Welcome to the MPC first quarter 2026 earnings call. My name is Julie and I will be your operator for today's call. At this time, all participants are in a listen only mode. Later, we will conduct a question-and-answer session. Press star 1 on your touchtone phone to enter the queue. Please note that this conference is being recorded. I will now turn the call over to Kristina Kazarian. Kristina, you may begin.
Welcome to Marathon Petroleum Corporation's first quarter 2026 earnings conference call. The slides that accompany this call can be found on our website at marathonpetroleum.com under the Investor tab. Joining me on the call today are Maryann Mannen, CEO, Maria Khoury, CFO, and other members of the executive team. We invite you to read the Safe Harbor statements on slide 2. We will be making forward-looking statements today. Actual results may differ. Factors that could cause actual results to differ are included there as well as in our filings with the SEC. With that, I will turn the call over to Maryann.
Good morning. Our first quarter results demonstrated the impact of our strategy and the capability of our integrated system. Operationally, we delivered. Our refineries ran at 89% utilization with nearly 100% capture. This was our strongest first quarter on process safety as well as our lowest level of unplanned downtime this decade, all while completing approximately 40% of our full-year planned maintenance activity. Given the constructive macro backdrop for the remainder of 2026, we proactively made decisions to enhance operational readiness. As a result, we are well-positioned to respond to the strong level of demand we are seeing across the system. Late in the first quarter, geopolitical events tightened global markets, disrupted trade flows, and drove global cracks higher.
While estimates vary, we believe approximately 6 million barrels per day, representing close to 6% of global refined products capacity, has come offline during the conflict in the Middle East, and the timeline for return of supply remains dependent on the extent of any damage to facilities and resumption of crude flows to those refineries. Against that backdrop, domestic demand for gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel remained strong, with exports providing incremental upside. We are largely insulated from global crude supply disruptions given our crude sourcing comes mainly from the U.S. and Canada. Combined with the depth and sophistication of our highly integrated value chains, we are well-positioned to optimize through volatility. This market environment underscores the strength of our refining system, and it showed in our financial results this quarter.
We invested nearly $330 million in our refining and marketing business this quarter, with near-term projects focused on increasing jet optionality, high expected returns, clear line of sight, and disciplined deployment. We are directing capital toward advantage assets with visible demand pool and a clearly defined path to monetization. Approximately 25% of our 2026 refining value-enhancing capital is directed to our Garyville refinery. In March, we brought more than 30,000 barrels per day of incremental jet production capacity online at our Garyville refinery. This investment strengthens one of the most competitive refining assets in the world and positions us to meet growing global jet demand.
As we move into the second quarter, our El Paso yield improvement investment is expected to enhance the refinery's ability to produce specialty gasoline for the El Paso, Phoenix, and Mexico markets, reinforcing its geographic advantage and its competitive position. Our Robinson Jet flexibility investment is expected to come online in the third quarter, enabling approximately 10,000 barrels per day of incremental jet fuel production and helping to address growing regional demand. Taken together, these investments strengthen our competitive position and support our commitment to peer-leading profitability across the regions where we operate. Over the past two years, we have meaningfully expanded our international LPG trading footprint, executing delivered business across Europe, Latin America, and Asia.
Building on that momentum, through an agreement with our South Korean customer E1, we have secured long-term delivered demand for up to 40% of the volumes MPC will purchase from MPLX's new Gulf Coast fractionation facilities, which are adjacent to MPC's Galveston Bay Refinery. Construction of MPLX fractionators as well as the JV export facility progress on time and on budget and are expected to enter service in 2028 and 2029. 2026 is a year of both execution and growth for MPLX. The business is investing over $2.4 billion with multiple investments anticipated to transition from construction to cash generation in the second half of the year. Approximately 90% of that growth capital is focused on natural gas and NGL opportunities.
Against a backdrop of ongoing geopolitical uncertainty, global demand for secure and reliable energy continues to grow, with international customers increasingly turning to the United States as a preferred supplier. U.S. natural gas and NGLs offer a compelling combination of supply abundance and demand visibility driven by LNG exports, power generation, and industrial growth, supporting disciplined infrastructure investment. In the Permian Secretariat, one processing plant has entered service and is expected to ramp steadily over the next 9-12 months, increasing regional system processing capacity to 1.4 billion cubic feet per day. Building on that progress, MPLX's sour gas treating expansion, Titan, remains firmly on schedule with expectations to exit 2026 with more than 400 million cubic feet per day of treating capacity.
In the Northeast, Harmon Creek 3 remains on track for startup in the third quarter, bringing regional system processing capacity to 8.1 billion cubic feet per day. Collectively, these investments provide a clear path to distribution growth, strengthen cash flow durability for MPC, and demonstrate our leadership in capital returns. In the first quarter, we returned over $1 billion to shareholders, and today we announced an additional $5 billion share repurchase authorization, reinforcing our commitment to delivering industry-leading returns through cycle. We will execute safely, invest strategically, and generate significant cash all at the same time. With that, I'll turn it over to Maria to walk through our financial performance.
