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, ONEOK. Joining me from ONEOK are President and CEO Pierce Norton; CFO Walter Hulse; Chief Commercial Officer Sheridan Swords. Welcome, everyone.
Thank you.
As ONEOK works to integrate all of its recently acquired assets, progress on the synergy targets and 2025 guidance remains a key focus among investors. I wanna start there. Can you talk more about where ONEOK is currently tracking with respect to the goal of $250 million in synergies in 2025? And have your expectations relative to the synergies changed at all since initially putting forth this guidance?
Okay. Well, no, our expectations haven't changed. I think if anything, you know, I think you gotta put it into buckets. The one that we're furthest along on is our Magellan acquisition. You know, if you think about it, Magellan, we bought in September of 2023, so we had kind of the fourth quarter to get things set up, and we hit the ground running and had all of 2024, and now we're into 2025. Most of those opportunities were opportunities that were completely within our control. So, at this point in time, I think we're well ahead of our expectation as it relates to Magellan, and really pleased with the opportunities that have presented themselves that we didn't know about and we're pursuing for further synergies.
When you look at EnLink and Medallion, I'll break those apart, too. Medallion, again, almost entirely within our control, on the synergies. We are in a position where we can fill our two long-haul pipes. We can actively go out and gather that crude and use the Medallion system in a more aggressive way than it was being able to be used before, to fit in with our long-haul crude backhaul assets that we bought from Magellan. Then EnLink, we just have really been at it since February one, when we closed that acquisition. And in that one, we're well on our pace on all of our corporate synergies. They're kind of falling right into line. Some of those big ones that come off are insurance, for example.
Those don't happen the day you, you know, you close a transaction. They happen throughout the course of the year. In fact, we just found four different policies on September one. So those are types of synergies that we will now pick up from this point going forward, in perpetuity. The low-hanging fruit in and around EnLink is all happening right away, but things like contracts rolling off that are synergies, those just happen with time. But we're on pace, and we're totally comfortable with the $250 million.
The only thing that I'd add to that is that there wasn't a lot of capacity left in the processing side on EnLink, so some processing plants needed to get built. So you don't do those overnight, so they take sometimes a year or two years to build those. And so that's gonna be... That was another thing that, you know, we knew that the pace of the synergies in EnLink would be different than in Magellan just because of either the contracts terminating or the fact that we got to build things, so.
I think you see us come out right away. We've already, you know, sanctioned another plant into the Delaware Basin to get that capacity coming along as quick as we can. There, we have a plant coming along at the end of this year, the Shadowfax plant in the Midland Basin, that will give us capacity to be able to grow, as Pierce said, and we'll see those synergies continuing to go forward. We did have capacity in the Mid-Continent, and we're now connecting our legacy ONEOK system and the legacy EnLink system together, that we can now access the most efficient capacity in the Mid-Continent. We can direct the gas to each one of the respective companies' processing plants to make sure we get the most liquids out of each plant, and all those plants are connected into our NGL system.
Yeah, don't wanna beat this question to death, Theresa, but in the MidCon, what's important there is that there was area dedications to the EnLink plants, and that dedication was far outside where the assets were located. So a lot of times, when the producer went to drill a well, then they had the right to go out and get it, but it was too far to economically drill. What just so happens, those acreage dedications overlap our assets, the old ONEOK assets, and so now, instead of losing that particular package to somebody else, we are now able to pick it up because of the expansiveness of our footprint between the two systems of EnLink and ONEOK.
Perfect. And on this type of optimization opportunities to capture more volumes and market share, but as it relates to the interplay of NGLs and refined products in particular, can you provide any data points to quantify those types of opportunities?
If you think about the optimization between the NGL and the refined product system, one of the big things we came out right away and said that you can move NGLs on a refined product system, and you can refine products on an NGL system. And that really came down to being able to reduce the cost of butane getting to the blending location. We blended over 50 locations across our refined products and asset base, and a lot of that is being trucked to those locations, with us being able to use the assets together, to be able to move a lot of that volume off a truck onto pipelines and get it into further out into the system where we can blend more.
Magellan's typical cost was $0.20 per gallon to move butane to the blending locations. As we finish the Easton integration, Easton connections, connecting our Conway NGL Hub into the Midwest refining centers, pipelines that we have, and we continue some of our other blending projects. We'll move that twenty cent per gallon on the logistic cost down to $0.10 per gallon in 2026. So a substantial reduction in cost, and then we'll continue as we get into 2026. As we bring on the Denver expansion, we'll be able to use that as well to be able to move butane from the Mid-Continent out to Denver to be able to blend there as well, what that is now being trucked today. So we'll see a further savings into 2026, into 2027 as well.
