number of businesses across North America focused on North America energy, midstream assets, large position in natural gas. You see up in the right our overall segment EBITDA budgeted for 2018 of $8,100,000,000 56% of that is in the natural gas pipelines where we have the largest natural gas transmission, transportation as well as storage network in North America and very much like this position. We are seeing a real growth in the natural gas business, something unlike in thirty plus years I've ever seen, which is 10% year over year growth in natural gas supply and demand, another big growth year expected in 2019. And that does a couple of things. One is it creates the potential for projects and Christine alluded to two of them, two of our Permian pipeline projects, which I'll get to in a minute.
And then also it fills up our existing infrastructure. So that helps improve renewal rates, it helps improve utilization of existing previously unused capacity, etcetera. And so generally a very good positive tailwind going on in natural gas right now. And we're connected to all the main resource players as well as the key markets including the key export markets. In products pipelines, we're the largest independent transporter of petroleum products, about 2,100,000 barrels a day, that's 10,000 miles of pipe added to our gas position of 70,000 miles.
Terminals, we're the largest independent operator, in North America. We've gradually migrated this business over to being primarily liquids focused, primarily refined products focused, which, gives us we think good margin opportunities and we've also built these assets up and round primarily hub positions where we get some opportunities for additional, value added services. In CO2, we are the largest transporter of CO2 in North America. And this is a business that's been high returning for us. It's been predictable in terms of production.
We usually hit our production targets within about 1.5% of what we budgeted for. So a predictable business for us, good returns and, we combine two important things here. One is we've got access to a scarce resource that's CO2 and there's certain oil that can only be liberated by CO2 and then also we have a good EOR team. So a very good business for us. So we think we're a compelling investment thesis, dollars 40,000,000,000 of market capitalization, investment grade rated debt and I'll get into our development there in just a moment.
Dollars 7,500,000,000.0 of adjusted EBITDA and we've outlined what our dividend growth is. We did that last year and showing $0.80 for this year and then 25% dividend growth in each of the two following years, 2019 and 2020. And unusual in our sector, we also have a share buyback program, 2,000,000,000 of which we used about $500,000,000 so far and that's over the same twenty eighteen to twenty twenty time period. And we're delivering. So over the last few years, we've talked about focusing on delevering the balance sheet, putting ourselves in position for a credit upgrade and using our excess cash for delevering, for investing in good opportunity projects and for good returning projects.
And then if we have excess, returning that in the form of dividends, which I just talked about, but also share buybacks. We have, with our announcement yesterday at KMI, checked that first box off. So we had, as you may have seen, a transaction that we announced earlier in the year to sell our Trans Mountain pipeline project at KML. The Trans Mountain pipeline project, the existing pipeline as well as the project for $4,500,000,000 Canadian. And, we closed on that transaction.
We had a shareholder vote on Thursday. We closed on the transaction on Friday and we announced yesterday what we were going to do with the proceeds. The proceeds go out to KML public shareholders and go out to KMI as the 70% shareholder on the same terms. It's going be distributed as a return of capital, that's a tax efficient way to distribute it, to the shareholders, and, that will happen. We have because of a couple of technical, points, we have to go out for a proxy that the proxy is not on a shareholder vote.
The shareholder vote is not on the use of proceeds, that decision has been made, how they'll be distributed, rather it's on a reverse stock split as well as a reduction in stated capital which I can get into if anybody has questions on it. When we go through that process, again, the decision on how to distribute the proceeds and when is a management board decision, that decision has been made. We expect the proceeds to be distributed the January. Looking at it from a KMI standpoint, those proceeds will be used to delever. We announced yesterday a new target for our leverage where we had been at or below five times debt to EBITDA.
We announced a target of the mid fours and with this transaction, we'll be at $4.06. So we announced the new target and showed you how we were going to make it This year, we're making it. So we've gotten to a point where we should be eligible for an upgrade. We've done the work that we need to do on deleveraging the balance sheet. We may continue to delever further as we continue to fund the equity portion of our expansion projects which we would expect to continue to do particularly at our current equity values and so we may gradually improve from there, but we don't need to.
We are where we need to be and that allows us to turn our attention, not that we ever took our attention off of this, of finding new projects, new opportunities to invest, our capital and to the extent we exhaust those opportunities to find ways to return value to our shareholders. So that was a real milestone. It was years of work. We've reduced debt substantially over that period and we've taken our leverage level from 5.6 times down to 4.6 times. So significant progress there.