Thank you, Maryann Mannen. Our first quarter highlights reflect execution and discipline across the business. We deliver adjusted earnings per share of $1.65 and adjusted EBITDA of $2.8 billion. Refining and marketing segment adjusted EBITDA per barrel was $5.37. Cash flow from operations, excluding working capital changes, was $1.7 billion. Consistent with our capital allocation framework, we return over $1 billion to shareholders, inclusive of $750 million of share repurchases. Overall, our first quarter illustrated the strength of our financial position and our ability to manage through market dislocations and honor our commitments to shareholder returns with a payout ratio of 62%. The next slide shows the year-over-year change in adjusted EBITDA from first quarter 2025 to first quarter 2026.
It connects EBITDA to net income, providing clarity on key items, including depreciation and amortization, interest, and taxes. Adjusted EBITDA was higher year-over-year by nearly $800 million, primarily driven by our Refining and Marketing segment. Refining turnaround cost totaled $530 million in the first quarter. We safely completed roughly 40% of our full-year activity. Our full-year outlook remains unchanged at $1.35 billion. Our earnings power continues to translate from operational performance into financial results, we remain focused on what we can control through operations excellence and commercial execution. Moving to our segment results, slide 7 provides an overview of our Refining and Marketing segment, where R&M first quarter adjusted EBITDA was approximately $1.4 billion. We capitalized on a strong refining margin environment while safely executing plant maintenance.
Our refineries ran at 89% utilization, with total throughput of nearly 3 million barrels per day. Regionally, our utilization was 89% in the Gulf Coast, 88% in the MidCon, 92% in the West Coast region. A strong domestic and international demand drove increased Gulf Coast margins, resulting in an incremental $596 million of adjusted EBITDA. In the MidCon, increased margins were offset by lower volumes as well as costs that occurred during our plant maintenance activity, resulting in an adjusted EBITDA decline year-over-year. On the West Coast, we deliver an incremental $460 million of adjusted EBITDA as we capitalized on a strong market environment and had minimal plant turnaround activity. This quarter, our Los Angeles refinery ran with the benefit of the completed investments on utility systems, improving reliability and efficiency.
These improvements are expected to strengthen the sustainability of our refinery, positioning us to be one of the most competitive players in the region. In an environment where market conditions can shift quickly, a strong planning and tight operational control matters, and our teams deliver. Importantly, we're not just optimizing for the quarter. We're focused on sustaining performance through reliability, disciplined spending, and continuous improvement across our refineries. That's how we protect margins and position the business to perform across cycles. Turning to slide eight, first quarter capture was 99%. Executing on our commercial strategy and integrated logistics gives us the ability to respond dynamically, adjusting geos, optimizing feedstocks, and placing products into the highest value markets. Favorable distillate margins were a key tailwind to capture performance.
We maximized diesel and jet production to align with the market demand. As Maryann mentioned, our jet production capabilities will further expand with the Robinson Jet flexibility investment expected to come online in the third quarter. Capture was also impacted by market-driven headwinds, primarily secondary products and derivatives used to manage price volatility. Our flexibility is a meaningful advantage, and we remain confident in the durability of the remaining the Refining & Marketing segment. Slide 9 shows our Midstream segment performance for the quarter. Segment adjusted EBITDA decreased $122 million compared to the first quarter of 2025. The decrease was primarily driven by derivative losses, the absence of a non-recurring benefit in the first quarter of 2025, and the divestiture of non-core gathering and processing assets.
MPLX continues to execute its value chain growth strategy and remains a source of durable cash flow for MPC. Now, moving to our renewable diesel segment performance for the quarter on slide 10. Results were uplifted by a stronger margin environment and recognition of Clean Fuel Production tax credits from 45 C regulatory guidance. As planned, we completed a successful turnaround at Martinez. We will continue to optimize our renewal facilities, leveraging logistics and pretreatment capabilities. Slide 11 presents the elements of change in our consolidated cash position for the first quarter, underscoring the contributions from both refining and midstream and reinforcing the strength of our business model. Operating cash flow, excluding changes in working capital, was $1.7 billion.
Working capital was at $573 million use of cash for the quarter, primarily driven by inventory build, lower throughput, partially offset by higher crude pricing. During the quarter, we returned over $1 billion of capital to shareholders, executing our capital allocation priorities. At the end of the quarter, MPC had roughly $2.2 billion of consolidated cash, including MPC's cash of $645 million and MPLX cash of over $1.5 billion. In this dynamic environment, we continue to generate substantial cash that supports reinvestment in the business and returns to shareholders, central to how we create value over the long term. Turning to guidance on slide 12, we provide our 2nd quarter outlook for the refining and marketing segment. Our focus is to execute, running safely and reliably, managing cost, and staying responsive to market conditions.
With that, let me pass it back to Maryann.