We're seeing a great reduction in our logistics cost, which doesn't depend on a spread to be able to capture. That's just purely drops to the bottom line.
Got it. And how have customers responded to your ownership and operatorship of recently acquired refined products and crude assets over the past few quarters? What has surprised you in your commercial discussions?
I mean, I don't know if there's been a whole lot of surprises. I mean, ONEOK has always been a very customer-centered company that wants to make sure we take care of the customers. I think we have brought a little bit different kind of offering to the customers on the refined product side that they appreciate. We've also brought the willingness to spend capital, more capital than we did before, and we've been able to work with our customers, especially like on a Denver expansion, where people were wanting that to be able to be done.
We tried to see what the opportunity was, how big that could be, what the future could look like, and working with those customers to get an acceptable project out to the Denver, and a very attractive project out to the Denver Airport with a lot of expandable upside onto that. So the customers have been very willing to work with us, seen that ONEOK is customer-centered, and I think they've liked what they've seen so far because they continue to sign up for more volume.
Very good. And I do wanna touch on the Denver refined product infrastructure project in a bit. But with recently completed and soon-to-be-completed projects entering into service, ONEOK is set up with significant amount of operating leverage going forward. Can you speak to the opportunities that this provides you and how you see these assets, such as the Elk Creek and the West Texas NGL pipelines, contributing to future earnings and commercial opportunities?
So to go back, when we did both, the West Texas expansion and the Elk Creek expansion, we had contracts behind that that gave us a very acceptable return on those projects. But we didn't have to fill the complete pipeline up, to get to those returns. So we oversized to put a little bit of optionality in there that we could, put more volume on there than what was needed for the project. So basically, you could think about that as we have pre-capacity. It's already been paid for, for certain contracts. So we sit there and go out there in the Permian, which is a very competitive area. When we compete, we can be very effective in competing for new volume coming on there that we can still continue to grow our bottom line.
So our objective now is to go in and fill that capacity, both that we talked about on the West Texas pipeline and out of Elk Creek, but we also have the Medford Fractionator coming up in 2026. That it's another one where it's a very low-cost fractionator. It's not completely full. We only needed to get a certain amount of volume into it, contracted before, for an acceptable return. We've FID'd that. When that comes up in late 2026, we'll be able to not only provide transportation out of the Permian but also fractionation and be able to compete with anybody out there for that volume.
So the only thing I'd add to that, Theresa, is that, when you make a decision on a pipeline, let's say you're gonna build a sixteen-inch, and you decide to do a twenty or twenty-four, that extra cost to get that extra volume is very, very efficient because, your right of way is gonna cost the same whether or not you put a sixteen or a twenty or twenty-four. The ditch size is basically the same, so you're really digging the same level of ditch, the cost on that. So really, the only difference is the additional welding that you have on the pipe, and then whatever the pipe cost is set between it, but it is very, very efficient to get extra capacity. The reason I'm saying that is because it doesn't take very much volume to really juice the returns on that extra capacity.
We like, we like to say it's a lot easier to expand the pipeline by two inches before you put it in the ground than after you put it in the ground.
Fair enough, and I'm seeing this playbook translate to my next question about the Denver expansion as well. There's some consistency here. So looking at this project coming into service next year, okay, so entering initial service mid-2026 at 30,000 barrels per day, can you offer some more color on the strategic importance of this project? Sheridan, you touched on the butane piece earlier. Can you talk about the potential changes to PADD 2 and PADD 4 refined product movements? And how should we think about the timeline to potentially scale the project towards this total hydraulic capacity of 250,000 barrels per day?
So if we're talking about the strategic side of it, that is, you know, our refined product system is a demand pull system, so we want to be connected to growing demand anywhere across our system. And we're seeing growing demand in PADD 4 and in parts of PADD 5. Not all parts of PADD 4, but definitely all parts of PADD 5, but definitely PADD 4, we're seeing growing demand in there, and definitely at the Denver airport, they continue to expand that airport. So we wanted to make sure we had capacity into that area, that we could service that demand, that we can pull it from our refiners, not just in PADD 2, but also in PADD 3, to be able to pull that refiners that's going to go forward.
