All right, we're very privileged today to have the ONEOK team here. So, the former prince of the Bakken now has merged with Magellan, and this is the first conference since the integration. And we have Walt Hulse, CFO, Sheridan Swords, EVP Commercial Liquids, Natural Gas Processing, and Danilo Juvane from the Bank of America investment grade side. So, thanks for being here, and maybe we can start out with just broadly, maybe give us a high-level overview of the new business now that you have the legacy Bakken integrated NGL system with the Magellan refined product system.
Great. Well, we're really excited about the combination. It completes our value chain, does give us some diversity away from the Bakken. We love the Bakken, and it has been very good to us and will continue to be very good to us for a long, long time. But getting our operations a little bit more diverse, we thought made some sense. The Magellan business brings us significant free cash flow that we can reinvest in the business. But even more than that, the way our system and their system lay on top of each other, the opportunity set from a commercial synergy standpoint, just seems to be getting better and better, and I'm sure you'll ask Sheridan about that a little bit later.
But we are very pleased, and the Magellan team has come over energized and ready to help us find those synergies. So, we're getting after it already.
Great. And how are the integration efforts going so far? And maybe the key focus areas that you're looking at in terms of priority?
Sure. Well, many of you know Kevin Burdick, who's one of our other executive vice presidents, used to be chief commercial officer. We have put Kevin in charge of the integration. He's chief enterprise integration something. It's a long title. But Kevin has got a really interesting background because he has a background in IT before he got into commercial, spent a little time in op, so he knows the business inside and out. He has put together a very structured synergy approach. We've identified over 250 specific synergy items. There's an owner, at least one owner, of each of those. We've built a tracking system so that we'll be able to report out to, first the board, and then ultimately, in a summarized fashion, to investors, our progress on those synergies.
We continue to see most of those on the commercial side. There's obviously cost synergies that will fall to the bottom line very quickly. But at the end of the day, this is really driven on the commercial synergies. So, you know, we had put out some numbers at the time of the merger. We are very comfortable at the high end of what we had put out at the time that we announced the merger back in May. So,
So maybe we can touch on those commercial synergy numbers, because we have a very broad range, right? Maybe $200 million-$700 million on the high side. And then, on your last quarter call, it seemed like you have a bunch of opportunities that could maybe be on top of that. Maybe I'm putting words in your mouth, but when we think about the range there and the $700 million at the top end, how confident are you on achieving the higher end? And then how would you think about timing, when you kind of put the synergies in there, you said maybe intermediate to longer term. So when would we realize those?
All right. Well, let me first kinda clarify a little bit. When we announced the transaction, we said $200 million-$400 million, and when I said that, we're very confident, I mean, at the higher end of that $400 million. We have identified opportunities north of $700 million. You know, when we originally announced the transaction, we said that it would be a $100-ish of cost synergies, and the balance would be commercial. I think we're still gonna be in that range. We'll probably beat that $100 number from a cost synergy standpoint. We are already seeing those come to pass. When we announce our guidance, we'll be able to already report on some of the cost synergies that are already falling to the bottom line. But we saw it in the October financials.
Some of those just are hitting right away. Every time we have an insurance policy roll-off, we combine and get significant, as an example of one of the, you know, kind of, low-hanging fruit that's out there. But the exciting part is really the commercial side, and, I'll let Sheridan get into some specifics, but I think the key to it is that, again, there are some that are achievable right away. The vast majority are within our control. We don't need a third party to participate, which is excellent. As I said, that we've put in most of the commercial synergies, a team together to hold them accountable for achieving those. Some of them we expect to be delivering by year end, year end.
Those obviously have been 0 or minute capital associated with them, or we wouldn't have been able to achieve them so far. And then as we go in, there will be some with modest capital, but I think you're gonna see a real benefit in the first year, and then that will over the next three years, we should be able to get to our number to achieve it. Sheridan, why don't you get into a little bit more specifics?
