Good day, everyone, and welcome to PBF Energy Third Quarter 2022 Earnings Call and webcast. At this time, all participants have been placed in a listen-only mode, and the floor will be open for your questions following management's prepared remarks. If anyone should need operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. Please note this call is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to turn the call over to Colin Murray of Investor Relations. Thank you, sir. You may begin.
Copies of today's earnings release and our 10-Q filing, including supplemental information, are available on our website. Before getting started, I'd like to direct your attention to the safe harbor statement contained in today's press release. Statements in our press release and those made on this call that express the company's or management's expectations or predictions of the future are forward-looking statements intended to be covered by the safe harbor provisions under federal securities laws. There are many factors that could cause actual results to differ from our expectations, including those we describe in our filings with the SEC. Consistent with our prior periods, we will discuss our results today excluding special items. In today's press release, we describe the non-cash special items included in our quarterly results.
The cumulative impact of the special items increased net income by an after-tax amount of $55 million, or approximately $0.44 per share. For reconciliations of any non-GAAP measures mentioned on today's call, please refer to the supplemental tables provided in today's press release. I'll now turn the call over to Tom Nimbley.
Thanks, Colin. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining our call. For the third quarter, PBF reported earnings per share of $7.96 and adjusted net income of just over $1 billion. The underlying supply and demand fundamentals of the global hydrocarbon market created an environment that has allowed PBF to finish the third quarter with effectively zero net debt and reward our shareholders with the reinstatement of the $0.20 regular dividend we announced this morning. We remain highly focused on continuing to strengthen our financial position while concurrently reinvested in our base refining business and diversifying our product lines. Continual reinvestment in our refining assets has allowed us to maintain relatively high operating rates that supply the market with our vital products.
We are progressing on new investment in lower carbon fuels in an effort to meet growing demand in that area while exploring other opportunities within our footprint to expand our business beyond traditional refining. We are making these investments because they will make our company more resilient in global energy markets that have become more chaotic and unpredictable due to geopolitical events and evolving policy positions that are causing uncertainty. As markets adjust to these gyrations, we are seeing several repeating trends that are firming. Global crude oil and product inventories remain low, especially distillate. Refineries are being called to run at high levels of utilization. Global natural gas prices remain elevated, although well off the highs seen over the summer. U.S. refiners continue to benefit from low-cost natural gas versus our European competitors.
We are seeing a benefit from wide light-heavy spreads as some refineries in Europe are running a lighter slate due to energy effect challenges of some secondary units. The wider spread on light-heavy is also implying that available coking capacity is at or near limits. The supply side of the story has been focused on several bullish factors, US SPR sales coming to an end, no Iran deal, OPEC+ agreeing to oil production cuts, upcoming EU sanctions on Russian crude oil and products, and continuing discussions about a G7 price cap on Russian exports. The simple synopsis is there is limited visibility on oil production rising materially in the near term. While there are some areas of growth in non-OPEC+, including the U.S. and Canada in particular, this growth may not be enough to keep pace with losses in other regions.
Global demand has rebounded from the lows of the pandemic and regional dislocations are occurring. Refining capacity is down, which is requiring higher levels of utilization from the remaining facilities. The U.S. refining complex, it is benefiting from lower natural gas prices, a highly skilled workforce operating the most complex and well-maintained assets. We expect that U.S. regional trading partners and the international market in general will continue to require U.S. products to help balance and stabilize the markets. The market instability we see today is the cumulative manifestation of politics and policy. Energy transition to a decarbonized energy stack is one large physics problem.
Attempts to remove on-demand energy-dense fossil fuels from the energy stack and replace them with less energy-dense and intermittent sources of energies is a very challenging proposition. The industry is being asked to pump and refine more oil today, and at the same time, being told that we do not want your fuels in the future, with some timelines putting a bookend of 2035 on the use of the internal combustion engine. Unfortunately, our business does not operate on such short timelines. Our investors and lenders require a return on their capital that does not necessarily fit within that timeline. There are solutions, and society needs to recognize that fossil fuels play a vital role in any transition, and PBF is very willing to play our part. We have restarted units at our refineries that were idled during the depths of the pandemic.