And investing in high return projects, return cash to shareholders, again, we've described how we're going to do that from a dividend standpoint. We're having a great 2018. We're exceeding our leverage metrics target. We're doing well in all of our businesses. What we've set out to do, we've done.
And we're turning a corner here, with our announcement yesterday. So we've continued to, issue zero equity since 2015 and we expect to be able to do that for the foreseeable future. We've got a good dividend coverage ratio. We are we have a leverage target around 4.5 times, which we are meeting. And you see our debt maturities there.
We have some debt maturing in February and debt maturing in December. And, we'll use the proceeds from, the Trans Mountain transaction, to reduce that debt. Overall, we've generated predictable fee based cash flows and we've used our great footprint, our great network of assets which are fee based and through fee based structures as well as hedging of the commodity exposure that we have, 96% of our 2018 budgeted cash flow, is completely independent of commodity prices. We're a leader in each of the segments, as I showed you on the first page. Critically important to us is being a safe efficient operator.
We measure ourselves against, industry benchmarks and we perform consistently better on nearly all of those benchmarks, 34 of 36 I believe is where we currently stand. And we do that while operating very efficiently. We treat the money as our investors money, not management's money, that's the way we operate. We keep looking for ways to operate more efficiently and at lower cost. We leverage the footprint for growth.
We've got about $6,000,000,000 of secured projects in the backlog. We continue to look to ways to add that. We think we're running at 2,000,000,000 to $3,000,000,000 per year of expansion capital projects or maybe more, maybe less in any given year, but we think that's a reasonable run rate, across our network. We continue to be very disciplined and I'll show you some, slides on the performance, on the capital investments that we do make. We've maintained financial flexibility and we've been very aligned with you with management and the board owning a 15% ownership stake.
We run the company like shareholders because we are shareholders. We're, strongly positioned to benefit, from natural gas. U. S. Production continues to grow, expected to grow, over 40% over the next ten years and from key basins which we are tied into.
On the demand side, we've seen big growth from, power. We're seeing growth in LNG and continue to see more. That's going to be the biggest growth area. Net, exports to Mexico, of which we account for, about two thirds, move across our pipeline systems. And then there's petchem, industrial, other demand sources that we see.
But the main point here is we're producing immense amount of natural gas and we can grow it year over year and there's more of it to be produced. And what we're trying to do is find a way to get it from the places where it's produced and put it to the places where it needs to leave, either be consumed or exported out of the country. And our network of assets is well positioned participate in that. As you see, we're attached to every major, producing area, with transmission assets as well as some gathering and processing assets. And then we're well positioned for LNG exports Mexico, power demand.
We're developing our own liquefaction facility at Elba Island in Georgia. So very nicely positioned and levered to the overall natural gas story. Dollars 6,300,000,000.0 of secured projects of which about two thirds as I mentioned, 4,200,000,000.0 is natural gas. Here you see a breakdown on it. It's, the Elba liquefaction facility, 1,200,000,000.0.
We expect to get that in service, in the fourth quarter of this year. That's the current projection. And then we'll continue to add units as we go through into 2019. We provide a lot of expansions to support LNG exports. So we're not the developer of the liquefaction facility.
We're providing the upstream infrastructure, midstream infrastructure, both transportation and storage to be able to serve those. Permian takeaway projects, which I'll have some more detail on. In the Bakken, we're well positioned like our G and P position, there and we're expanding that position, investing about $05,000,000,000 worth of capital in it. Marcellus, we have southbound projects that were at the tail end of what was about a $2,000,000,000 set of projects to move gas from Marcellus and Utica down to the Gulf Coast. We have one more of those potentially to do that's not in our backlog.
And then, I think you'll see a step change in terms of the rate that's required in order to be able to provide new export capacity. But our Tennessee system comes right through the Marcellus. It's now reversed and flows south to Louisiana and we're in a position to continue to provide outlets to the producers in that region. We support power generation supply projects, various of those. And then we've got $2,100,000,000 in other segments, of which about $1,400,000,000 is in EOR and then the rest is finishing out some projects in our liquids business segments.
So building out LNG. So there are a number of ways in which you can participate in LNG. You can be a developer, you can go out and develop projects and you can, underwrite the liquefaction and go out and place those molecules in the global market or you can build and develop the facility and put that space all under capacity, to someone who's willing to take that risk and that opportunity and that's what we did at EBA. So our participation there is we build, we own, we operate the facility and Shell takes the capacity and places the molecules in the international market. We're not going to do the first one, We like doing, the Elba model and that's what we're looking for, as a potential on our Gulf LNG, facility which is currently a regas and is the last brownfield, facility for potential development.
