Good morning, everyone. My name is Theresa Chen, and I'm the midstream and refining analyst here at Barclays. It is my pleasure to introduce our next company, Kinder Morgan. With us from Kinder is CEO Kim Dang. Welcome, Kim.
Thank you. Glad to be here. Such a great conference.
Glad to have you, as always. Kim, I'd like to start with a discussion of Kinder's robust outlook for natural gas infrastructure demand growth. Since we spoke at last year's conference, Kinder has increased its forecast for natural gas demand growth through the end of the decade and beyond, and can you talk more about the recent drivers of this incrementally positive outlook, as well as other potential needle movers to look out for from here?
Oh, sure. So yes, we have increased our natural gas demand forecast. I think last year we were around 20 BCF of growth over the next five years. And now we're projecting 28 BCF a day of growth between 2025 and 2030. And historically, we have not published our own demand forecast. We typically use Wood Mac. But about a year ago, we started to diverge more from where their numbers were. And then so we started publishing our own. And right now, their number is at 22. So they're at 22 BCF a day. We're at 28 BCF a day. The biggest difference between those two is we project LNG export growth of 20 BCF a day. And so that's a huge percentage of the 28 versus Wood Mac at 15 BCF a day.
And if you look right now at the projects that are actually under construction, plus one project that was recently FID'ed, you're over the Wood Mackenzie number, and you're starting to approach our number. And there have been a number of SPAs that have been announced this year for projects that are not yet FID'ed, which I think people are seeing as more and more likely. So I actually think there's a reasonable possibility that we exceed the 20 BCF of growth. And so the demand forecast for LNG has just continued to strengthen. And especially as a result of the administration has been encouraging and has been supportive of that. The other place we see big, nice demand growth is on the power side. And that's a function of multiple factors. Obviously, the one that a lot of people focus on is the data center growth.
But it's not just data center growth. It is population migration. As populations have migrated south, businesses have moved south. You have onshoring or reshoring. And so you've got chip factories in Arizona, car factories in Alabama and Georgia. All these things need power. In Texas, they're looking to back up more of the renewables. And so there's big demand for these peaker plants. And so we expect that there's going to be really nice demand for power growth. The other thing I'd say about the power growth estimates is our projections and Wood Mackenzie's projections were done prior to the recent reconciliation bill, the one big, beautiful bill. And so I think there was an expectation prior to that that there was going to be more renewable development. And now I think natural gas predominantly will have to fill that hole.
And so I think there's probably upside to what we've forecasted on the power side. The other thing I'd say about our power projections is they are much more conservative than if you look at AI spend and what people think is going to drive how much power demand there's going to be as a result of AI spend. Or some people look at the GE turbine backlog, and they've got a much greater number based on that. If you look at the utility IRPs, all those drive bigger numbers than what we have in our forecast. So I think it is a very nice environment to be a natural gas infrastructure company. I said on our second quarter call, I've been at Kinder Morgan approaching 25 years. And this is the best opportunity set that I've seen during my career at Kinder Morgan.
Yeah. Within that extremely robust opportunity set and the outlook, Kinder's also been very busy over the past 12 months on the commercialization front. And among the major projects in the backlog intended to support this growth is Trident. I want to talk about that for a second.
Okay. So recently upsized to 2 BCF per day to satisfy incremental LNG feed gas demand. Can you talk about the strategic importance of Trident to KMI? And how should we think about the likelihood that a phase three potentially would move forward? And should we anticipate more capacity from further phases to support LNG feed gas needs as well?
So for those of you who aren't as familiar, Trident is a pipeline project which moves gas from the west side of Houston, Katy area, up and around Houston, down into what I call LNG Alley on the Texas side of the border. So Port Arthur's down there, and Golden Pass is down there, right up. And as a result of the second phase, we are tying in to KMLP, which is a Louisiana project which moves through the Louisiana LNG Alley. So we're tying Trident into KMLP so that we can further serve LNG demand on the Louisiana side of the border. So it is a $1.8 billion project, can move 2 BCF a day. And it's largely backed by LNG demand. There also is some power demand that is backing that project.
But yeah, I mean, I think with the expansion opportunities that we just talked about on the LNG side, the 20 BCF a day growth, there's going to be nice opportunities to potentially expand that pipe. We serve about today 45% of or move 45% of the gas going to LNG facilities. And right now, we've got about 8 BCF a day contracted. That'll go to 12 BCF a day based on Trident and some other projects where we have signed contracts. And so it'll be a great opportunity for us to build off of in the future. So looking forward to potential opportunities there.
Got it. And tackling the LNG feed gas side from a different angle. Okay. So now that you expect to transport 11 BCF per day of LNG feed gas by the end of 2027, given that the LNG-related project authorizations have continued to accelerate under the current administration, how can Kinder position itself, particularly within the Haynesville, to capture greater market share within LNG feed gas going forward and potentially bring upside to this estimate?