As we go and look at just the structure out there and what's happening, we sized it that we could grow as that area grows, and also we sized if there was a structural change in PADD Four and refining capacity, we would be able to supply the Front Range with enough refined products to meet their needs continue to go out, but even beyond that, we're seeing deeper into PADD Four. We're seeing premium markets continue to grow as more population grows out there as well, and into PADD 5 on the eastern side of PADD 5 that this pipeline is set up very nicely. It's connected to all these other pipelines. As demand continues to grow, we'll be able to supply it out of the Mid-Continent and out of the Gulf Coast.
... And if there's ever any reason why the supply should be short out there in the Denver and the Front Range area, we're right there ready to add pumps onto this pipeline and fulfill that entire need.
It's thirty thousand barrels a day, but it could easily, with pumps, go over two hundred thousand barrels a day.
Standing ready to add pumps, and with a potential long-haul tariff from those far-flung refining centers.
That's right. Right. And you said, when could we see it grow? We'll see how what the market comes to it. It was, as Pierce said, to make that pipe, to grow it up to 16 inches to what we wanted, was very small incremental capital to be able to do that in. When you look at the whole scope of the project, it gives us tremendous upside as things happen into the future. Same thing we did, you know, we did the same thing with Elk Creek. We had, at the time, didn't think we needed a 20-inch pipeline, but we put a bigger pipeline in case we need it, and now we need it, and it's been very profitable.
Got it. So turning from the downstream side of things, let's go to the wellhead. Okay, producer activity has been an area of interest, given the ebbs and flows of pricing out there. How are production and G&P volumes currently trending across your areas of service? And what are you hearing from your producer customers in terms of expectations for the remainder of this year and into next year?
We're having the same dialogue we've always had with the producers. We're going on, and as we think about 2026, they're working through their budget processes at this time. It'll be later in the year when we get a little bit more insight of what they see into 2026. We're across our basins continuing to grow. All basins are growing. Our volumes are growing up there. No doubt, growth is. That rate of growth is slowed just a little bit as we kind of look across our system, but we still very much are growing our volumes, and we anticipate that to be into 2026 as well.
As, like I said, we haven't got the official budgets and what they're gonna do, our producers are gonna do in 2026, but everything they're telling us now, they continue to expect it to grow. Obviously, the Permian is gonna be one that's gonna probably have the highest growth as well, but we're seeing good growth out of the Mid-Continent over on the western side of the state. There's the Cherokee Formation over there. We got a couple of producers continue to be excited about that location, and then the Bakken is gonna be the Bakken. It's gonna be a steady growth. It's gonna be a low single-digit growth, especially with kind of more. We're calling for more flattish crude oil, and then we'll see a lot of the growth coming through the GORs.
Perfect. And speaking of GORs and following that wide-grade molecule downstream, so can you shed some light on your outlook for NGL pipeline and fractionation economics as contracts turn over and incremental capacity is set to enter the market?
I think that you have to look at it by region and what regions you're talking about. You can't just look at every, not all regions are the same. A lot of that incremental capacity you're talking about is definitely coming out of the Permian. As we said, Permian's a very competitive area out there. We are now on both pipeline and fractionation. We are at rates that are below new build economics, so we don't think there'll be any at these rates, any more additional being brought on at this time. So I think with the assets we have out there, we will be able to compete at this level, but we see that kind of tightening up as more volume comes on.
We think we're more and more at a low spot right now coming out of the Permian, as well as the Mid-Continent is. I think it's gonna be steady as well. And, obviously, out of the Bakken, there's been a lot of talk about a new entrant into the NGL space out of the Bakken.
Never heard of it.
Never. Yeah, I thought you hadn't. And when I talk about the Bakken and the competitiveness in the Bakken, I first start off with and say that ONEOK on the GNP side, we talk about competitiveness on the NGL side. On the GNP side, we own 60% or have market share of 60% of the market in the Bakken. That volume's not going away. So first thing, we talk about competitiveness, you can take 60% away. So now we're talking about 40% left that's up for competition. Of that, most of that, we have long-term contracts that go into well into 2030 on that volume. So now we're really talking about a very small amount of volume that's really up for competition into, in the near term, into the Bakken.
So we like the position that we're in today, as we can be able to compete in that area. We've known that this possibly could happen, and we've been preparing for it by extending contracts and keeping our contracts way out in front of us, be able to provide our producer with a very good service. They like what we provide up there. We've actually put extra capacity up there to be able to meet their needs and to be able to, as some of our plants go down, we can move that volume to other plants. We've had plants go down, our producers don't even know they go down, be able to do it.