Thank you, Maria. Safety and reliability are foundational to everything we do. They are ingrained in our decision-making and underpin the performance of our assets across the system. We are constructive on the outlook for U.S. refining and midstream. Structural advantages continue to support strong fundamentals and durable returns. We strive for excellence every day by leveraging our planning, commercial, and operational capabilities to optimize our fully integrated value chains. This approach allows us to remain competitive, resilient through cycles, and positioned to deliver peer-leading profitability in each region where we operate. A key differentiator for us is MPLX, which continues to enhance MPC's value creation opportunities. MPLX's advantage natural gas and NGL footprint, combined with disciplined growth, strengthens our through-cycle cash flow profile and reinforces the integrated strength of our enterprise.
MPLX expects to deliver 12.5% distribution growth for the next two years, underpinned by mid-single-digit adjusted EBITDA growth. This performance provides growing cash flow uplift to MPC and further supports our ability to deliver industry-leading capital returns. Confidence in the durability of our cash generation profile is reflected in our actions. In addition to returning significant capital this quarter, we announced an incremental $5 billion share repurchase authorization, reinforcing our commitment to lead the industry in capital returns through cycle. I'm confident in our ability to deliver improving results through our planning, commercial, and operational capabilities. With that, I'll turn the call back to Kristina.
Thanks, Maryann. As we open the call for your questions, as a courtesy to all participants, we ask that you limit yourself to one question and a follow-up. If time permits, we will re-prompt for additional questions. We'll now open the questions. Operator?
Thank you. We will now begin the question-and-answer session. If you have a question, please press star then 1 on your touch-tone phone. If you wish to be removed from the queue, please press star then 2. If you are using a speakerphone, you may need to pick up the handset first before pressing the numbers. Once again, if you have a question, please press star then 1 on your touch-tone phone. Our first question comes from Neil Mehta with Goldman Sachs. Your line is open.
Thank you very much, team. Just wanna start off on slide 12, the second quarter outlook. Maryann, the utilization guide looked very good here at 94%, but maybe you can unpack the numbers a little bit more, give a sense of your plans for each of the regions. To the extent uptime is surprising to the upside here, anything underneath the hood that would give us some sense of, you know, give us more confidence and reliability. Thank you.
Thank you, Neil, and good morning. For our second quarter guidance, you're right. As you can see, we are planning for utilization at about 94%. That comes off of a really strong turnaround in the first quarter. I mentioned in my comments that we pulled forward some of our turnarounds so that we've actually completed 40%, roughly 40% in the first quarter. We did that because obviously we had a good view on what we saw the macro to be, and I'm sure we'll talk more about that here, you know, going forward. We didn't change scope. This is not a reduction of scope at all.
This was just our intent to bring that cost forward so that we are prepared as we are running strong in the second quarter, given the demand that we're seeing. Also, you know, you hear me talk about planning and commercial execution as well. You know, we have been, as you know, for a long period of time, really leaning in on our commercial performance. You know, the team is really optimizing on ensuring that we're expanding the crack in the quarter, and then more importantly, that we are developing sustainable changes through our organizational effectiveness, through our technology use, and the commercial planning opportunities that we have as well, trading also. You'll see that come through.
If you know, look at the quarterly performance, first quarter, our capture would have exceeded 100%, had it not been for, as Maria mentioned in her comments, you know, the timing impact of derivatives all expected to, you know, unwind as we think about through the second quarter as that physical comes. Frankly, given the volatility in the market from the commodity, you know, we had headwinds coming on the secondary. From a regional perspective, you see, you know, planning around our U.S. Gulf Coast. Clearly export opportunities there continue to be strong. We can lean in on that as well. We made some changes in Garyville on expanding our jet flexibility there, having yield capability around distillates, and obviously having GBR running well.
On the West Coast, obviously, when you look at the environment there, you look at our positioning, you look at the challenges being caused in the region as a result of lack of flows into the state from the Iran conflict, you know, you can see as you look at our regional performance that we should be able to lean in very strong there. Hopefully that gives you a sense. We're really looking at our execution being sustainable. I mentioned in my comments that we had the lowest unplanned downtime in the 1st quarter, along with outstanding safety, and recognize Mike and the rest of the refining team there. It has been a core objective of this organization and they truly delivered this quarter, and I think you can expect to see that sustainable through the year.
Let me pause there, Neil, and see if I've got at your question?
No, you got at the question, Maryann, that kind of brings us to the follow-up, which is what do you do with the cash? You know, if I think about some of the comments that you made on the last quarterly call, you said you did $4.5 billion of return of capital last year, 2025. In current market conditions, you think you could be higher this year. This 1st quarter you did about $1 billion. I guess the math would imply an acceleration of return of capital through the balance of the year. Any of your perspective on the cadence at the forward curve would be great.
Yeah, sure, Neil. I would say, look, we have no change to our capital allocation priorities. You know, I mentioned we look at the strengths of the MPLX growth and the distribution that it provides to MPC. You know, this covers, you know, the $1.5 billion that we've committed to capital on the MPC side and our growing dividend. It gives us the ability to truly lead in return of capital. You see the strength of that second quarter. My guess is, you know, your view on the long term is pretty consistent with ours. We should be able to generate cash flows as a result of this market, and we would continue to see return of capital via share buyback as the vehicle to return capital to our shareholders.
