas going to Mexico today, so we have projects to help accommodate some of that incremental build-out. Power generation and power demand for natural gas. WoodMac has that demand growth as relatively flat. This is one that we wholeheartedly disagree with. We think that the power generation demand for natural gas is going to grow. We've disagreed with WoodMac in the past, and because we've expected more power generation growth from natural gas, and we've been more right than WoodMac has been in the past. So we think that this is a consistent theme that we've seen played out over the past few years.
So why would power generation go up for natural gas and the demand for natural gas power-fired power generation? It's because it's really the only dispatchable fuel available to backstop renewable power. So as renewable power penetrates the market further and further, you're not gonna use coal because coal is not competitive for many reasons. You're not gonna use nuclear because of the permitting processes and the natural and the national perception that it's risky and unsafe and so forth. So you're gonna use natural gas, and that's what we're seeing across the country. We're seeing natural gas peaking plants backing up renewable power. You're seeing baseload plants expanding and being built out in order to backstop renewable power generation facilities. We're also seeing natural gas being used for data center loads.
New data centers are popping up across the country, and we're seeing natural gas as a reliable power source to support those data centers. So all the number threes on the map here are new power generation being met by natural gas. So you can see it's across the country in multiple locations. Oh, and I forgot one, one last one: coal. Additional coal power plant retirements being replaced by natural gas. System operators look at coal retirement as something that needs to be replaced by natural gas because of the dispatchability of it. As a system operator, you have to have confidence you're gonna be able to meet that base load of demand, and renewable power just can't get them the same type of confidence and comfort as a dispatchable source like natural gas.
Okay, industrial demand. So number four on this, and this is also in the Gulf Coast here, petrochemicals, industrial, manufacturing, et cetera, processes that are hard to or impossible to electrify or have other limitations towards electrification. Those will continue to be met by natural gas, and as demand for these products globally continue to increase, the natural gas demand for those are expected to continue to increase as well. You know, as long as, and we're, we're seeing this now with, with natural gas prices as low as they are, that actually continues to catalyze some of these, these processes, some of the, the facilities that are being built and sited to take advantage of global spreads of the feedstock and the end market for these products.
You know, it's a double-edged sword because the low gas prices mean activity levels will come off a little bit in the U.S., but it continues to catalyze some of these demand responses because of the global spread that they can achieve. Okay, so as we said, so LNG is the primary driver of opportunities, of the opportunity set that we see before us for the next several years. And so this page, I think, illustrates where we are, you know, in the 13 BCF a day, 12-13 BCF a day today of feed gas going to export in the form of LNG, growing to 28-29 BCF a day in 2030. So a very healthy amount of incremental growth from LNG facilities.
You can see there the peak, and the vast majority of that is already under construction. So the green wedge are the LNG facilities that are already under construction, over 11 BCF a day. So we're almost doubling the amount of LNG feed gas that we're experiencing today, almost doubling just from those projects that are under construction. I know there's recent LNG DOE pause, permitting pause has come to light and is on a lot of people's attention. But putting that aside, this trend is going to occur to some degree, since many of these are already under construction. So just to put that into perspective, we're talking about 15% of today's total U.S. demand of incremental demand coming to the market.
So 15% incremental, relative to the entire U.S. demand set, is coming to the market. And it's just hard to underestimate how significant that is. And the reason why is you can't just build one of these trains or build a facility and connect it to a pipeline and say, "All right, I'm good to go." That pipeline will need to have an adequate supply behind it. The pipeline that it will be connected to will need to have adequate supply behind it. You need to really kind of build it out all the way to the supply basin. So we've already talked about where the supply is coming. For these new LNG facilities, we're gonna need to be able to back all the way to the supply basin in some cases.
So even if we're not—if Kinder Morgan is not the pipeline that wins the business to connect to a new Cheniere LNG train, for example, we could still benefit by supplying that pipeline with incremental supplies because the network that we have right now is full. So we'll need to build out our existing network, loop it, add compression, whatever we have to do, maybe even build brand-new pipeline, to get the incremental supply to the pipeline that's going directly to the LNG facility. We'll also need storage. Incremental storage will be needed because of all of the new demand and new supply coming to the market. Those are gonna create disruptions, so new storage will be required. And many of these LNG operators are looking for supply diversification.