But aside from all that, aside from direct participation in LNG, the really very low risk and higher reward opportunity for us is in holding the upstream natural gas transportation and storage network that's needed to serve third party LNG facilities. So what we're doing is building the pipe, expanding the pipe and providing the storage service that LNG providers are going to need. And that's easy for us. We know how to build pipelines. We know how to expand our pipeline network and it creates a very good opportunity for us.
And so we've signed up about 4.5 Bcf of capacity and about $900,000,000 worth of capital, very capital efficient way for us to participate in that market, in that growing market. Here's our Elba, facility. As I mentioned, expecting the first unit come on in the fourth quarter. The we're two projects here. It's the liquefaction facility itself, which is about a $1,400,000,000 project, $745,000,000 share.
And then the terminal facility, which is $430,000,000 that's Kinder Morgan project. The in service is again phased through the fourth quarter of this year through the third quarter of twenty nineteen as these 10 modular units are placed into service. We have our certificate of course. We're under construction, well advanced in construction right now and closing in on completion of the first unit. Permian production.
So we have one announced FID ed and in the backlog project today, to date and that's the Gulf Coast Express, project and actually I'll go to that first. So, this is about a four fifty mile pipe, starting in Waha and terminating in Agua Del C, Texas, where it interconnects with our Texas intrastate system. So this will give Permian gas, about two BCF of Permian gas, the opportunity to access markets along the Texas Coast, power, industrial and petchem, but really importantly also markets in Mexico and access to the LNG facilities. We have this under fully under contract, and project in October of twenty nineteen in service. And really remarkable, I mean, we we barely had this thing FID ed and we started working on another one.
And that speaks to just the overall growth in Permian production and its need to find an outlet. And so as I'm sure all of you know, the Permian gas is associated gas. In some cases, it really has negative value. It needs to be moved somewhere in order to untrap or unlock, the oil that's there. And so there is a strong desire to get that gas out and get value for it.
And so Permian is is one of the lowest prices, priced regions in North America, not the lowest, but one of the lowest. And now the premium markets are in the Houston Ship Channel and in Southern Louisiana. And so we've got the pipe to get them from one place to the other and all within the state of Texas. So we don't have a, we need an Army Corps of Engineers permit but we don't need a Federal Energy Regulatory Commission permit. So a more rapid permitting environment, a more predictable construction environment, good value going to our producers, two BCF of gas hitting a five Bcf network today on our Texas Gulf Coast system which will create opportunities not only for our shippers but also create opportunities for us on that asset as we bring an incremental two Bcf of gas, into our network.
So the next step would be, the PHP pipeline project, which we've made a couple of announcements about and said that, we think we may have something to say here in the third quarter. And we've continued to make progress on that. We have, good shipper commitments that have come in. We have some equity that's associated with those commitments coming in. But, a great project that will bring an incremental two Bcf to our system.
So a system that today runs at about five Bcf is going to see four Bcf coming into that network, which will create follow opportunities, for us and for our shippers. We connect them to the markets that's going to allow them to dispose of the natural gas that they're producing in association with the crude, in in, West Texas. So we're look, we're well along on this. We continue to make very good progress. And as soon as we have it wrapped up, we'll announce it FID it and announce it.
All right, so that's the Permian opportunity. Our liquids business, so we have I'll start with the lower right hand corner there. We participate in refined products export markets because we are we provide the dock space in the Houston Ship Channel. You can see refined products exports have been increasing along our docks, over the last several years. But we also have a large refined products pipeline business.
This is not a fast growth business like natural gas is, but there's incremental growth that's happening every year and it's going to continue to grow marginally when you consider global consumption needs. Our position in the Houston Ship Channel, again predominantly refined products, position, but connected, by pipelines inbound and outbound. It's interconnected, between and among our facilities by cross channel pipelines. We have 12 barge docks, 11 ship docks. We're connected by train.
We have, we have a nine bay truck rack. So, this is an example of the kind of thing we're trying to build in our terminals business, a hub position in a critical market with lots of options for our customers, lots of options, for us, lots of infrastructure that we're interconnected with, refineries inbound and cross country pipelines outbound, as well as, international international export markets for the refined products. So we built the premier clearing point for domestic and international markets, 43,000,000 barrels of total capacity and a significant refined products position, really the dominant position in the Houston Ship Channel at this point. Beyond the current backlog, there's continued need for energy infrastructure investment, 400,000,000,000, more than $400,000,000,000 over the next twenty years in natural gas alone. Looking at our opportunities, what we're exposed to particularly southbound capacity, additional southbound capacity to feed the Marcellus, the growing Marcellus production.