Thank you. Thanks, Maryann T. Mannen.
Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question comes from Manav Gupta with UBS. Your line is open.
Good morning. I'm actually trying to get a little better handle on elevated earnings for the near term or medium term. The two aspects I'm looking at is one is global refining macro. As you mentioned, a lot of capacity is still offline, and eventually, even when it does come online, storage of products globally is depleted. My hope is that cracks will be elevated for a longer period. The other thing I also wanted to talk to you a bit about is there's a bear thesis which is floated around that as the refining crack tends to spike, there's a proportionate drop in capture. When I look at your 1Q results, your beat would not have been possible if March capture was not strong.
Can you talk a little bit about, A, refining macro among the cracks and then capturing the higher crack as it relates to your system? If you could talk a little bit about those two things.
Good morning, Manav. Thank you for the question. Maybe just our refining macro to begin with. You know, as you know, we've been saying we've been very constructive, the refining macro for a longer period of time. When you look at demand that we see over the decade continues to be strong. When we look at supply, particularly, you know, past 2026, we think there's a true balance there. Actually, demand will ultimately outpace supply. A bit of supply coming online, as you know, some of that actually in the petchem space. You know, even heading into before the Iran conflict, of course, we've been extremely constructive over the refining macro for the long term. You add the impact of the Iran conflict to that.
You know, as I mentioned, obviously, estimates vary, at least 6 million barrels offline, Middle East, China. There's another 1 million, Russia. I think you said it in your question to me, you know, it will take time, even if the straits were to be open rather immediately for global flows to normalize. I think this gives U.S. refiners, and particularly MPC, an advantage. One, as we've mentioned, we're leaning in particularly on our export capabilities, and I'll pass it to Rick here in a moment and share a little bit more about that. You know, we'll flex there when those economics are there, but we've been building capabilities there for a period of time. We source the majority of our crude, U.S. and Canada, we're largely insulated.
As you can see from our guidance for the second quarter, and frankly, we have confidence, you know, as we look throughout the year, we remain extremely constructive given the macro backdrop, long-term supply demand, and then most importantly, our commercial planning and operational excellence to be able to optimize in these crack environments. Let me pass it to Rick, and he can give you more color.
Yeah. Hi, Manav. Just a few comments. You know, when we look at this unprecedented situation and scenario we're in, you're seeing extreme volatility. I really wanna make that point because that leads to incredible capture generation if and when we execute. I think you've seen here in 1Q, and you'll see going forward, our team is extremely energized in this environment, and our ability to expand the crack was quite evident, and I think you'll continue to see that going forward. Just a few examples to give you and things I wanna leave you with, you know, mainly by product. If I start with crude, think of the theme on crude that we are utilizing our inland connectivity to buy advantage barrels versus high-price waterborne barrels that are being bid up throughout the world.
Those who have access to inland barrels are the big winner in these events, such as the 1 we're in. We more than doubled our U.S. Gulf Coast Canadian volumes in response to the rising premiums on the U.S. Gulf Coast that we've seen. In April, actually, it's gonna be a record volume of Canadian volumes for us system-wide. We've never hit volumes like we've seen now. As you know, the differentials are quite attractive, so it's a 2 win for us. Then as you maybe move a little bit more into the heartland of where we're at, we've increased Bakken volumes in the MidCon, and we're actually taking Bakken to the Pacific Northwest, which is backing out higher-cost waterborne barrels.
Even a little closer home here to Findlay, Ohio, when you look at what's in our backyard with the Utica Marcellus, we are blessed to have condensate right in our backyard, and we are running record amounts of local crudes at Canton and Catlettsburg. In addition, Manav, we purchased 5 advantage Venz cargoes in 1Q. You know, the Venz cargoes are getting a lot of press, what I would leave you with there is we would have bought more, but we had better alternatives leaning into heavy Canadian, we didn't have the need to buy any more than 5 cargoes of Venz crude. I will say the Venz crude being on the market, Manav, is quite a tailwind for us because it's putting pressure on other grades.
On the crude side, I'll leave you with, lastly, you've probably seen in print that we've purchased approximately 10 million barrels of advantaged SPR crude directly from the DOE, taking out the middleman. We are advantageously working with the DOE to run those barrels in 2Q, and we're hopeful we may even get some barrels to run in 3Q with the bid, SPR bid that came out yesterday. Moving on to products, I'll leave you with really a couple of comments that are in line with what Maryann previously mentioned. We're maxed diesel, as you would guess, and jet across our system. Boy, the Garyville project came online at the absolute perfect time for us. It's really a classic example of our strategic capital deployment to enhance our yields and our competitiveness to create capture tailwinds.
Jet was a big story for us. As you know, we're large producers of jet, not only on the Gulf Coast MidCon, but especially in L.A., Manav, where you see the ULSD to jet differentials blow out. When you look at the Jones Act waiver, we leaned into that in a big way as well. We took jet from the Gulf Coast to Alaska. We took alkylate from the Gulf Coast to L.A., we had various Jones Act waiver moves around L.A. and PNW, amongst many other moves. Maryann T. Mannen, I guess, said and mentioned exports in her prepared remarks, so I'll touch on that a bit as well. We really were creative and made some unique movements on the exportClass of trade this past quarter. We moved ULSD from LAR to Australia. First time ever we've done that.