Yeah. So we've got, in addition to the interstate and intrastate pipes that we have to serve LNG, we've got a big position, gathering and processing position in the Haynesville. Our projections are that the Haynesville is going to need to grow by about 10 BCF a day to meet the demand forecast that we have. I think if you look at Wood Mackenzie's forecast, they're at 6 BCF a day. So either way, significant growth coming off of what is about 13 BCF a day of production in the Haynesville. We just announced in the second quarter a $500 million investment in our gathering.
Kinder Hawk?
Kinder Hawk in the Haynesville. That's going to add a BCF a day of processing capacity. It's going to add pipe capacity. We've already started to see the producers in the Haynesville start to ramp their production. Projections are for the fourth quarter that LNG demand's going to 19 BCF a day, and so we're going to see some pretty significant increases in LNG demand over the next several months, and I think Kinder Hawk is well positioned to meet that now and then as we expand it into the future.
Got it. And I want to also talk about the Texas Access Project, which aims to utilize KMLP to deliver gas off of Trident into South Louisiana, further supporting your LNG feed gas strategy. How does this fit in within your overall footprint and strategy, and what are the growth opportunities along this?
Sure. Interestingly, KMLP was originally built to import natural gas. When we thought the country thought we were going to run out of natural gas, it was built to import for a couple of major oil companies. Now we have turned that pipe around and we're using it to export. As I mentioned earlier, it ties into Trident. We can move gas from the Katy area. That would be Haynesville gas. I mean, that would be Permian gas and Eagle Ford gas. We can move over into the LNG corridor by using Trident flowing into KMLP. KMLP goes from the coast, and it goes up into what I call Pipeline alley. It interconnects with all kinds of interstate natural gas pipelines. You can actually move gas into those facilities from all those connections.
Now we'll be able to move gas in there coming from the Texas direction as well. It can be multi-directional. It's going to provide us a lot of flexibility to serve those LNG exports. There's pretty cheap expansibility of that pipe. Right now, we have about a BCF of that subscribed with the most recent project. There's another BCF and maybe more of expansion capacity that we can do very economically on that pipe.
Great. And aside from LNG feed gas, which is the primary driver of near-term growth, of course, to your earlier point, Kim, power generation is another major contributor to the positive outlook for gas infrastructure, in part supported by the anticipated proliferation of data centers to come. So now that the proposed Copper State Connectors are likely to move forward following the sanctioning of a competing project, could you provide color on other major project opportunities that Kinder is currently assessing to support the growing gas-to-power load? And where are KMI's competitive advantages in winning these potential projects?
Yeah. I mean, I think I'll just start with the competitive advantage. I mean, we've got a huge natural gas system. So if you look at the design capacity of our interstate natural gas projects, I mean, interstate natural gas pipelines, it's like 63 BCF a day. I mean, so we've got a huge system that we can then build off of. And so that makes expansion opportunities very economic generally and allows us to offer our shippers a lot of different services in order to meet their needs. So that's where we get a lot of competitive advantage. I mean, I think other places is we're in this business for the long haul. So when we build pipeline projects, we want to make sure that they are going to work for the long haul and serve our customer needs. And I think generally reviewed as a very good operator.
I think all those things work together to help us win those projects. But in terms of the opportunity set that we see today, and this is overall not just on power, but I'd say a big portion of this is related to power. Back in the first quarter of 2024, we said that we had an opportunity set. So projects that we were looking at that were not in the backlog at that time of $7-$11 billion. And since that time, our backlog has grown from $3 billion to $9.3 billion. We've actually added like $8.5 billion of projects, put $2.2 billion in service. That's how you get to that add of $6.3 billion that we've added to our backlog. And then obviously, we weren't successful on Copper State.
So we went back and we said, "All right, what does the opportunity set look like now?" And so when we went across the businesses and looked at the opportunity set, the opportunity set is still in that $7-$11 billion range, even though we have added all these projects. So I think as you noted at the start, the demand for natural gas has continued to increase and gotten better, and the opportunity set has not diminished. So I think we've got lots of opportunity and power. Right now, our $9.3 billion backlog, about 50% of that is associated with power. And I think the one thing people miss, everybody's so excited about AI and data center demand, and there's definitely going to be a lot of that. But there are so many other power opportunities out there.
Our South System for expansion that we did, some of that may be data center, but a lot of it is not data center. A lot of it is just growth in power demand as a result of the factors that I talked about earlier. We've got power expansions, coal conversions for TVA that we're working on. You've got new power plants being built in Arkansas. You've got new power plants being built up north that we've got projects on NGPL. And then I think you'll see some other power plant conversions in Arizona that probably can't be served with the Transwestern expansion. So I think there's enormous opportunity on the power side. But our opportunity set, despite the fact that we've added all these projects, is not diminished.