Yeah, I'll say that, you know, and Walt touched on it earlier, that since we've got the two companies together, our list of opportunities or synergies commercially has really expanded. And what we've had to been able to do is prioritize and sit there and go, "How—which ones are we gonna work on? How are we gonna prioritize?" And then we work through that, and we'll keep going. And a lot of those have been, as he said, "Hey, how quick can we get it online? How quick can we start realizing it? and how much capital would we have to be in there?" And the capital really kind of gives your timeline. You know, if you have to spend a little bit more capital. All of them very, very low capital.
Most of them, not all of them, will fit inside of our routine growth. But as I've talked before, you know, we've kind of come in with the, you know, the three V's, that we've tried to get everybody batching, blending, and bundling. It's where we kind of categorize our synergies we have in there. And as like I explained before a little bit, you know, like, if you think about a batching, you can put refined products on an NGL line, put it right in there, have a NGL batch in between refined product batches, and you can do the same thing with refined products on an NGL line. And one example that we've thrown out there is that there is, at times, disparity between the Gulf Coast and the Mid-Continent on refined products.
So we can use the Sterling system, or use the Sterling system, to be able to batch products in between those two market centers. We can open up that pipe, and because of the Medford and moving Medford down to Mont Belvieu, we have some capacity on that pipe, so we really can leverage as well. The other thing that we have, you think about blending and the whole blending operations that Magellan had. With us having a large amount of normal butane available and readily being put on those pipes, we can make sure when there's blending opportunities that Magellan had been using and had been enjoying in the past, we can make sure that butane is there, 'cause they're not capturing it all. Sometimes they can't get it there at the right time, and also we can get it there cheaper.
Magellan had been using a lot of trucks to get the butane in the right location. By batching it on their pipeline, we can put it into the right location at a fraction of the cost. Typically, it could be as much as $0.20 a gallon on average for the logistics cost. We will significantly reduce that as well. And then, when you think about bundling, especially when you brought Magellan in, we have 4 business segments. We have very large integrated energy companies that touch each one of those business segments. They are a customer of each one of our business segments, and some of them substantial customers in each one of those business segments.
So now as they have more volume, different areas coming up with more opportunities that they're out there looking for people to bid on, we have much more leverage that we can go in there and give a little value in one area to get to sweeten the pot or make us look different in other areas. So we've been able to do this in our systems we have today between gathering and processing and NGLs, or even with our NGL network being in multiple basins, where we can look across the whole value chain and bring more value to our customers, which puts us in a better light than the competition that can't do that.
Yeah, one thing I would just add to that, and then I'm gonna kick it back to Sheridan to give you an example, but when it comes to the batching, we talk about being able to put NG or refined products in our NGL pipes. I wanna clarify that when we say that, what we're saying is that we can put them on our purity pipes. And we have two different kinds of pipes in our NGL system. We have our raw feed pipes, which are taking the product from the Bakken or the Mid-Continent or the Permians. We aren't gonna use those for refined products.
But then we have our purity pipes that move product from the Mid-Continent south and from the Mid-Continent up our north system, up towards Chicago and Minneapolis and the like, and that's one of the parts that sits right on top of Magellan. But why don't you give them the gasoline?
Okay.
butane example, 'cause it lets people see it tangible.
So when we talk about batching, when you batch on a refined products on an NGL pipeline or refined products on a refined pipeline, all you're doing is if you put gasoline in, you put a bunch of gasoline into the pipeline, bunch of gas, and then when you switch to a different product, say you want to go to diesel, you just put diesel right behind it. And we do the same thing on NGLs. So if we're running propane, then we can put normal butane right behind it and then put propane behind it again. And the areas where they mix, those components, those products, you can have a little bit of normal butane and propane, you can have a little propane and normal butane.
But what we can do on a gasoline, if you're moving gasoline, we can just stop the gasoline batch, put a batch of normal butane in there, and keep moving on and moving up the pipeline. And where those two intersect a little bit, you're putting butane into gasoline, which is allowed. So we're gonna do... So that's why we all of a sudden have expanded our whole network. So you got to think about it in the purity NGL pipelines, you know, we talk about Sterling and the north system, and Magellan's refined products pipelines, they now become refined product and purity NGL lines. So you just expanded your whole network of pipelines, that you can move products throughout the Mid-Con, throughout the mid part of the United States.