So in some cases, you're, you're not just building one path to a supply basin, you're building two or maybe even three supply paths to multiple supply basins. So it, it leads to multiple infrastructure projects, not just one. So it's very exciting, and this is, this is why we're so excited about the future of Kinder Morgan right here. Okay, so we touched a little bit about, a little bit on storage capacity. We own 700 billion cubic, billion cubic feet of storage capacity, about 15% of the total U.S. portfolio. This is a component of our portfolio that often gets overlooked because it's so integrated with our pipeline storage, or excuse me, pipeline offerings, but it's really increased in, value. And the reason it's increased in value is because of the incremental volatility that we're experiencing in the space.
Greater renewable penetration, brand-new areas of demand, incremental demand, incremental supply, all of these things are creating volatility in the market, bottlenecks in the market, disruptions in the market. All of those things add to volatility, which all add to the value of storage. So in many cases, we're seeing the rates associated with our services, our storage services, increase, and increase a lot in some cases, especially in our footprint in Texas. We're seeing the value of our storage facilities increase nicely, which is good. Plus, when we combine, and this is, again, kind of speaking to our advantaged footprint, when we combine our storage offerings with our transportation offerings, we're able to provide flexibility and a more robust, broad set of services that many others can't compete with.
Yeah. Oh, you're kidding. Wow, that flew by.
All right, we're-- I'm gonna fly by these other ones. I was getting too excited about talking about our asset footprints here. So, moving on from our natural gas segment, we do have three other business units: our product business, our product pipelines business, our terminals business, and our CO2 business. The products business and our terminals business are mostly focused on refined products, gasoline, diesel, jet fuel. These are... The way to think about these are, these are very steady, slow-growing businesses with very little capital requirement. So they're cash cows, and we take the free cash flow generated from these, and we're now deploying those into our natural gas business and opportunity set. Now, touching on the smallest of our business units, this is our CO2 segment.
This one's worth touching on just, just a minute because even though it's the smallest one of our business units, we've developed a unique capability here. We have an enhanced oil recovery business in this, in this business segment. That means we take carbon dioxide, and we inject it into old, mature oil fields. It enhances the viscosity of the oil, which means it's easier to produce, and then we sell it. But what's really unique about this is that same expertise can now be used for carbon capture and sequestration. So we're taking our same reservoir engineers, who are working on this and have for a couple of decades, are now helping us explore our ability to participate in the carbon capture and sequestration space, which is pretty exciting. It's earlier stage, earlier days, but, but it's pretty exciting.
Our Energy Transition Ventures group is focused on that, as well as renewable natural gas, and that's where we've really focused currently and is expanding nicely. We're committed to being a good steward. I'll fly through this one. Just one example, we've reduced our methane emissions here by 30% since 2020, and that's an example of us trying to be a good steward to the environment, to our shareholders, and to our employees. But many other efforts that are ongoing, but I'm gonna have to fly through this because we're going so quickly. We've been recognized nicely by some of the sustainability rating agencies out there. Some good remarks there. The next two pages are for your benefit, some more detail behind our assets and some of our sensitivities to our 2024 budget.
And then to conclude, I think you've seen it, and I talked way too long. We're very excited about our current prospects, the assets that we own, the existing committed projects that we've got, plus the incremental projects that we're working on. You know, being a natural gas transporter means we are very well suited to take advantage and very well positioned to take advantage of some of the trends that we've talked about. And aligned management, 13% of our business is owned by management and board, good growth, good dividend yield, and good idea for opportunistic buyback programs.
I would just leave it with this: It's intriguing to think about a company like us that's, you know, paying out a dividend in the 6.5+ range, combined with the growth prospects that we're talking about, 8% in 2024. The total return opportunity set looks very attractive to us, and we think there's more to come. So we're very optimistic about our future, and we hope with these comments, other people are just as excited about it as we are. So thank you very much for coming. Appreciate it.