I give the team huge kudos on creativity and capturing a market opportunity. We moved naphtha to Asia. First time we've done that. From a jet, export gas, diesel export opportunity, we continue to see strong markets, I would say especially, Manav, in Europe and in Latin America. I guess moving forward, if I were to kind of say what should you look for in 2Q, I think the tailwinds are going to be butane blending with the RVP waivers. Certainly the jet ULSD spreads that we're seeing, we continue to expect those to persist. As Maryann T. Mannen and Maria Khoury have mentioned, we are ready to run in 2Q, and we postured this quite well going into driving season. Now with the conflict remaining, we continue to be in a great spot to capture margin.
We have incredible optionality on our crude diet with our MidCon avails. The SPR barrels will be a nice shot in the arm for us as well. Lastly, Manav, maybe from a headwinds perspective, you know, we're going to watch backwardation very closely. Obviously, it is extremely steep, so we're keeping a very close eye on our inventories, making sure we don't have any more than we need. I think what you've seen, Manav, there is the prompt month keeps rolling up and rolling up. We do expect that to continue to happen as long as the conflict persists. Certainly we're going to keep our eye on the secondary products market with how cracks move and how WTI and Brent move.
Hopefully that gives you some color, Manav, maybe that more color than we had given you in the past, but I really felt like it was appropriate for me to lean into it this quarter because our commercial team really responded well.
Thank you. This was a very detailed response. I'll be quick with my follow-up. First, thank you for providing adjusted EBITDA per barrel by region. If you could talk a little bit about those additional disclosures you provided. As I understand, some part of the management compensation is also linked to these. You are trying to be top in terms of, you know, EBITDA per barrel, but now you're taking it a step further where you want to be top at the top end of the range for each specific region. Can you talk a little bit about that?
Yes, of course, Manav. Thank you. You're absolutely right. We wanted to provide incremental visibility to our regional performance. As you know, for a while we've been saying that we continue as an objective to have as a target for us to be the most competitive in every region where we operate. You're absolutely right. Our executive compensation, you know, the annual cash bonus element of that, it's a portion of that. It's about 20% actually, is focused on the delivery of being the most competitive in every region where we operate. We think this covers cost competitiveness. As Mike and his team are making decisions about turnaround and making decisions about OpEx, that plays through in our EBITDA per barrel.
Similarly, as we think about capital allocation, I mentioned, we need to have returns of 25% in order to put capital to work on the refining side. Projects like Robinson Jet, Garyville Jet, the DHT, all of those decisions should be yielding incremental returns and improving EBITDA per barrel. We think this gives you the visibility that you need to see the performance in each of those regions and have the ability to assess our planning, commercial and operational excellence as it plays through in our EBITDA. Hope that helps.
Thank you so much.
You're welcome. Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question comes from Sam Margolin with Wells Fargo. Your line is open.
Hi. Good morning. Thanks for taking the question.
Morning, Sam.
This might be an elaboration on the last answer, but your refining capital is directed to all these optimization projects and yield enhancements. I wonder if there's any commercial constraints that come with the yield benefits. It doesn't sound like there are based on the last answer, but maybe just to hammer the point home. If so, you know, how does MPLX potentially address those in the context of, you know, it seems like MPLX has an imperative to invest in the, in the gas value chain. I guess to sum it all up, you know, competition for capital across logistics, you know, with the backdrop of all these yield benefits coming to the refinery level.
Thanks, Sam. Maybe 2 parts to my answer for you. Let me focus first on MPLX. You're absolutely correct. Our capital program is targeted, as you well know, toward nat gas and NGL. It's roughly 90% of the spend in 2026 and had a similar allocation in 2025 as we invested in the Titan Northwind processing treatment as we are progressing our 2 fractionation and U.S. Gulf Coast export dock. We'll continue to allocate capital that meet our strategic objectives and optimize our ability to deliver mid-teens returns and again, continue to support our mid-single digit growth. As we move to the refining side, our target there, as I mentioned in the past, we're looking at returns in about 25%. We want yield optimization. We want cost reduction.
We wanna continue to focus on those assets that are delivering the best profitability over the long term. You often hear us say, you know, our asset portfolio for the short term and our asset portfolio for the long term. These projects have high hurdles. As you can see, when we put these to work, you look at, you know, jet at Garyville, 30,000 incremental barrels a day of jet and then again we got another one coming online in Robinson. This has flexibility as well, so that if we were to see changes in the jet pattern, we can revert back to other distillates. We think these projects give us outstanding capabilities.
Again, both of these businesses, both MPLX and MPC, have very specific mandates, strategic focus, financial hurdles, for which they need to allocate capital. I hope that helps.