Fascinating. With the steadily increasing demand for transmission infrastructure across the U.S., to your point, do you expect returns to trend higher from here? I mean, even just looking at that $9.3 billion sanctioned backlog, can you tell us about the economics that you've observed have evolved? And from a regional perspective, where do you think the most attractive returns are?
Okay, so here's what I would say on that. Almost every project that we do is competitive, and so we are always almost unless you're building like a five-mile lateral off an existing pipe. You are almost always in a competitive environment, and especially on greenfield projects, and so I don't anticipate that returns are going to move up from here, but I would also say that the returns that we get are very attractive. As you know, the $9.3 billion that we have in our backlog is coming at less than a six times multiple when you look at first-year EBITDA, so I mean, very, very attractive projects, so I think we are happy with those returns and happy to do all the projects that we can get at those types of returns.
And given the amount of prospects out there, I think we will continue to be able to do projects at those returns. But I don't see returns increasing. When you think about where we get the better returns, I'd say the greenfield projects are very competitive. I'd say on some of the brownfield projects, that's probably where we get a little bit higher returns. And then we also target higher returns on a gathering and processing opportunity. So it's always about balancing the risk and reward, making sure that if we're taking more risk, we're getting more return. But at the end of the day, what we're trying to do with our backlog of projects is deliver high-quality growth to our investors.
And the goal is we try to keep our base business relatively flat and then deliver nice growth from these expansion projects, which we are funding with internally generated cash flow. So there's not incremental interest or dividend costs associated with financing these projects.
Got it. We spend over half the time on natural gas. Turning to maybe the less sexy parts of the business, but equally important in cash yielding, on the liquid side of things. So tell us about how these assets fit within your portfolio. And also from the lens of commodity exposure, obviously on the natural gas side, very minimal commodity exposure, if any. On the liquid side, there is a little bit more sensitivity to crude price, which this year has borne some volatility. How do you see that evolving going forward? And would just love to get your thoughts here.
Okay. So let's get it. Your first point is how do they fit within our portfolio? And your second question is about commodity exposure. So in terms of how they fit within the portfolio, so if you look at how Kinder Morgan Assets break down, 65% of our portfolio is in natural gas. About 26% of our portfolio is in refined products. About 9% of our business is in CO2/energy transition. So we are very comfortable with that portfolio of assets. Over the time that I've spent in the business, at different times, different sets of assets have had the biggest growth opportunities. And right now, that opportunity set is in natural gas. And one thing that's great is it happens to be the biggest asset, the biggest asset type in our portfolio. So that works out well for us.
In terms of the other businesses, the refined products businesses are very stable assets. We get inflation adjuster, a price adjustment on those annually on the pipelines through the pipeline tariff, and if you look at our contracts on the terminal side, generally those contracts have escalators built into them. So you have some nice inherent growth built into them. They're relatively low in terms of capital intensity, so they deliver a lot of cash flow to our business that we can use to finance the growth in natural gas, and on the CO2 assets, we get great returns. We target good returns, so there where you have a little commodity exposure, we're targeting to get 20%+ returns on that business. We look at those returns on all the projects that we're doing with our board every quarter, and most of those projects are exceeding 30%.
So we're getting very attractive returns where we are taking commodity risk. We think that's compensating us for the additional risk that we're taking. So very comfortable with that portfolio of assets. That being said, we are economic creatures. And so every business that we have is for sale every day. And if we get the right price for an asset, we will sell it. We will make the right economic decision. But there are tax consequences to selling assets. And so we have to overcome those tax consequences for it to be the right economic transaction for us. And you say, "Well, how does that happen?" I mean, there are places where we found that assets that we've had in the past were better owned by someone else where they had more synergies or could get more out of the assets because of other assets that they own.
And so we've sold assets in the past, not averse to doing it, just need to make sure that we get the right economic result from that. And then on commodity price exposure, you look the way our business breaks down, about 64% of our EBITDA is from take-or-pay contracts, meaning that our customers pay whether or not they use the capacity. Now, in the long term, we want them to use that capacity because that means they'll renew their contracts when they roll in 10 years. But in the short term, if there are fluctuations in demand, it's not a big deal for us. 26% of our business is fee-based, meaning that there's no variation in the price we receive. There's some fluctuation in volume, but a lot of that volume on that is associated with refined products, which is pretty stable.
And then 10% of our business is exposed to commodity price. Most of that's in CO2, so it's exposed to oil price. And then some of that is in our natural gas gathering and processing business. On the CO2 side, we hedge a good portion of that in any current year. So when you look in the current year, we only have really 5% of our business is exposed to commodity prices because we hedge the other 5%. So I think given the nature of the cash flow on the rest of our business, the scale and the scope of the business, the balance sheet flexibility we maintain, I would put this set of assets up against most others. I mean, it's a really nice set of assets that we own, really stable business. The one thing I'd say about volatility is it also presents opportunity for us.