So it opens up a great amount of additional areas that we can market our products, 'cause now we have pipelines, the easiest and most cheapest way to move products into these areas. So it really expanded our network on both sides.
So we talked about butane blending. The costs are definitely going down from you self-sourcing that. Historically, Magellan has had a nice-sized business in the Mid-Con. Are you looking to expand that in other regions? More scale in the Mid-Con? How would you think about sizing the butane blending business at this point?
So I would say a little bit, if you think about in the Mid-Con, you know, it's driven a lot by demand. And the demand fairly steady in the Mid-Continent right now. When I think about the Mid-Continent on blending, what we can do is make sure by batching that product on their systems, that we can make sure butane's at the terminals when the opportunity to blend is there. And it's a lot easier to have to be able to move it up a pipeline and have it ready than try to schedule trucks to be in there at the right time going forward. So you're really capturing that last little bit and dropping cost.
We will look for other areas as well, that now that we can get butane at a cheaper cost to others, it opens up more opportunities for blending that may have been uneconomical before because the cost to get the butane there was much higher.
Got it. And I think maybe the most misunderstood portion of this is the bundling, where I know you have producers in the Bakken, producers in the Permian. You can offer them multiple services, different basins, different products. Can you maybe provide just some clarity on, let's say, where you could bundle refined products in NGLs, crude NGLs, just the different combinations and not specifically naming anybody, but the theory behind it?
Sure, Ed, no problem. So you think about refined product in NGLs. Today, the NGL marketing team is selling normal butane, isobutane, and natural gasoline to refiners. So we are delivering into refiners, where our Nor system, we talked about in the Upper Midwest, a lot of the Upper Midwest refiners are our customers. Those same refiners are taking refined products out of those refineries on the Magellan system and coming out of there as well.
So all of a sudden now, when you're going there and you're competing to get them to move refined products on your system, you also have this NGL delivered there as well, that you can go in there and, "Hey, if I give you a little bit better deal on the NGLs, can we do something on the refined products?" Where you both win, you both make more money on that by kind of bundling the two services together. And then you use that same concept when you think about NGLs and crude, where really, when you think about our natural gas gathering and processing, we have people talking to people at the wellhead today trying to gather their natural gas to go through our G&P systems.
So when they're talking to them about that, they'll talk about, we can handle your crude, we can move that as well. It's the same thing. You're going, "If I give you this kind of deal on the G&P, how does that look like on the crude?" You know? And as they look across both segments, you're not just competing with someone heads-up on the crude. You have this other touch point that you can enhance your position and where you make more money, and then the producer makes more money and more easier, and they have one person to deal with instead of multiple people.
What was interesting about that is when we announced the transaction, and we couldn't, you know, we weren't in a position yet, because of the FTC, to actually be talking about each other's businesses with customers yet. Our phone was, we were getting inbound calls from producers, who saw opportunities to give us something on the crude side in exchange for. And, you know, we touched some of these folks in the Bakken and the Powder and the Mid-Continent and in the Permian. So there's, you know, they're looking at their overall business holistically, and we can provide solutions all the way through. And now we can even, we can even provide solutions downstream with the docks and the distribution off the Magellan system on the other end of the system.
Great. I want Dan to have some dialogue here, so maybe you can turn to the capital allocation, and we can turn back to the Permian a little bit later.
Perfect. Thanks, Neil. Thank you again for allowing us to host you at this conference. With the deal that that's now closed, and given only your recent commentary, as well as the fact that you guys are ahead on your deleveraging schedule, that's now your confidence in your 2024 outlook, how are you now thinking about capital allocation? In the past, you said you have a $500 million maturity that you plan to pay down. Do you still need to pay that down? Then how are you thinking of and growth versus share buybacks, and when do you start really leaning into that?
Yeah, well, you know, we're on our trajectory to get where we want to. That 2024 maturity is only $500 million.
Yep.