We recognize the essential role that the products our refineries make are vital to today's quality of life, and we welcome a balanced discussion on how to fuel the future. We remain focused on running our assets safely in an environmentally responsible manner and reliably. Our valued employees work 24/7 to ensure safe, reliable operations that provide a continuous supply of products to the market. We will continue to invest in our assets, improve the financial resilience of our company, and ultimately reward our investors for their support, as we've done today by reinstating our dividend. With that, I will now turn the call over to Matthew Lucey.
Thanks, Tom. Our operating and financial results for the third quarter are a direct reflection of the tireless work of our employees. Since inception, PBF has been focused on assembling a highly complex and geographically diverse refining system. Our system is demonstrating the value of that diversity and complexity. Our dedicated employees are running the refinery safely and reliably in an effort to keep our customers and consumers well-supplied. In the third quarter, our total throughput was over 90 million barrels, or 984,000 barrels a day, which is the highest level of throughput in our history. This follows an extensive maintenance completed in the second quarter and relatively uninterrupted operations in the third quarter.
We are in the final stages of completing our last major turnaround of the year at Martinez now, and the impact of this is included in the guidance provided in today's press release. Our assets require continuous investment to remain competitive and stay in business. Over the last few years, we have seen over 5% of the refining capacity in the U.S. either shut down completely or converted to much smaller renewable operations. A reduction of capacity can be attributed to a capital-intensive business that is continuously under assault from certain state and federal initiatives geared towards accelerating a transition away from refined products. The energy supply cannot be rapidly changed through policies attempting to force a premature transition without significant costs.
The conversation needs to happen amongst all stakeholders that focuses on the goal of providing cleaner fuels while not ignoring the necessity of maintaining reliable and affordable energy sources that are at the cornerstone of our high quality of life. To that end, PBF is focused on maintaining our refining operations while expanding the types of energy and fuel we provide. We are progressing our renewable diesel project in Chalmette. We are approximately halfway through the capital spend and expect to be in production with full pretreatment capabilities in the first half of 2023. Our project will deliver new capacity above our existing refining operations to the market. Importantly for PBF, our project will generate environmental credits with the potential to offset a significant portion of our annual purchase RIN obligation.
We are more committed than ever to bring this new capacity to market while we continue to have discussions with potential partners. In terms of the forward refining environment, we expect current volatile market conditions will persist. Inventories are low, and demand will continue to support high refinery utilization. The fact that the U.S. is the world's largest oil and gas producer and a net exporter of oil liquids is a wonderful benefit for our country and something we should never apologize for. Our domestic energy industry brings the U.S. advantages that are the envy of many countries, especially in Europe, as they rely on the U.S. to provide them energy at a time when they need it most. With that, I'll turn it over to Erik.
Thank you, Matt. For the third quarter, we reported adjusted net income of $7.96 per share and adjusted EBITDA of over $1.5 billion. This brings our trailing 12-month adjusted EBITDA to more than $4 billion. Consolidated CapEx for the third quarter was approximately $247 million, which includes $142 million for refining and corporate, roughly $103 million related to continuing development of the RD facility, and $2 million for PBF Logistics. For the full year 2022, we expect total refining and corporate CapEx to be roughly $550 million-$575 million, excluding the renewable diesel project. We have mentioned previously, we have transitioned to our normalized pre-pandemic turnaround schedule.
We have been steadfast in our long-term commitment to maintaining a strong balance sheet. While challenging events like the recent pandemic caused us to use all available levers to maintain excess liquidity and demonstrate our commitment to prudent balance sheet management, our position never wavered. As we sit here today, PBF's balance sheet is its strongest ever. Our reported net debt to cap is 1%. Liquidity is more than ample to operate our refining system at elevated utilization rates and at current hydrocarbon prices. Additionally, we have the financial flexibility to continue to fund our diversification efforts into renewable diesel while we explore a potential partnership for this business unit. With our balance sheet now fortified, the dividend reinstated, and the macro backdrop for refining translating into higher mid-cycle earnings, our complex and geographically diverse system is well-positioned to generate significant value.
Our financial performance over the past five quarters has set the stage for a rebalancing of our future prospects. On paper, we meet or exceed many investment-grade metrics. In fact, we crossed into this territory over the summer as a result of our de-leveraging efforts in connection with the full repayment of our secured notes. As we look forward, our system should continue to demonstrate through-cycle earnings power with diversified earnings streams as we enter the low carbon fuel space and continued balance sheet discipline. In turn, our long-term cost of capital should go down as our credit ratings increase. These steps will make PBF more competitive in all market backdrops.