Yeah, it does. This is of, you know, a follow-up within kind of this gas theme. You know, these gas exposure is very thematic. As you know, there's end market growth across across the natural gas value chain in every category. You know, the question is if whether MPC would ever wanna participate in those end markets and leverage MPLX's growing exposure into that, into that vertical.
Yeah, Sam, it's interesting. Let me give you some thoughts and then I'll pass it to Rick to give you some incremental color. You know, you hear us often talk about this concept of value chain. You know, when you look at our refining side of the house, so to speak, right? We have a natural short, so to speak. Our assets demand natural gas every single day to operate. Then you look at the flip side of that on MPLX, and you look at our exposure, we're processing, touching, if you will, over 10% of U.S. natural gas every single day and expanding that footprint. Rick and his team have a nat gas NGL organization now, and we're looking how to optimize that. You know, a focus on the U.S. Gulf Coast project that we're talking about.
As you know, we've said MPC and MPLX will have a contract, meaning MPC will take all of the product from that those two fractionators, and then Rick and his team then takes a marketing of that. As I mentioned in my prepared remarks, right? We just concluded a potential contract here for 40% of our demand with E1. We see this opportunity growing. I'm gonna pass it to Rick, and he can give you a little more color on how we're thinking through that.
Yes, Sam. I think Maryann said it very well. Think of on the R&M side, we have a massive nat gas short. As you know, with the substantial footprint we have through MPLX, with our pipeline commitments and the equity they have in pipelines, that is absolutely complementary to our U.S. Gulf Coast refineries, especially. We look to parlay those positions into advantageous nat gas for our refineries, especially along the U.S. Gulf Coast. I'll just give you another little nugget. On the power side, we have several cogens across our footprint that we participate in those markets commercially, and they supply us certainly with power for our refining assets. There are opportunities and synergies there that we're really pressing into. A lot of opportunity in this space, Sam.
Great. Thank you so much.
Thank you, Sam.
Thank you. Our next question comes from Doug Leggate with Wolfe Research. Your line is open.
Hey, good morning, everyone. Thanks for having me on.
Good morning.
Maryann, Good morning. I think we got a very thorough answer on capture. It's never enough. Sorry. I wonder if I could just ask a really simple characterization question. You've got a target of 100% capture. Your trading business has obviously had a big impact, especially in this kind of market. There's a lot of moving parts, and particularly on secondary products, and you already talked about physical crude markets and how you're swinging your portfolio. My simple question is this: If we look forward at the extraordinary indicator margins and acknowledge there's gonna be some offsets, do you believe you can sustain your 100% target in this extraordinary environment? That's my first question.
My second question is really more, I understand your comments about the macro, all the rest of it. I think none of us expected the situation we have currently. My question is, do you see this as a windfall as we sit here currently? In which case, how does that inform the pacing or the decisions you make on Neil's question about cash returns? My point is simply this. A couple weeks ago, the foreign minister of Iran turned around and said the Strait of Hormuz is reopened. Oil prices fell $17 that day, everything got hit pretty hard. If you mistime buybacks at this point in the cycle, the risk is, you know, a lot of that windfall cash flow goes away with a decline in the share price. My question is, how does that factor into your thinking?
The first on capture and the second on the pacing of your cash returns? Thanks.
Yeah, of course, Doug. Sure. On capture, first and foremost, you know, we have been working on our commercial performance for a period of time. The objective for the commercial team, as you know, in any quarter, is really to expand the crack regardless of the market that we're given. Every quarter, the macro, they are diligently working to expand that crack and address all issues in the prompt. At the same time, the commercial team is working on sustainable changes for the long term. Right, to your point, can we continue to say capture should be improving period over period? Organizational changes, Rick D. Hessling has talked about those in the past, our access to markets outside of the U.S. so that we've got, you know, if you will, round the clock coverage. We're using other digital and other technology capabilities.
We've got a planning organization now that is critical to identifying where those opportunities exist in the organization so that both commercial and Mike's team operationally can execute those and deliver the incremental value, so creating sustainable as well. If we look at just the first quarter alone, our capture would have been in excess of 100% this quarter, if not for 2 things that you mentioned. 1, secondaries, and 2, the impact for derivatives. You know, secondaries is not necessarily something that we've got complete control over. As that commodity volatility moves rapidly up or down, our ability to capture or hold pricing on the way down or respond to pricing on a rapid rise is a challenge, and we saw headwinds this quarter coming from that secondary market. Derivatives. You know, derivatives are a normal and ordinary course through our risk lens.
We use hedges to protect a certain portion of our inventory, and that's a normal ordinary course, and frankly, this quarter was absolutely no different. What was different was the volatility in the commodity. The timing of that, meaning when that physical barrel was actually received, be it first quarter or second quarter, also had a headwind. That'll unwind in the second quarter, but that had an impact on our capture headwinds in the quarter. I guess to try to answer your question, there are things that we cannot control, as you well know, and that volatility will create variability. We even try to look at tight correlations so that we can actually do some projections ourselves.
The things that we can control, the quarterly, addressing the prompt market and responding and the long-term sustainability, we believe we have more opportunity to deliver incremental performance on an EBITDA per barrel across our regions, Doug. I hope that answers the question.