So, you know, we'll deal with it, when it comes about. That, given the size of the balance sheet, isn't gonna move the needle-
Yep
... dramatically one way or the other. So we'll deal with that depending on where the market is, whether we just pay it off with cash. Clearly, as we go into 2024, the way things are setting up, the strength of the core businesses across all the businesses and then the synergies on top, our flexibility around capital allocation has improved. You know, we were trending prior to the announcement of the transaction to a point where we would've had we not been successful with the transaction, been in a position to put forth a more specific strategy. So this set us back maybe a year before we were able to do that.
But we think going in with this guidance, that we'll be in a position to lay out, you know, our views on how we'll think about that for the years to come, going forward, because our flexibility is definitely getting there quicker than we thought. And one that—you know, at the end of the day, if Sheridan's got a 3 or 4 times project that we can go do, that's where we want to use our capital, because if we can make, you know, 33%-25% return on investment, we're gonna do that first. But we obviously are gonna look at all the alternatives. And, you know, I think that the key as we think about those alternatives is we want to maintain flexibility and be able to take care of opportunities in the future.
... Great. And then as a larger scale company with added fee-based earnings, how has your target leverage changed? And what is a good long-term marker going forward? I think when you first announced this transaction, you said 3.5x by 2026, unless there was some capital projects which could push that to 2027. Has that changed at all, and is that still kind of the long-term leverage target we should be using?
Yeah, I think that we think that 3.5-ish is the right area to be in. We're not worried if we go lower than that. You know, if the nature of the business, you know, that will be a good thing because earnings will be coming in. So if we trend a little bit lower, that's fine. If we end up seeing opportunities and end up a little bit above that, that's fine. You know, when we announced the transaction and put that 3.5x target out there, that was where the rating agencies were kind of holding us, as where they wanted us to be. Moody's has subsequently come out and said to maintain our current rating, we need to consistently be below 4x.
I don't think that's changed our view of 3.5 times, but it does demonstrate that this asset mixed together and the scale that we have now does give us flexibility. And the other thing I think is important, if you think back to the company in 2015, we were about $1.5 billion of EBITDA. You know, as we go into 2024, we're going to be in that $6 billion-ish area, give or take. So if we talk about internal leverage, we're talking about a whole lot of money. We're talking about $6 million. And so that difference between 3.5 and 4 today gives us the ability to make very meaningful investments without really adjusting that leverage.
Can I just follow up with that Moody's four times? I'm guessing that would mean for the right transaction, you would go above that if you had a path below that very quickly, as you did with Magellan. But just in the normal course of business, you wouldn't be comfortable with leverage starting to slip above, you know, four, four times, like, just from projects coming online.
Yeah. I mean, I think our normal course of business is we want to, we want to manage it around 3.5 times.
Yeah.
You know, that was just a marker that Moody's put out there. That doesn't change what our view is of where the right leverage. But I do think that it demonstrates that the market isn't telling us that we need to push towards 3x. With the mix of business, we have very little direct commodity exposure. You know, I think we're very comfortable in and around 3.5x.
Sorry, I think I asked the question the wrong way. Basically, that's the marker for the mid-BBB ratings.
Mm-hmm.
Would we expect you to defend the mid BBB ratings if you got into that scenario?
If we saw an opportunity that took us up towards 4 or around that, we would manage it back towards 3.
Sorry, I asked it wrong the first time. I'll pass it back to you.
But we got to find that opportunity.
Yeah.
Right now, as we sit here, you know, that's just a hypothetical.
Understood.
The reason I gave you the scale is if you think about the opportunity set that's out there today, there aren't many things out there that could actually even push us above four. So opportunity set probably would keep us in that sub four range.
Gotcha. Got it.
So maybe we can talk about just the, I guess, not standalone ONEOK business, but predecessor ONEOK business and a couple of fundamental items. So Sheridan, everyone's been calling for the end of the Bakken, but you continually outperform with GORs and GPMs. What do you see as the, you know, volume outlook for the basin on the rich natural gas side, and where do you think people are wrong that kind of look at just where they think oil inventory for the Bakken is, in the near term?