Through great customer service, moving our contracts out and our market share on the GNP side there, we think we're in a very good position in the Bakken, as always.
Sure, that complexity-
Yeah, just as important is, you know, you're being able to take the gathering and the processing, you know, the NGLs, the gas takeaway, all that's bundled into one service, and it gets you all the way from where the supply is, all the way to where the demand is, all the way down to the Gulf Coast. Nobody else has that kind of connectivity unless they go through multiple pipes.
Mm-hmm.
So it's just easier to do business with us, and it's, it's an area where we can be way more competitive.
Yeah, you don't have the rate stacking as you go through different companies.
Fair enough. The integration, the connectivity, and the redundancy and complexity of the system keeps that producer on. So also on the Bakken, in terms of the ethane, incentivization prospects, so in light of ongoing commercial efforts to construct another residue egress pipe in Bakken, how do you think the addition of incremental residue capacity could impact ONEOK's incentivized ethane extraction business in the region?
Let me try this one.
You bet.
I like this question, Theresa, because I have a long history with Northern Border Pipeline through other companies. And so everything on the gas pipeline takeaway side is kind of hinging, not necessarily on volume, but what is the BTU spec that that pipe can take? So the only way that actually any sort of things change up there in that area as far as gas takeaway, the egress of the gas, is if the BTU spec on that pipe were to be different. So what I'm saying is that if that spec were, say, twelve hundred BTU-
Mm-hmm.
you know, instead of say, a thousand and fifty, then that would make a difference and start to do some things, you know, with your ethane rejection, because you could leave more ethane in the pipe and then put it in there. But it's always gonna compete with what are the gas prices up there in that area, in the Ventura area and the LACO area. So that's what really toggles the ethane rejection or recovery up there. But in the event that there's a pipeline built, and it just happens to go to a location that the BTU spec can be up to twelve hundred, which is pretty rare, but if that were the case, then that would start to have some effect on that. But we think any way possible, it would be positive for us 'cause we're the ones that toggle that.
Okay, and looking ahead, I'd like to now turn to your JV export dock with MPLX, so as other industry participants point to challenged margins, how does this impact your expectation for the export dock, if at all?
The first thing we've always said that, you know, we have the volume behind that export dock going through our system today. So we have the supply for that dock. It's not like we need to go out or contract with supply. That's already been done. Obviously, it's a competitive market. The export docks have never been that, you know, as good as some of the other projects that we've had in terms of return. That's why it's taken us ten years to get to this point as we continue to go forward. We see that export dock really as a further integration of our value chain. It's the completion of the Wellhead to Water strategy that we had, and that a lot of our customers have been talking to us about, is getting that...
Making sure our product moves through the system. There's been a little bit of compression of rates. We went with that, but our expectations are still, as we look three years out from now, a lot of contracts now are short term, you know, three-year term. Three-year terms are fairly standard. We are still excited about what we see in the future about this dock and what it will do for us. It's still in a superior location. It's well right next to open water. It's probably 20 hours worth of travel time out and back from other locations. And remember, on the shipping business, they have 48 hours from the time that ship's ready to load, to move it up the ship channel, load it, and move it back out of the ship channel.
And when you're taking up almost half of that on the move and not the loading, it can be a great disadvantage, especially if you get fog or something else in there. So we think our and our customers are talking to us. They love the spot that we're in. We think they think it's actually worth a premium on that side.
So the only thing I'd add to that, Theresa, is that if you usually are in a position where you're looking for supply or you're looking for demand. And we feel like that our position of having the supply is easier than going out and trying to find the supply to match to the demand, or have the supply and then go find the demand. Because it's, you know, the amount that you've got to put into it and the capital you've got to put into getting that supply; it far outweighs trying to find the demand side of this business.
If I can just ask a question of clarification on this. The supply aspect of it, I imagine that is rolling off of one of your competitors' facilities, given that it exists. The question is: Is it all at once matching the in-service date of your facility, or is it ramping over time?
So right now, you know, we own over 70%, or we market over 70% of the volume that's on our system, so we buy it at the wellhead, and we are selling that into the market. Some of it's on short-term deals, some of it's on long-term deals, maybe three or four years terms, and some of it is spot, but obviously, we know when our LPG dock is gonna come up, so obviously, all our terms match up, that we will have the amount of volume coming off contracts that we need to be able to supply that dock.