Lastly, on the previously announced transaction whereby PBF Energy has agreed to acquire all of the common units of PBF Logistics that it does not already own, we expect that transaction will close this year, subject to receiving all of the necessary regulatory and unitholder approvals. Operator, we've completed our opening remarks, and we'd be pleased to take any questions.
Thank you. In a moment, we will open the call to questions. The company requests that all callers limit each turn to one question and one follow-up. You may rejoin the queue with additional questions. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star two if you would like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys. One moment while we pull for questions. Our first question is from Roger Read with Wells Fargo. Please proceed.
Yeah, good morning, everybody, and let me deliver my congratulations for you all fighting all the way back, given where the company's been over the last couple of years and the depths of the COVID issues. In terms of my questions, I guess I'd like to understand, Erik, you know, you've done a lot here at balance sheet, you know, a lot of repair, but you've got commitments on renewable diesel. You've probably got some catch up on refining maintenance and all. So how should we think about the necessary investments going forward for PBF to keep you on the right track? Obviously you've got to close PBFX as well.
Yeah, I think as we sit here, you know, at the end of the third quarter with consolidated cash of over $1.9 billion, obviously it's a lot of money. To your point, we do have some commitments that we've made to not only, you know, I think the total environmental accrual was about a little north of $1.2 billion at the end of the third quarter. We've tried to outline for folks and have included in the 10-Q. About 2/3 of that is committed. It's going to erode or decay away over the course of the next 12 months. On the RIN side of things, we're still in an environment where there are three outstanding compliance periods, so we are actively managing that program.
We also believe we will see the AB 32 Cap-and-Trade and LCFS credits also start to decline in terms of overall balance over the course of the next 12 months. There's about $300 million allocated to a potential PBF Logistics buy-in, that's included in those figures as well. From a CapEx standpoint, we've oftentimes talked about, you know, $500 million-$600 million a year of CapEx. Those numbers will swing a little bit depending on timing of turnarounds. To Matt's point, we had the highest throughput in our history during this past quarter. Well, to go alongside high throughput, you need to make sure that this equipment is actively maintained, and we are back on a regular way turnaround cycle. One thing, again, we've mentioned this before. Important to note, we never stopped investing in our assets.
We continued to spend circa $200 million a year just in general maintenance, environmental, safety-related spend. That's gonna continue whether we're in the depths of a pandemic or we are in the current market environment that we see today.
Yeah, fair enough. I guess the other question, and I don't know if this is for you, Tom or Matt, or you all wanna, you know, kind of split it up. Obviously, a lot of discussion about how policy is an issue. There's a lot of worries about, you know, policy affecting either crude or refined product exports, maybe both. As you look at the current situation, inventories where they are on the East Coast, you've got a front row seat there. What are you seeing in the way of flows? I mean, does it look to you like there's more than enough product available, or is there something else going on in the market there?
Well, there's no doubt that distillate inventories are tight, frankly, globally. To your point, in our backyard right here in PADD 1, New Jersey, PADD 1 distillate inventories right now are, I think, about 45% below the five-year average. That is a focus point and has to be a focus point for trying to get those inventories rebuilt. The base problem is really quite clear here. We've had rationalization of capacity associated with COVID, and it's been coupled and ganged up on to a certain extent by policy that does not drive you to want to continue to operate facilities or invest in as necessary when you think there may not be a long enough runway to get a return on that investment.
To your point, I think, in fact, the world is going to if the oil caps go into place, if the bans go into place on February fifth on products, the world will become more reliant on the U.S. to supply not only our own base, the five PADDs, but also other parts of the world. I'm confident we're gonna be able to do that, but it's gonna take enough, you know, a heavy lift because we are running already at high capacity utilization. Matt, would you add anything?
No, I think you covered. I think actually the president made a comment the other day, where he reiterated the fact that it's on the U.S. and our capabilities on producing energy to help fuel our friendly countries and our allies. That is as important today as it's ever been, because the last thing we wanna do is shove our allies to our adversaries.
Roger, one other thing I should mention, we did in fact start up a number of pieces of equipment, a number of units in Paulsboro that we had regrettably had to shut down. It was a very difficult decision during the peak of the pandemic. But those were a reformer and a couple of hydrotreaters that are supplying jet and ULSD to PADD 1 that weren't running at this time last year.
Oh, great. Thank you.
Our next question is from Doug Leggate with Banc of America. Please proceed.