Storage to support renewable power generation and LNG exports. Storage is going to be, we believe, although it's not showing up in storage spreads today, is going to be increasingly valuable as you look at the intermittent sources on which the power market is increasingly relying on in the form of renewable power. We believe the combination of our transportation assets and our storage assets allows us to sell really a different product to our market and that product is deliverability. So in those markets like California where the transition is to more and more renewable energy, they still need the reliable backup and they need, if anything, need more our peak deliverability than they did before, before they added all these renewables. So we think it's a good opportunity for us to continue to participate in renewable firming.
We also think there's going to be demand for storage that's associated with LNG exports. So it's not going be a real consistent necessarily every day, day in and day out, movement of the commodity. And these are big numbers. And so from time to time, there's going to be a need for that storage along with the normal need for seasonal storage, which the bulk of U. S.
Storage is geared to that need, the difference between summer utilization and winter utilization. So we have a great storage position. We believe that should continue to see increased value over time. Downstream connectivity for Permian volumes, we are working on that and I mentioned the two big projects, but there's more to it than that. We have existing assets in the Permian Basin on EPNG, also on NGPL which we own 50% of and any bit of capacity that we can make available to Permian producers we sell.
We've even sold capacity, we've been selling capacity at, on good terms from Rockies assets which traditionally have served, there's been more Rockies export capacity than there has been production for a very long time. But now anything that gives people an opportunity to get out of the Permian is, valuable and can be sold. And so this, this speaks to something I think, again, that is important to us as we look at our base business. Even separate and aside from projects and capital expansions and things like that that we might do in order to expand our, our network and our footprint, we benefit from the uplift that's associated with just seeing a 10% year over year increase in the amount of natural gas that's produced and used over the course of the year. Fills up existing capacity, makes renewal rates better.
So participating and benefiting from it not only in terms of new projects but also in terms of what it does for our existing asset base. The transportation for additional supply for LNG exports, again that's big and big for us. Haynesville 2, so a lot of activity returning to Haynesville. We have some assets that are very well positioned there. And on gathering and processing, so we have a very nice position in the Bakken.
Our producer there is extremely successful and is developing additional production. We're investing in that business. Haynesville, we built out a fairly large network, had volumes come up and then go back down. Now they're coming back up again and we can be very capital efficient in our investments there to meet the need for new production as it comes on and we have a new owner of the acreage behind that asset that is interested in investing in it. Our Eagle Ford position in South Texas is Eagle Ford is a more challenged basin, it's recovering but it's recovering in the face of, you know, more export pipe, than is currently needed.
But it's very much integrated into our natural gas network in Texas. And then other assets like Kopineau, Oklahoma and some of our Rockies assets maybe not as core, to our business, but, good gathering and processing positions particularly in the Haynesville, Eagle Ford and in the Bakken. So good opportunities for us to deploy additional capital. Given everything that we've done over the last several years to improve our balance sheet, to give people visibility on our dividends, to continue to find good projects to invest in, Notwithstanding all that, we continue to trade at a discount to our peers. We think particularly by solving the issue on our overall leverage, putting ourselves in a position to be a BBB flat entity, finding good opportunities to continue to invest, resolving the uncertainty around the Trans Mountain situation in Canada in a favorable way, to our shareholders at KML and KMI.
We think when you look at our trading, relative to our peers that there's room for upside there and that's what this, chart is speaking to. If you look at the first two, the top two rather, DCF yield and EBITDA multiple, those would imply 40% to 50% share price upside for KMI by themselves. We've got a good dividend growth rate obviously and we have good dividend coverage which we would expect to maintain. So going forward, we're increasing the dividend but we would expect for the very long term to have a well covered dividend, right? Have a well covered dividend and a strong balance sheet and continue to find good projects to invest our capital in.
So we think of ourselves as a core holding in any portfolio, should be a core holding in any portfolio. Diversified energy infrastructure, one of the 10 largest energy companies in the S and P 500, we're core to the North American energy economy. And if you look at North American energy production, NGLs, natural gas, crude, refined products, it's all growing. It's all growing right now. And all of it is growing in a place where it's not necessarily being used and needs to be moved.