So, so what I'd say, I think that on the gas side, where people have missed it, and even though we talked to the producers have missed it, is on the GOR. That has gone... meet their expectations every time, and every time we talk to them, in fact, they're even saying now: "We don't know where it's going to head to. We have some ideas, but we've always undershot that. It's always been much over." So we've seen a lot of growth on the gas just because of GOR. But if you think about right now, we have enough rigs in the Bakken to be able to grow the crude production that's coming out today. And we are seeing, we have different levels of producers out there.
Some are going to be much more steady on their crude production to slightly up, and they're going to just let that go for a long period of time, and the GORs will bring us growth on the gas side of that. Then we have some other producers out there, a little more aggressive, and they're drilling a little bit faster on that, so we're going to see some oil growth continue to grow forward. We continue to see a long life of, growth in the Bakken on the gas side of it. We don't see that really coming off anytime soon. We think, we're not going to see the growth that we've seen in the past, but we're not going to see a decline for a long period of time.
Then how, how are the GPMs trending in terms of NGL content?
Well, you got to look at it. It's all over. Well, in a relative amount, it depends on what part of the Bakken that you're in. Certain areas are a little bit more than others. It's all what I would call relatively very rich type, but sometimes you may have an area that hits 12 GPM and sometimes 10 GPM in there. Just kind of depends on the area that you're in, not necessarily have a wide swing from you. Like you would see more in the Mid-Continent. You could see a 3-10 swing on that, but that's depending on what different zones they're in. They're all drilling the Bakken and the Three Forks here, so it's somewhat stable around the 10-12.
Okay. So, your argument is with Bakken crude production, you're going to see rich gas growth for a long time. Is that fair?
That is very fair.
Okay.
And right now, we're growing the crude production, so it would even be more than that.
... Got it. And, obviously, the topic that has come up in the 3Q earnings season has been the Permian NGL pipes announced, and your friends at Enterprise will be up here later today with their Bahia expansion. So you guys don't have the GPM system in the Permian, and you've been clear that that's something you haven't historically focused on, but you're expanding West Tex very low cost to over 700,000 barrels per day. So kind of, let's say, 500,000 barrels per day of increased system capacity. How do you plan to fill that without a GPM system, and what's the strategy there?
Well, the first thing I'd say we're planning to fill it is, as you mentioned, that it's a low cost. We think it's the lowest cost option out of there right now. So we can provide a low-cost option to the producers out there. Also, in the Permian is a little bit different than some of the other areas that a lot of producers have taken take-in-kind rights out of plants, which means that the producer controls the liquids and the gas, not necessarily the processor. So we have a lot of producers that, as Walt mentioned earlier, that we're dealing with in the Bakken, we're dealing with in the Powder River, we're dealing with in the Mid-Continent, and we're dealing with in the Permian. So as we talked about that bundling concept with the refined products, crude and NGLs, we also have that by basin in the NGLs.
We're sitting there talking to them about what can we do for them in the Bakken or the Powder River to bring volume onto our system in West Texas. And we've been doing that for a period of time. When we first bought the West Texas system in 2014, it was moving out of the Permian about 100,000 barrels a day. Today, we're moving 300,000 barrels a day. So in, you know, nine years, we've tripled that capacity. So we've been we've shown that we can compete without having a GPM presence. Now, we may continue to look and see if that's something we want to get into, but right now it has not hindered us being able to put liquids on our pipeline.
And we've, on our expansion, as I've said, we've already contracted long-term contracts with producers and processors in the Permian that are gonna give us an acceptable, nice return on this project with plenty of extra capacity that has not been contracted yet.
You know, we look at GPM basically as a capital allocation. You know, we have had so many opportunities for high return projects that GPM in the Permian just doesn't have the returns that's been able to compete within our overall opportunity set. You know, as we look into the future, you know, we'll continue to evaluate that. But, the low-hanging fruit that we have from these commercial synergies and the ability to, to have very high return on investment has always led us to, you know, especially since he's been so successful competing for those NGLs.
So if I could ask a follow-up to both of you on that. So maybe one of the bundling concepts that hasn't been appreciated, and tell me if I'm putting words in your mouth, is that you have a large producer that has in-kind rights in the Bakken, and now you can offer them that, you know, a bundled deal to take away their NGL, both in the Permian and the Bakken. Is that fair?