Thanks. Good morning, everyone. Tom, I'll add my congrats getting back to net debt zero. It's quite an achievement. So I'm sure all your shareholders are thrilled about the progress. My question is actually about gasoline. I know there's a lot of focus on distillate, but you know, we're three or four months away from the traditional switch to you know, lower vapor pressure product in the summer, you know, ahead of summer starting on the West Coast. I guess I'm curious that with gasoline stocks where they are and the spread still between heat and gas cracks, how do you solve the supply problem for gasoline going into 2023. I'm just curious to your thoughts on that. My follow-up is for Erik.
I guess, Erik, simply put, now that the balance sheet has been addressed, how do you think about managing cash balances going forward and your thoughts on cash returns? I hope everyone is listening to your message to policymakers this morning, Tom. I'll leave it there. Thank you.
Thank you, Doug, and let me take the first one. I did read your piece. I didn't get all the way through it this morning, but I did read the headlines. Well written. We're kind of in a doom loop right now. What happens is because we're so tight on inventories, so tight on available capacity, we look at the market, every refiner looks at the market and says, "Okay, the distillate crack is $20 or $30 or $40 over the gas crack." We turn every drop of gasoline that we can into distillate.
Then all of a sudden, you get what you're alluding to is, wait a minute, yeah, distillate inventories are very low, but yesterday we drew 2.5 million barrels counterseasonally on gasoline for the second week in a row. It's a little bit of we're making less gasoline yield because we're trying to make more distillate yield. That worm will turn. Then what will happen is, of course, gasoline prices will likely come up in the spring. In fact, with the season over, perhaps distillate prices will come down. There will be some build. I'm confident of that over time. You're spot on in that what we're really doing right now is reacting to where the crisis in the market or demand in the market is the heaviest. Right now it's distillate.
It was distillate in the first and second quarter, went to gasoline for a while. It's gonna happen again until really, my opinion, and Thomas O'Connor, you can weigh in. What's gonna solve this problem, hopefully not a global war or something like that or a huge recession, is there will be additional refining capacity coming on next year. Of course, in fact the problem is that global refinery capacity is very, very tight. There's gonna be refineries coming up in Asia. How much would you say is gonna come on board?
Yeah. I mean, I think to those questions, Tom, I think it's really kind of adding a couple things in terms of, you know, capacity additions in the AG and in Asia being a source of resupply, particularly in calendar 2023. I think when you're looking at the market today, don't diminish the fact that Monroe and Irving have been in turnaround.
Exactly.
Those coming back to the market should provide a little bit more buffer in terms of where we've been over the last couple years.
Thank you.
Doug, on the returns concept, I think from our standpoint and the board's standpoint, reinstating the dividend, you know, nominally this is $100 million a year, that's gonna go out the door based on current share count. That's a great first step. If we just go back 16, 17 months ago, that's when we transitioned, right, from being in the red to being in the black. We've now found ourselves in a position where clearly the balance sheet is fixed. Again, it's as strong as it's ever been. As we go forward, we do have a few remaining items that we need to cover. We will, again, see those environmental credits come down. We think that is important for shareholder value overall.
Lastly, we do have about $525 million of debt that is essentially pre-payable at the PBF Logistics level. We'll need to do something with that over the course of the next year. There's a couple different levers that are already on the balance sheet. As we go forward, we do have the renewable diesel project. To Matt's point, you know, this thing is essentially halfway there, so we've got another, call it $300 million-$350 million, of CapEx that I think we're comfortable overall investing to get that project up and running because that kind of current market environment or current market prices with 300 million gallons a year production on an annualized basis, that should generate, you know, $400 million a year in EBITDA.
I think we're comfortable continuing to incubate that project because there are returns on the flip side once the pretreater is up and running.
I'm sure someone else will pick up that question, but thanks a lot, fellas, for the answers.
Our next question is from Ryan Todd with Piper Sandler. Please proceed.
Okay, thanks. Maybe I will start following up on the renewable diesel side. You clearly have the flexibility or the capacity, as you said, to fund the project on your own if you want to. How should we think about the urgency to find a partner? How important is it to you? How would you describe the ongoing conversations? Or, you know, is there a preference given the attractive returns that you see there, to do it on your own?