Thank you for clarifying. Okay, so turning to the natural gas side of things, can you discuss the strategic rationale behind the recently announced Blackcomb Pipeline JV out of the Permian? And more broadly, ONEOK's strategy for growth in the natural gas pipeline segment, as underlying demand for gas infrastructure assets remain on an upward trajectory. And similarly, within this vein, what has explained the significant outperformance, in this segment over recent periods?
On the Blackcomb Pipeline project, obviously that's another pipeline coming out of the Permian. We saw a need as we look at our growth out of our GNP and the growth we're seeing on other GNP players coming into our system, as well as growth across the whole Permian Basin, that more natural gas egress needed to come out of the basin, and you look at the increased demand from LNG that's gonna happen along the Gulf Coast, that was the location we thought was the best to go. We already have a relationship with WhiteWater, who is building the Blackcomb pipeline. We own 15% of the Matterhorn pipeline system. We got that through our EnLink acquisition, and that gave us the opportunity to participate in this Blackcomb project.
You couple that with we have growing, we're, as we already talked about, we're putting more GNP plants into the Permian, that we need gas takeaway for those plants, and we need, we need the cheapest gas takeaway we can get for those plants to keep our, the netbacks for our producers. So it's just natural that we signed up for, or participated in the Blackcomb project through our Matterhorn and through, some commitments onto that pipeline systems going forward. We're, we're excited about that. It's a low multiple project. It can grow up to two and a half BCF. It's been well received by the industry, so we're, we're very excited about the opportunity to be in that project and what it does for our integrated value chain as we connect in our, our processing plants in there, into that pipeline.
As we think about the whole natural gas business, we are very excited about the natural gas business, especially if you look into Louisiana, with the natural gas business that we bought from EnLink. It's kind of the last mile into the river corridor. We've seen a lot of industrial demand growing there, ammonia plants coming online, hydrogen plants coming online. But we also have the opportunity, and are working with some of the LNG, Louisiana LNG players, to be able to supply gas through our system into their plants as they continue to come online as well. So we see good growth in Louisiana. As you get back into our legacy, Oklahoma and West Texas, we are seeing demand growth from AI.
We have some data centers that we're very close to getting some things done with them as well, that are very close to our system, that are good return projects. I mean, they're. In the size of the company, they're not huge needle movers, and we don't see we have a lot of them that are huge needle movers on the AI, 'cause you're only laying maybe a couple miles of pipe to 20 miles of pipe, and you're gonna get a really nice return on that, as you can afford. So we are excited about the natural gas business. We'll continue to grow with it. That's growing. You got growing supply, growing demand, and that's what midstream does best, put those two together.
Excellent. I'm glad that you said the words data centers, Sheridan. I would be remiss not to bring that up in an infrastructure fireside chat, but as you pursue these opportunities, from a commercial perspective, what do you think differentiates winners and losers within the competitive landscape of who is going to get these projects? Is it naturally just a result of where the existing infrastructure lays, and who has to build the shortest lateral, or how should I think about that?
I think that's a lot of it. I mean, the ones that we're looking at right now, it's definitely that we are the closest pipeline there, and that means we can be the most competitive, and we can get there the fastest, and speed to market is really probably the biggest thing, and then comes to rate, but that isn't think you can just go in there and torch anything as you go out there. So you have to, it has to be still competitive, but speed to market's probably the quickest thing to be. We think that's the differentiator, is the speed to market.
Okay, and finally, after significant large-scale M&A activity over the past couple of years, how should we think about ONEOK's capital allocation priorities from here?
You know, I think our capital allocation is pretty clear. It hasn't changed. We continue to look at opportunities for organic growth as our number one objective. We clearly are in a position right now where we're de-levering from the last acquisition. That progress is right on track. We're very pleased with where we're gonna get, and our expectation is we'll get to that 3.6 run rate in the Q4 of 2026. So I think we're on track to go there. If you run the models through, you're gonna quickly realize that we don't stop at 3.6, we keep going, keep going down. You know, the recent tax change was very advantageous to ONEOK.
I think we were in a unique position because we still weren't in the AMT, so it allowed us to extend another year before we had to go into the AMT, and then when we go into the AMT, we won't get to the full rate for the extended period of time, so that's an enormous amount of additional free cash flow, $1.3 billion over that five-year period, mostly concentrated in 2027. So that's a major infusion of cash flow. Clearly, as we sit today, we don't have projects to do to take all of that, and the debt reduction will be in where it should be, so we'll clearly have the opportunity to look at stock buybacks as we get closer to our debt goals.
Great. Well, thank you all so much for the insight and the color, as always.
Thank you.
Thank you.