That's very fair.
Okay.
Or the Powder River, or any other place that we touch these large producers.
Yeah, but it's a little bit flipped in that most of those in-kind rights are in the Permian.
Right.
So it's not as common, it's very seldomly the case in the Bakken, because we really are the only option out of the Bakken.
Right.
But in the Permian, where they have a lot more competition and the producers, you know, you've got a lot of large producers that wanna control those commodities, take-in-kind rights is very, you know, very common. You saw a big difference between Navitas and Lucid. One didn't have a lot of take-in-kind rights, the other had significant take-in-kind rights, and, you know, the valuation was adjusted accordingly.
And with WestEx, geographically, can you touch pretty much anywhere in the Midland and the Delaware, or are you focusing more on one of the basins versus the other? Can the pipe kind of hit anywhere in the Permian that the producer would want to move the barrels out the processing plant?
Well, the Permian is very big, and we don't have pipes to go all throughout that, but we do have an extensive gathering system throughout the Midland and the Delaware. It just depends on exactly where it is. It's really dependent on when a new plant comes on, how close you are versus the competition, and how you balance that coming in. But we have—you know, when we first bought the West Texas Pipeline from Chevron, we laid a big line out to the Delaware. So we have an artery out to the Delaware that we can leverage into the Delaware, and they had an extensive gathering in the Mid-Continent as well. So we've enhanced our gathering as we went from 100 to 300.
We've expanded that, but now we're just gonna finish up the, the main line coming out of there.
And Walt, when you say that GPM can't necessarily compete in the STACK, what about when you think about all the downstream benefits? So maybe filling up latent capacity with T&F, and then ultimately, if you went to the export business, and if you think about it as the engine that's giving you the volumes that give you growth, would you look at it as kind of like a standalone margin or capital allocation decision? Or could you look at it as, "Hey, this is really gonna allow us to increase frack capacity and get more maybe into the export game longer term?
Yeah. You know, I think what I said was that historically, it hasn't, it hasn't met, you know, given the, given the opportunities that we had and the configuration we've had. Magellan has obviously changed that configuration, and so we have more to evaluate when we think about that. So that'll all go into the mix, and we'll look at every opportunity, you know, going forward with the, the full opportunity set that we have today. There is no doubt that we have more opportunities today than we did prior to Magellan.
And just to round that out, the present value of the tax benefits that you adjusted for the transaction, that's lower than the full amount you could completely utilize, right? So there are financial transactions you can make to fully utilize the NGLs?
Well-
NOLs, sorry.
It's interesting because, and if you, if you kind of read the nuances in our press release, we actually said that we expected to achieve greater than the 1.5. And it's not financial transactions, it's just earnings. The reason that was the aggregate amount of the potential savings is $3 billion. And the reason that we were only getting the net present value of that is that in 2027, unless we have a significant change, we would get tripped up by the Alternative Minimum Tax. We aren't in that, we won't be, but in 2027, we would be, and so that limits the amount that we'd be able to utilize.
To the extent that we bring earnings forward, more synergies, that's where we think we're gonna be able to utilize more, another, you know, a tag-on acquisition or an asset that we can build that, you know, is going to achieve more earnings than we had in the projections. What we said at the time was it was a present value of $1.5 billion based on the projections that were in place at the time that the merger was announced. Everything that we've done to enhance earnings increases the utilization of that NOL above the 1.5. And we definitely think we will achieve greater than 1.5 utilization. But you can pretty much say any earnings, and said another way, any earnings we achieve between now and 2027 are pretty much 100% sheltered.
Right. Great. And the last topic I wanted to hit on was the Saguaro natural gas pipeline. You've had great success with Roadrunner and some of the other pipes that go down to the border, 20-year contract, and it looks like Mexico Pacific has 2 of the trains contracted. We just saw some news here today that the Sierra Madre pipeline, that would probably be the impediment, is really gaining some traction here, that would connect the Permian to the West Coast of Mexico. So when we think about that pipeline, I think you guys have said there's a possible FID around year-end 2023. And, you know, if you were to go forward with it, you would likely be the operator, but you'd probably want an equity partner.