I would say, you know, it's funny, virtually nothing has changed with our renewable diesel project since we announced it. Virtually everything has changed outside the renewable diesel project, and certainly with PBF and certainly with our financial position. We have the increased capability, we have the increased luxury, we have increased optionality to do what's best for the company and its shareholders. I'm more than pleased with some of the discussions that are progressing with our partners or potential partners. We have the ability to be a bit more selective because if terms are not to our liking, we can obviously do it ourselves at this point, as you said.
That's simply gonna be a function of, is there a partner that can increase the value of the partnership, where there's an additive aspect, where someone's bringing some attributes that we don't currently have? The valuation aspect to it, where the cost of the project today should be incrementally much more attractive than it was a year ago because we've progressed the project. Project's on time, it's on budget. If someone were to start a project today with inflation where it is and with scarcity of materials, it would be a much, much longer build time and a much more expensive endeavor. We are thrilled with our positioning for the project. We're pleased that it's on time and on budget, and we're very pleased with the discussions that are ongoing with our partners, potential partners.
We'll see where it brings us. Hopefully that addresses your question.
Yeah. I mean, just one quick follow-up on that. On the attributes that a potential partner could bring to the project, would that predominantly be, you know, something on the feedstock side, or are there other attributes that.
Well, there's, you know.
Maybe underappreciated attributes that somebody could bring.
Obviously, the base business is procuring feed and, you know, the disposition of products. Secondarily would be, you know, simply the cost of capital and valuation.
Great. Maybe switching gears to the second one, your underlying refining performance and in both operationally and in terms of margin capture has clearly exceeded expectations over the last couple of quarters. I know it's early, but as you think about margin capture in the fourth quarter, you know, what are you seeing in terms of crude differentials, market structure, secondary products pricing, et cetera? Any early thoughts on how you think margin capture may trend versus the third quarter?
It has been, as you stated, we've seen good capture rates, and it's because of the market environment. That market environment continues, and this fact is probably moving in a further positive direction. We've got better crude differentials. We've got clean-dirty spread, and everybody understands that clean-dirty spread is the difference between high sulfur fuel oil and ultra-low sulfur diesel, i.e., coking economic incentives are at very, very elevated numbers. We've got a situation where because of oversupply and overcapacity in the petrochemical market, there's surplus naphtha that's being put onto the market that we are taking and other refiners are taking to blend into gasoline that's economically attractive. It is also driving up the cost or the value of octane, and we're benefiting from that.
That on top of the fact that the base business got strong fundamentals because of the tight capacity utilization, high capacity utilization and recovering demand, we would expect this trend to continue.
Perfect. Thank you.
Our next question is from John Royall with JP Morgan. Please proceed.
Hey, good morning, guys. Thanks for taking my question. Can you talk a little bit about how we got to the point we did in California cracks in late September, early October? What does that tell you about the market out there? Is this kind of a one-off anomaly, or is this something that you think we'll be seeing more frequently?
I'm gonna start and then turn it over to Paul Davis, Head of Commercial, but also is previously the President of West Coast Operation. It's kind of the same story, only a little bit on steroids is the situation in California during the pandemic. California, you guys have said this many times. California typically was one to 1.5 refineries long with everything running well, and then when something happened, if there was an operating upset or a refinery went down, then you'd get these rather sharp and dramatic moves in the marketplace. Now, during the course of the pandemic, of course, you had the Avon Refinery, or I refer to it as the Martinez Refinery 'cause when it was under Tosco that's what it was.
Those Marathon Petroleum's refinery in the San Francisco Bay Area made the decision to go ahead and shut that down in the early part of the pandemic because of capital requirements and the fact that there was gonna lose a lot of money and convert it to a renewable diesel plant. 160,000 barrels a day refinery coming off the market. That's a significant move. We look at 1.4 million barrels a day capacity coming off in North America. It adds 4%-5% of capacity. When you start talking about 160 and then the corollary impacts on some other refineries like Rodeo and Santa Maria, the percentage of capacity that's come off is actually slightly higher than that. The market is simply tightened up.
Paul, what thoughts would you have on that?
Well, I think you said it well. I mean, the only thing you can add is going into the summer, there was a significant amount of planned and unplanned maintenance along PADD 5. Some of the unplanned maintenance really snowballed with the effects on the inventory drains coming into and out of September. I think the price reacted to that. You know, the arbitrage into the West Coast for gasoline components, which it needs to balance, we just have not seen the flow of products both on gasoline and really jet coming across from our Asian counterparts. You know, September was a month where a lot of that came to fruition.