Yeah, it's very clear. Thank you, Maryann. maybe on the windfall question, allocation of cash.
Certainly. On the windfall question, as you know, our capital allocation hasn't changed. We continue to believe that MPLX supporting our capital plan and covering the distribution gives us the ability to lead in capital return. That should not change. Obviously, as the volatility persists, we will watch our balance sheet. We will be very disciplined in the manner in which we allocate capital, both through our capital return as well as across the system when we're thinking about projects, et cetera. Overall, our return to capital, if you will, philosophy hasn't changed.
I think that's clear. Maybe just to clarify, would you pace the share buyback or is it ratable?
We try to do our very best across the system to make the best decisions that we can and be as disciplined as we can when we are returning capital, Doug.
Very diplomatic answer. Thanks, Maryann.
You're welcome, Doug.
Thank you. Thank you. Our next question comes from Theresa Chen with Barclays. Your line is open.
Hi there. Given the upside volatility in flat prices that we've seen, would love to get an update on your demand observations and outlook across the products within your footprint. Are there any regions or areas that you're seeing any resistance as far as demand goes? Any areas where we're testing that point of inflection for demand elasticity?
Hey, Theresa, it's Rick. I would say resilient is the word I would leave you with. We continue to see resilient demand for both gas and diesel across MidCon, Gulf Coast, and the West Coast. One ironic piece is even when you look at the differing prices throughout the United States, on the West Coast, we've actually seen a small increase in our wholesale class of trade with other players exiting that market. We've seen the benefit of that, and we're seeing new markets for exports such as diesel to Australia, as I mentioned earlier. I would say from a jet perspective, we are not seeing any decline in the jet demand. We see strong jet demand in L.A., Gulf Coast, and MidCon Chicago area. Across the board, we're not seeing any impacts yet, Theresa.
Thank you. Turning to the LPG export project, great to see the commercialization progress there, in terms of getting a third-party offtake, for that facility. I'm curious as far as your plans for the remaining 60%, is the strategy or plan that you will farm that out to a offtaker to, like, a consumer on the other end? Are you planning to keep a certain portion of that capacity for your own marketing purposes? Beyond the initial 200,000 barrels per day, given the call on U.S. resources and export infrastructure in general at large and this growing source of volumes from a supply push perspective from the producing basins, what are your thoughts on incremental phases of expansion on that facility?
Yes. Maybe I'll start with that, Theresa Chen. When you look at our strategy to continue to move LPG through our docks, E1 Corporation, as Maryann Mannen stated in her opening remarks, that's just the start. That's a, that's a delivered barrel that will go to South Korea. We are looking at other Asian and other Asian and European markets, African markets. Our ultimate plan is to contract up a significant portion more of those barrels before the project goes live in 2028 with frac one. You'll see us lock down more volumes. We're leaning into both the delivered and FOB option. You've heard me say this a lot over the years. We're gonna look to what we believe is the best economic signal.
Right now, we believe that's delivered with our expertise and with the VLGCs that we have on time charter and those that we will procure. I would say it'll be a combination of FOB delivered, and then we'll leave some to the spot market just to make sure we're able to take advantage of volatile markets when those fracs come online, which we expect to be in our favor with the Qatar LNG facility going down as well as the other projects around the world being delayed. We believe the timing of our asset coming online couldn't be better.
Theresa, it's Maryann. You know, to the first part of your question, maybe just around the potential beyond that. You know, when we announced this project, we did say that we saw this as a growth platform. We know we've been saying frac 1 and frac 2, so 1 that comes online in 28 and 2029. We've got a high degree of confidence, right, that both of those fracs will be full. We'll continue to evaluate that opportunity, but you certainly, you know, this is a growth platform for us.
Thank you very much.
You're welcome, Theresa.
Thank you. Our next question comes from Jason Gabelman with TD Cowen. Your line is open.
Yeah, hey, thanks for taking my questions. I wanted to start on what you're seeing kind of in the inland markets in West Coast and kind of we've seen a bit of inverse performance there. Inland was, I'd say, you know, weaker than normal seasonality in 1Q. What do you think drove that? Do you see that kind of reversing back to normal seasonality as we move to 2Q? Then kind of the inverse for the West Coast, which was very strong for 1Q, but has been volatile since 2Q started.
Yeah. Hi, Jason. It's Rick. I will start with the MidCon and tell you in Q1, the MidCon was really performed exactly how we thought it would perform, and that's in line with seasonal trends. It was a tough January and February, that's not to be unexpected. As we leaned into March though, we saw the MidCon start to widen out. As we look at the MidCon today, it is absolutely the best market we have right now within our system. We're seeing extreme tightness on gas and diesel inventories. EIA stats went from length on inventory in January and February to abnormally low levels now. Really what's causing this is you have some turnaround, us included, at locations such as Robinson.