So the services that we provide, and especially natural gas volatility, because of the services that we provide our natural gas customers. And so when you get big volatility in gas prices because you're getting change in supply or demand, we can provide storage services for our customers. We can provide what we call synthetic storage, which is park and loan on our pipes. And so we can provide balancing services. So there's a whole host of incremental services and ancillary services that, when you see volatility in supply or demand, we provide for our customers and bring us incremental revenue.
Thank you for that comprehensive answer. I do want to touch on the CO2 segment and how you see the future for the segment evolving. So on one hand, the recently passed IRA includes tax incentives to support EOR activities. However, elsewhere in the segment, the RNG business has faced intermittent operational challenges as the facilities have come online, plus headwinds due to lackluster D3 RINs prices. So how do you view the path forward for the CO2 segment? Just to take into account.
Sure. So CO2, obviously, we talked about the oil and gas business, the returns that we get there. And there aren't a lot of players in the CO2 business. And so we've got an expertise in a business that a lot of people don't understand. And so we're continuing to invest in CO2, the CO2 oil and gas production, where we can get returns. And then we have optionality, if you will, on CCS or CCUS, so carbon capture. You noted that the recent IRA took the tax credits that you can get on CCUS, so capturing carbon, injecting it for EOR, and then producing oil from $65-$85. So it makes more of those projects economic. And so that presents additional opportunities for us. But it's nice that we've got this staff of reservoir engineers. They know how to keep CO2 in a certain area.
So for example, we had a field one time where we were injecting CO2 to produce the oil, and the CO2 started migrating to someone else's field. Well, we know how to install water curtains to keep it within that field. So now when somebody else wants to do it in their field or just sequester it permanently, we have the expertise to do that. Not many people do. So we've got an existing business. We have those reservoir engineers on staff. We're keeping them busy on our CO2 business. So we're not incurring a lot of overhead to have the optionality on the CCS and the CCUS business. So I think it's a great place. It's a great place to be. That business is going to take time to develop. I think it's slowed down a little bit under the current administration.
But I think there'll be opportunities in the future there. On the RNG business, it's something that you noted that RIN prices have come down. That makes new investment opportunities less economic. So I don't see it as a business that will be expanding a lot during the current administration. But it's a fine business. We have had our operational challenges, but I think we're getting to a point that we're getting those facilities running much more smoothly. And so it'll be a fine business for us to stay in, and then we can see what happens after this. But I think in general, this administration has been hugely positive to the natural gas business. And everything we're seeing there, which is 65%, a little bit of headwinds on the RNG business, which is less than 1% of our business. So we'll take that equation any day.
Fair enough. And finally, I'd like to discuss Kinder's capital allocation priorities from here. With this lengthy runway of potential gas infrastructure projects, would you consider increasing runway CapEx above the $2.5 billion runway over the next few years to support more growth opportunities? And how do you plan to balance growth in general versus maintaining comfortable leverage and returning cash to shareholders?
Okay. Let me say a couple of things about that. So for those of you who aren't as familiar, what we've guided is we have roughly $2.5 billion per year of expansion CapEx opportunities, which we can fund based on what we pay out in the dividend. And $2.5 billion, we can fund with internally generated cash flow. And so it's $2.5 billion is a rough number. In any given year, that can be up or down from that, just depending on how the project spend rolls out on the $9.3 billion backlog. If it's more than that, we've got balance sheet flexibility. Right now, our leverage, our debt to EBITDA is 3.9 times. Our balance sheet range that we try to maintain is 3.5-4.5 times debt to EBITDA. So we're in the middle, slightly on the lower end of that range.
So we've got flexibility there to take on more expansion. And if you look at the projects coming online that we're doing and what happens to leverage based on the $9.3 billion backlog, leverage trends down over time. And so what that's doing is that's just creating more balance sheet flexibility for us in the future to add projects. So we've already got some balance sheet flexibility to do incremental projects. We're adding more flexibility over time. Our view is for the projects that we're pursuing at the returns that we're getting, if we ever needed external capital to finance those, I mean, we could do that. And as opposed to missing an opportunity, you do a JV, you get 50%. I mean, there's lots of ways to cut that. I don't think we're anywhere near having those conversations just because of the balance sheet capacity that we do have.
And I expect that we'll continue to add to the $9.3 billion backlog given the demand in natural gas growth. On the dividend side, I think what you'll see us pursue is similar to what we've done over the last few years, where we want to grow the dividend by some amount, but keep it fairly modest given the opportunity set that we see out there. So I think it's important for those people who are owning our stock for dividends to show some growth, but at the same time, want to maintain flexibility given the current environment in which we find ourselves.
Excellent. Thank you so much, Kim.