Okay, great. That's really helpful. Thanks. Maybe to switch to capital allocation, great to see the base dividend coming back and certainly a little earlier than we expected. I assume over the long term, you envision this company as having both a base dividend and a buyback. I guess first, I just wanted to confirm that a buyback is in the thought process down the road. How should we think about maybe you have to get over some of these cash flow hurdles like PBFX and Chalmette first before we can define what that looks like?
I think that's right. Ultimately, share buyback is yet another tool that can be employed. We've seen it amongst our peer group and amongst other folks that are out there, and so it absolutely can be something that we could put in place at some point in the future. I think we've tried to approach this in a prudent manner. Again, we know and we've gotten a considerable amount of questions over the past year around other things that we're trying to address here, and we've tried to lay out a plan to true everything up over the course of the next year.
At the same time, we've also seen our business generate enough cash that we feel very confident that getting back to, you know, the first step is paying this dividend, and that's really the most important message for today.
Thank you.
Our next question is from Carly Davenport with Goldman Sachs. Please proceed.
Hey, good morning. Thanks for taking the questions. Wanted to just start a bit on the crude side, particularly on heavy Canadian differentials. Can you talk about what you think has been driving the wider WCS spreads, and if you've been able to take advantage of those discounts and source more of those barrels across the system?
We'll do this. I'll comment and then Paul will come over the top. Somewhat impacted by the releases from the [audio distortion], which basically, you know, pushes back a little bit on Canadian crudes. They come out of turnarounds on the upgraders, so the supply has come back. There has been a rather significant widening of not only the WCS-WTI spread, but the Brent-WTI spread, which is, if we're moving barrels, which we are, to the East Coast of the United States to Delaware City, that has been advantageous, and we have been able to take and are continuing to take advantage of that market dynamic. Paul.
A lot of the WCS valuations have been impacted by the problems in PADD 2. I mean, some of those problems are planned, some of those are unplanned, and they're not insignificant. That's put pressure on the differentials there. Fuel oil pricing has really driven where WCS valuations are for refiners in the Gulf, and that's impacting the price. We're taking advantage of it on the East Coast. We're still running our slate there. We're buying it in Chalmette. Both those sites have had some advantages with that.
Great. That's helpful. Thank you. Just wanted to follow up on the renewable diesel side. I think you mentioned potential for $400 million of EBITDA there once the PTU is up and running. Can you just talk a bit about what the key assumptions around the economics are that you're making to kind of drive those estimates?
I would say there's obviously multiple levers with the economics of renewable diesel. Obviously, feedstock costs and diesel prices are obviously at the cornerstone, but it's a renewable fuel that you know gets a RIN, qualifies for you know credits in California. You have the Blender's Tax Credit that's relatively stable. EBITDA today modeled for our plant is above $400 million. Our base case in approving the project, we assume something below that just to be conservative. We're pleased with where the market is. We have as much conviction today as we did when we you know designed and approved the project. Like I said when starting out, there's multiple levers to it, and so you can try to bring you know a fine-tooth comb to each one.
If you sit back and from a 10,000-ft view, look at a macro and say, "Look, the environment is such where governments are going to want to incentivize the manufacturing of renewable diesel." Whether that manifests itself in the D4 RIN, which is clearly needed to incentivize the production or California credits or credits in Europe or, you know, the Blender's Tax Credit is constant, as I said, we believe the market is gonna be there in a resilient fashion for us to make good money with our renewable diesel plant.
Very clear. Thanks for the time.
As a reminder to star one on your telephone keypad if you would like to ask a question. Our next question is from Paul Cheng with Scotiabank. Please proceed.
Hey, guys. Good morning.
Good morning, Paul.
Two questions. Tom, historically that you guys have a growth through acquisition strategy. Of course, after the Torrance and the California acquisition, and then with the pandemic, you paused. With your balance sheet is back in a very good shape, even though you still have some spending to go. How should we look at whether that strategy is still intact and that how you balance between that and capital return to shareholder? That's the first question.
Okay. Paul, good question. Let me start by saying that we pretty much accomplished the main objectives. Our timing wasn't particularly great, but the main objectives that we had. We wanted to be diversified in several of the PADDs, and particularly in California. After we bought Torrance, we were looking for an opportunity to balance that capacity. We did that with Martinez. As you all are well aware, the timing was not particularly good because we closed on February 1st, and COVID hit around the same time. That being said, it's a very good asset, and it's going to be very powerful asset as part of that system. We are very comfortable with where we have our assets right now. That being said, we are also trying to diversify the business.