Really what's driving this, Jason Gabelman, is we're seeing good demand, and you're seeing a lot of unplanned maintenance in the region. The marker as we look today is very strong because of the supply-demand inequalities that exist in the market. I would also say that everyone's in max diesel mode as you well know, to meet the demand signal. We're seeing strong ag demand, which is positive, but that has led to tightness now on gas inventories as we head into driving season. We feel very good about where we're at from a MidCon perspective and where we're headed as we enter into driving season. On the West Coast, I will tell you know, you signaled a bit that it's fallen off a bit, but it has, but it's still at very robust cracks.
We believe that will continue to persist because the West Coast is structurally short, as you know from a refining perspective, and the volumes coming over from Asia, the import volumes coming over from Asia have been significantly reduced due to all of the refining issues that Maryann mentioned in her prepared remarks. We continue to feel very confident that the West Coast will stay in a good zip code area that it is generally in at this ten seconds as well.
Got it. Thanks. That helps color. My follow-up is on the intercompany contracts between MPC and MPLX. I think over the next 2 years you'll see a number of those contracts come up for renewal. Should we expect those contracts to get renewed at kind of similar terms as what they're currently at? Can you just talk through the process that you go through in renewing those contracts? If I could just sneak 1 last one in, for any avoidance of doubt, can you provide the derivative impact that you've alluded to a few times that you incurred for 1Q?
Sure, Jason, it's Maryann, and then I'll pass it to Maria to give you the specifics on the derivatives in the quarter. On the MPLX MPC contracts, absolutely, you should expect us to renew those contracts. You know, we typically, as we get within an 18-month period, you know, we'll get those renewed. But we have all intentions of those contracts being renewed. As you know, the relationship between MPC and MPLX continues to be extremely important when we look at the strategic focus of both of those organizations, and if you will, the inextricable relationship, so to speak, that we have, and the ability, frankly, for us to use that overall integrated system, it's critically important. Yes, you should expect that those contracts will get renewed.
On the derivative side, I'll pass it to Maria in a moment, but let me just, you know, comment again. Our derivative program in the first quarter is no different than any quarter that we have ever executed. We use derivatives to cover a portion of those inventories to protect physical to protect the price, obviously. You know, the challenge in this quarter is just the extreme volatility of the commodity. I mean, you can even go back and look at, you know, the crisis when Russia and Ukraine we would have seen similar except the change in volatility or the change in the commodity wasn't as severe. A portion of that physical came through in the first quarter, the balance of that, or largely balance of that we would expect to unwind.
Let me pass it to Maria and she can give you a little more color.
Hello, Jason. From a derivative perspective, in the first quarter, we had about $500 million of unrealized losses. If you think about midstream was about $63 million. Then the impact on margin calls to working capital was about $340 million overall use of cash.
Hope that helps, Jason.
That's very helpful.
Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question comes from Joe Laetsch with Morgan Stanley. Your line is open.
Hey, good morning, team. Thanks for taking my questions. I wanted to start on the renewable fuel. Good morning. I wanted to start on the renewable fuel side. With the rally in RINs, I suspect we'll see results continue to improve in that business. Can you just talk about how you're thinking about the path for D4 RINs and margins broadly here and the outlook for the renewable diesel segment? I know it's a smaller piece of the business, but it could flip to a tailwind here. Thank you.
Yep. I'm gonna have Maria give you that color, Joe. Thanks.
Thanks, Joe Laetsch. As you noted, the macro environment is improving with the higher RINs and also higher diesel values. Most importantly for us is really focusing on what we control. You just saw that we completed our first major turnaround in the Martinez facility in the first quarter, and we're ready to run here in the second quarter, and we are looking to have utilization levels in the second quarter of low 90%. That's really where we are gonna anchor ourselves for performing in the second quarter in this environment.
Thanks. That's helpful. Then I wanted to follow up on some of the opening comments on refining and utilization in particular. First quarter came in 89% above the 85% guidance level. Can you just talk to some of the drivers of the performance during the quarter? Was that more efficient turnarounds or higher uptime when the assets were running? I think you also mentioned lowest unplanned downtime, which was probably a factor here as well. Thank you.
Yeah, Joe, of course. Thank you. I think you did a nice job of answering the question. Our lost capacity, if you will, or unplanned downtime was at our lowest in a long period of time, and that clearly had a benefit over our operations. I'm actually going to ask Mike to give you a little bit more color. He and his refining team have been working diligently on operational effectiveness and excellence, and ensuring their reliability. I'd like to have him give you a little bit more color on what happened in the quarter.
Sure. Thanks, Maryann. The biggest thing that we've been working on for, from a utilization standpoint or reliability and obviously reducing our LSIP is primarily around reliability projects. We had talked about some that we had pulled forward into the first quarter. In addition to that, we have a continued reliability focus program along with human reliability and upskilling our operations. The main focus for us around utilization has also been targeting just basic, the basic operation steps, making sure we are the best operator. The first quarter, that's been our primary, I guess, changes that we're making. In the second quarter, we're just continuing on with that as we go through the additional growth projects that we have and our reliability projects.
That's really been target, the biggest target for our utilization numbers.
Great. Thank you, all.
You're welcome, Joe.
Thank you.
All right.
Our last question.
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