Plains All American Pipeline, L.P.

Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the PAA and PAGP first quarter 2022 earnings call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star 1 on your telephone. If you require any further assistance, press star zero. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Mr. Roy Lamoureux. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Chino. Good afternoon and welcome to Plains All-American's first quarter 2022 earnings call. Today's slide presentation is posted on the investor relations website under the news and events section at plains.com, where an audio replay will also be available following today's call. Important disclosures regarding forward-looking statements and non-GAAP financial measures are provided on slide two. And an overview of today's call is provided on slide three. The condensed consolidating balance sheet for PAGP and other reference materials are located in the appendix. Today's call will be hosted by Willie Chang, Chairman and CEO, and Al Swanson, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Other members of our team will also be available for the Q&A, including Chris Chandler, Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer, Jeremy Goebel, Executive Vice President and Chief Commercial Officer, and Chris Herbold, Senior Vice President, Finance, and Chief Accounting Officer. With that, I will now turn the call over to Willie.

Thank you, Roy. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us. Well, our business is off to a strong start to the year, reporting solid first quarter adjusted EBITDA attributable PAA of $614 million, which is above our previous expectations. Given the quarter performance and our outlook for the balance of the year, we are increasing our full year 2022 guidance for adjusted EBITDA by $75 million to plus or minus $2.275 billion, with a bias to the upside. This is primarily driven by constructive fundamentals and the associated benefits of a higher commodity price environment within both our crude and NGL segments. Al will provide more detail on our quarterly results and our full year outlook in his portion of the call. Current global events have highlighted and reaffirmed the importance of hydrocarbons in everyday life, spurring a renewed focus on energy security and the need for safe, reliable, and responsibly produced energy. The North American energy industry plays a critical role with abundance of resources, access to capital, a skilled labor force, and innovative technology. We believe the call on North American shale, more specifically the Permian, will remain strong for decades and that our integrated midstream asset base and business model will play a critical role connecting energy supply with global demand. As shown on slide four, we are executing on our levers for maximizing unit holder returns In the Permian, we continue to expect at least 600,000 barrels a day of production growth in 2022, of which we anticipate capturing approximately an incremental 280,000 tariff barrels per day on our Permian gathering systems year end of 21 to year end 22. As a result of our system flexibility and operating leverage, we have added an incremental 45,000 barrels a day of contracted short-term volumes to our Permian long-haul pipelines versus our full-year expectations in February. As Permian production continues growing beyond 22, we expect meaningful growth on both our gathering and long-haul systems. In our NGL segment, we expect continued growth in Western Canada gas production and improving NGL supply and demand fundamentals combined with a higher price environment. This drives our focus on optimizing and de-bottlenecking our existing facilities and operations to allow additional volume capture over the next several years. Additionally, we continue pursuing capital-efficient emerging energy opportunities, such as the recently announced MOU with Atura Power, which is a subsidiary of the Ontario government, to conduct a feasibility study which could result in adding hydrogen storage capability at our Windsor, Ontario, salt cavern storage facility. This would directly support Atura Power's Brighton Beach Generation Station and aligns with a larger hydrogen strategy outlined recently by the province of Ontario. Regarding our financial strategy, we expect to continue generating significant multi-year free cash flow and we will allocate this cash in a balanced manner to maximize unit holder returns. Our near-term focus will continue to prioritize debt reduction while also increasing cash return to equity holders and making disciplined capital investments. In that regard, we announced a $0.15 per unit annualized distribution increase last month, and we have cumulatively repurchased approximately $250 million of common equity under our repurchase program since inception. As shown on slides five and six, demand recovery contrasted against the multi-year backdrop of reduced upstream investment is causing a tight supply and demand tight supply and demand balance, resulting in global inventories drawing down and hovering at multi-year lows, all of which underpins a higher commodity price environment. The conflict between Russia and Ukraine has further exacerbated market tightness and increased commodity price volatility. We expect U.S. shale production, led by the Permian, will continue to be crucial to supplying and meeting global energy demand, with planes, integrated system and business model well-positioned to benefit and generate significant multi-year free cash flow. This is supported by our Permian gathering system and 4 million dedicated acres with approximately half of the total horizontal Permian rigs currently located on that acreage, our highly contracted long-haul pipelines and meaningful Permian operating leverage, as well as our existing critical infrastructure and other key producing North American basins. Furthermore, high levels of cash flow and strong distribution coverage position us to reach our leverage target mid-2023 with meaningful capacity to further increase cash returns to equity holders and drive strong unit holder returns both near and longer term. With that, I will turn the call over to Hal.