We can't ignore the fact that the policymakers have got a different agenda, perhaps. We have to do things like the renewable diesel project, and we actually have some other things I alluded to in the comments, that we might do with our footprint because of the amount of land that we have. That being said, we will always be on the lookout for a deal if it makes a hell of a lot of sense. Right now that's where our focus is.
I think in the past, I think the acquisition strategy is looking for some maybe out of shape refinery and you buy in, you're trying to improve it. I think subsequently that you have said you think that you may not want to do it anymore, and that if you're going to buy, you may be willing to pay a little bit more, but thereby a well-maintained good quality asset.
Yeah.
Is that still the thinking at this point?
I think that has shifted, Paul. I mean, at the time that we started PBF, there were a number, as you're well aware, of refineries that the current owners were motivated to sell those refineries. Delaware City, Valero had made the decision they wanted to get out of PADD 1. Delaware City goes on the market. Paulsboro goes on the market. You know, we had the opportunity to buy at a reasonable price, knowing full well that we'd have to spend a fair amount of money, particularly in Delaware, because it had been shut down and mothballed, and we'd bring it up. Toledo was kind of the same way in that Sunoco wanted to get out of the refining business, and that became an opportunity for us.
ExxonMobil wanted to get out of California after the precipitator explosion or even before that, probably. They were all opportunities that were there because of an exit strategy by the owner. We recognized that we were gonna have to, you know, do perhaps, as you suggested it, we might be buying a fixer-upper to a certain extent. Martinez was completely different. Top drawer asset. I think there's not too many of the refineries that people are gonna say they wanna get rid of now. There'll be some, obviously, that we'll get on. With the refining environment right now and the market environment, you're gonna have to pay up, Paul. Now, if it's a great deal, we will. Otherwise, we'll focus our efforts on other things, including returning more capital to the shareholder.
Yeah. The reason why I ask that is that you have LyondellBasell going to shut down their Houston refinery because they couldn't sell it. It appears that there's quite a number of facilities up for sale and may not have a lot of takers. That's why I'm wondering, will you go back into your old strategy?
Go ahead, you talk.
Paul, I would just say it's just all a function of price. We can't declare here today that we are gonna be acquiring refineries or not acquiring refineries. Obviously, the one in the Gulf Coast is set for closure because the market couldn't come to terms on price and the company is moving on. You know, for opportunities for us going forward, it'll simply depend on the opportunity that exists at the time. As Tom said, we're very pleased with the portfolio we have, and we think having highly complex coastal refineries with coking capacity is gonna reward our shareholders handsomely.
A final question from me. Tom, you mentioned that you are running some WCS in the Delaware City. Can you tell us then how much you're running in the third quarter and how much you expect in the fourth quarter? What's the current rough estimate transportation cost to rail it from Alberta to the East Coast? Also, if you can mention that, I mean, how much is the cost to rail it down to the Gulf Coast to Chalmette and how much you are running there? Thank you.
Okay. I'll take a shot at least in the beginning and then turn it over to Paul, who's got all the answers to all of the other parts of the question. What do we run, 25,000-30,000 barrels a day of Canadian heavy?
We're running about 30,000 barrels a day of Canadian heavy on the East Coast.
On the East Coast. Now we're running some down in Chalmette. I would also say that our commercial organization has been able to source some other heavier materials. We're running a resid straight run, heavy straight run material. So again, it's a function of the fact that the heavy barrel is starting to get some pressure. In terms of transportation cost and how much that is from Canada to Delaware.
Canada to the East Coast, it's still running around $15 on rail, all in. Chalmette. Chalmette, we buy that barrel in place off the water from others that are shipping down there. The rail freight down to the Gulf Coast is pretty comparable to the East Coast economics. I don't know exactly what they are because we're not doing it. I do know it's comparable, and it's just barging in at market valuations delivered into the....
Perfect. Thank you.
Thank you, Paul.
We have reached the end of our question and answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Tom Nimbley for closing comments.
Thank you very much all for participating in the call today. I'm very, very proud of the organization. I'm very, very pleased with the results we've had. We look forward to hopefully being able to repeat that as we go forward and look forward to our next call. Thank you and have a great day.
Thank you. This does conclude today's conference. You may disconnect your lines at this time and thank you for your participation.