And that's where midstream infrastructure players like us come into play. Well positioned for growth with a $6,300,000,000 backlog, a good footprint to grow off of, good flexibility to be able to execute, have a healthy balance sheet, new EBITDA target which we believe we have met and we've found good ways to deliver shareholder value. We generate a lot of cash in this business, a lot of cash. And our objective is to find the best ways to use that cash. As we put our balance sheet in a very healthy, strong position, we have the opportunity to continue to invest in projects and then look for other ways to return value to shareholders.
And then finally, as I said, we're aligned with you. We're working, for you. So with that, I will take any questions you have. We have a separate breakout session in about six minutes too.
Maybe I'll kick it off. For, in the last couple of years, you've had to play defense, you know, you've had to delever and it kind of tied your hands in things that, you know, you could, that you maybe would want to do. The DNA of Kinder in my opinion has been, you know, who's typically played offense, you know, been acquisitive in past years. Now that you're kind of at pretty much close to the targeted leverage, you know, how should we think about, you know, are you guys still going to be playing defense or, you know, are you going to turn the corner and maybe be a little more playing offense and what kind of opportunities would that entail?
Sure. Well, first I'd say it sure felt like we were playing offense the last thirty months. And I think it took a lot of active work, and a lot of active management in order to be able accomplish what we did on the balance sheet. I mean we high graded our backlog. We brought in partners where it made sense.
We got promoted on those JVs, to get us additional returns for our shareholders. We, did some good divestiture transactions, most recent one, being last week. We did a lot of work to get ourselves in a position of strength. And so we never took the offense off the field. And during that time too, we didn't turn projects away.
Continue to look at projects and find good projects to do, Gulf Coast Express, the most recent example, hopefully Permian Highway, the next example of that, we continue to find ways to do things. The place where we've historically played offense, where we've been sidelined a little bit to your point, Christine, is that our relative trading multiple has not made our currency attractive in acquisitions. And we would like to be back in a position where we can do that. That's where about half of all the capital that we've deployed since the inception of the company has gone has been in M and A. We've had hits and misses like everybody, but overall, you look at the track record, we're good
We're able to take costs out. We're able to find synergies, commercial synergies, capital synergies and, do things like position ourselves for what we're now seeing in natural gas, which happened with the El Paso acquisition. And, you know, we saw this coming to some extent and we put ourselves in a position to do that. And yes, we'd like to be back in that position again, but we will not have an itchy trigger finger. I mean, we are going to be disciplined.
That's what's gotten us to this point to date, is we've been disciplined. And we will continue to be disciplined and we won't do something just to get a deal done that's marginally accretive or something. We're going to be looking for good opportunities and we think that in time those good opportunities will be available, and particularly as the value of our currency improves.
Maybe also with the sale of Trans Mountain, your Canadian footprint has gotten a lot smaller and so has obviously your growth potential up there. How should we think about, you know, the remaining assets there? I mean, do you do you think over a longer term it's something that you want to grow or is it something that maybe you want to potentially, you know, shrink?
Right. So our footprint will consist of the Cochin pipeline system and it also consists of our significant merchant terminal position in Edmonton. Those are attractive assets. We've been experiencing good renewal rates there and a great bulk terminal facility in Vancouver Harbor, which we are investing in now and we are growing. We just added another growth project to that.
This is a business that we like and it's they're good midstream assets and we can certainly continue to invest in them and grow them. Very low leverage on this entity. All of that to say, we don't have to do anything except to continue to run and manage these assets. However, as we said, all alternatives will be considered and if you look at some of the objective facts here, this is a small midstream company with attractive assets and with no debt on the balance sheet, all right. So about $200,000,000 a year of EBITDA or so without any significant leverage.
About the only leverage is the preferred shareholder interest which is gets 50% debt treatment for it. So very low leverage, good set of midstream assets, continue to invest in, it can stand pat. But it is small, its original purpose was to take these assets and get the financing in place for TMX. That purpose no longer exists obviously. It's a set of midstream assets in what we think is an attractive seller's market for those assets.
There are plenty of midstream players including people with complementary positions to ours, who, we think will be interested and we are going to explore that over the coming months. They're attractive to KMI. Now we have to work out the governance and make sure that that works out. But I would say that objectively, again, talking about objective observations here, the multiple at which KMI trades and the multiple at which a set of midstream assets like these would trade, there's a dilutive effect there. And so whether KMI could make that number those numbers work I think is very much an open question.
But the fact that these are attractive assets, in a good market, for those assets, those are I think those are facts. And so over the coming months, we'll see how this particular process plays out, but we'll always be in a position of not having to say yes to anything. We can always say no because the assets themselves will stand on their own.
Great. So we are out of time, but breakout will be in liberty three.