Maybe you can just expand on that or tell me where I'm-
Yeah, no, I don't know that I went as far as saying that we would want an equity partner. I think that where we are, we're currently working towards FID, as is the project. We expect the presidential permit here in the not-too-distant future. That's been kind of one of the key for everybody to get to the point where the project can get FID. I mean, realistically, we're mid-November, and year-end 2023 is coming upon us pretty quick in the holidays, so the likelihood of achieving a year-end FID is getting smaller and smaller with every day. But we're not too far off. We think everything's falling into place. The news today about the state sponsorship of the pipe in Mexico was, we thought, very favorable as well. So we're working on the finishing of...
The engineering is by and large pretty much done at this point. So things are falling into place and you know, we need to get the project itself to get towards FID before we can get there. So I think that the key that we see about why that pipe is so important to us is it's yet again another bundling opportunity in that we are now gonna provide takeaway service for natural gas to some of the biggest producers in the Permian. Gives them an option to go to a new market that's favorable, and now with what's going on in the Panama Canal, it's gonna even be more favorable. So you know, it's long-term positive return, very very good return investment that has been effectively de-risked once that's up and built.
But we're working towards FID. When we get there, we'll let everybody know, and the final structure will be announced at that point.
That's right. So there's some major producers that are taking capacity on, on Mexico Pacific that would likely put some equity lines there. Okay, great. Great. And then maybe with if anyone has any questions for the last 4 minutes, I can ask a few more and let you guys close out. But if anyone in the audience... All right, well, I'll continue. So, back to the Bakken, the possible Elk Creek—is it possible or probable with Elk Creek expansion? And, does that kind of send a message that, hey, the Bakken is continuing to grow? What's the latest on that one?
...The latest is, as we've said, we're spending money today to put us in a position that we can expand that pipeline as quick as we can. We basically went and looked at what is it gonna take to expand the pipeline? What are the long lead time items? And let's go make that happen right now. So we're on a timeframe that we're gonna get it done, and it's that before we see the growth catching up to our capacity. But we thought it was wise to come out and say that we are spending money on that project today, is what we're doing, and we are moving as fast as we can to make that happen moving forward.
We can stop it or if we want to, but I don't see that happening as we continue to see volume grow coming out of that basin right now. But that's why we started spending money at this time. As we look forward, if it keeps on this trajectory, we will need this capacity by a certain time. We need to start moving today. And we've always said this, we will not run out of capacity coming out of the Bakken.
I think it's also important to recognize that there's also natural gas takeaway that's being expanded. The Northern Border project going down Bison, you know, that project is breached FID, and it's moving, we're moving forward. So all the takeaway is being expanded to meet what producers view of the world is going forward.
Got it. Any last comments for you guys? I'll leave you with one last one.
No, no, we, we appreciate the opportunity to come here and look forward to your last question.
So, Walt, maybe this is just for you. So ONEOK, obviously great footprint, Bakken, S&P 500 company. It seems like, you know, when oil moves, you're one of the names that trade up and down based off of that, with NGL pricing, and that's not necessarily how your business works. When you think about shareholder value and putting Magellan and ONEOK here together, was part of the rationale really that you have a more stable business that isn't subject to oil prices kind of moving your stock price up and down when the beta shouldn't be there?
Yeah, I think if you look at our earnings from 2014, when we spun out the utility to today, we've grown EBITDA every day, every year, no matter what the commodity cycle was. But you're right, up until this merger, we had quite a bit of volatility. So there's no doubt that it factored in as we were thinking about it, to get... It's more to get demand pull on our bi-- on our overall system, and be in a situation where you're actually countercyclical. If crude prices are going down, volumes on the on the refined product side should be going up. So we'll see over time whether that actually reduces the beta. I mean, we're, we're in it for a short period of time at this point.
You know, our hope in the longer term is that we would see that beta come down and that sensitivity, because it hasn't factored into our earnings power. It's been more of a perception than it has been a reality.
Right. All right, I think, 12 seconds left, so just on time. We, we really appreciate the time, and-
Thank you.
Thank you for coming.
Great. Thank you. Thank you.