Enterprise Products Partners L.P.

Good day, and welcome to the Q1 2021 Enterprise Products Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to Randy Burkhalter, VP of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you, Christy. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the Enterprise Products Partners call to discuss first quarter 2021 earnings. Our speakers today will be Co-Chief Executive Officers of Enterprise's General Partner, Jim Teague and Randy Fowler. Other members of our senior management team are also in attendance for the call today. During the call, we will make forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 21E of the Securities and Exchange Act of 1934, based on the beliefs of the company as well as assumptions made by and information currently available to the enterprise's management team. Although management believes that the expectations reflected in such forward-looking statements are reasonable, it can give no assurance that such expectations will prove to be correct. Please refer to our latest filings with the SEC for a list of factors that may cause actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements made during this call. And so with that, I'll turn the call over to Jim. Thank you, Randy. Thank you.

Our businesses continued to perform extremely well during the first quarter. We reported $2.2 billion of adjusted EBITDA. Distributed cash flow was $1.7 billion, and a 1.8 times coverage, and we retained $700 million. Andy's going to get into all the numbers deeper. We couldn't be prouder of our people. Time and time again, whether they're faced with a financial crisis or over 50 inches of rain from Hurricane Harvey at Montbellevue, a combination pandemic global price war that was immediately followed by a record Gulf Coast hurricane season, or a historic winter storm that shuts down virtually the entire state, our people prepare, adjust when needed, and they execute and make things happen. And for that, we are extremely grateful. Relative to the winter storm, forecasters did a great job of calling for a major, even historic event at least a week in advance. As the storm developed, every county in Texas, as you know, was under a winter storm warning. It rose in supplies across the state and affected the entire energy value chain. It impacted much of the generating capacity across the state, at one point even some of our nuclear. In spite of what you've heard in the press, Texas ended up counting on natural gas as wind generation dropped to near zero at the height of the storm. Our people prepared, packing our pipelines, buying extra gas to prepare for freeze-offs, scheduling our assets, and staging themselves in hotels and on cots at our plants. Most of our Texas assets, including our assets at Montbellevue and the Ship Channel, were offline at the height of the storm, mostly intentionally, we work to make BTUs available through deep rejection, bypass, and plant shutdowns. We sell natural gas to electricity generators, natural gas utilities, and industrial customers to assist them in meeting their needs. Our gas business, which includes pipelines, gas storage, small gas storage, and gas marketing is integral to what we do in many of our other businesses. but it's nowhere near the size of, say, a Kinder Morgan or Energy Transfer. During the freeze, our natural gas team, including the commercial gas control and gas marketing and schedulers, worked tirelessly. They knew to start preparing long before the temperatures dropped. Then they worked around the clock for days to deal with the problems and the opportunities, and it shows in our results. As to power, our people took proactive steps to minimize our exposure to $9,000 a megawatt hour power through participation in ERCOT's LARS program, which redeploys industrial power supplies to human needs and by voluntary shedding a significant amount of load. Today, Texas and Louisiana Gulf Coast petrochemical plants and refineries have completed repairs and have increased rates with both industries realizing some of the best margins we have ever seen. As we emerge from COVID-related lockdowns, global demand continues to improve for crude, NGLs, primary petrochemicals, and refined products. Diesel demand actually exceeds pre-COVID norms in much of the world, and gasoline demand is picking up, already exceeding 2019 levels in some countries. Downtown Houston is far from fully occupied, But traffic in this city is at times already back to what some term is awful. For the first time in my life, I think traffic jams are beautiful. Since April the 20th, 2020, we have been outspoken about why we felt oil prices would go up dramatically. While economic recoveries aren't uniform, when you look at the world's largest economies, demand has moved up and all indications are that even Europe isn't far behind. Moving on to capital, we continue to expect our growth in capital investments for 21 to be $1.6 billion and another $440 million for sustaining capital. The rest of 21, we continue to be on schedule to complete the expansion of our Acadian gas system to Gillis, Louisiana, which serves LNG markets, the expansion of our ethylene and propylene pipeline systems, and the construction of our natural gasoline hydrotreater. Our growth capital in 22 and 23 projects currently sanctioned is $800 million and $400 million, respectively. Longer-dated capital commitments are largely around our PDH-2 plan, expected online in 2023. We know that we're in the show-me state for this project because of the difficulties we had in our first PDH. I will tell you, I have a high level of confidence that PDH 2 will be highly successful and will generate consistent cash flow. As to PDH 1, we recently completed a 46-day turnaround. It was on time, and it was under budget. The restart went exactly as planned, and the unit is operating above design capacity. Sometimes I read reports that make me think investors are worried that we're running out of projects. And then the next report I pick up makes me think investors are worried that we're going to spend a dollar. We have never been afraid of opportunity, but we definitely respect this part of the cycle and our expectation for returns on new projects have moved forward. Going forward, I think you should probably think about our capital run rate as somewhere between $1.5 and $2 billion. I hear a lot about energy evolution. Note that we don't say transition. We're thinking of things like hydrogen and carbon capture utilization and storage, not just as threats but as potential opportunities. Angie Murray, our Senior Vice President of Technology Services, has taken on additional responsibilities around a deep dive technical analysis of low carbon technologies currently under discussion. Over the last two years, Angie and her team have worked closely with operations and our big data team, identifying several areas to significantly cut our operating, in some cases, our capital costs. What we're finding is these are not one-time hits, but are to be thought of as continual improvement. In addition to those responsibilities, Angie's role has been expanded to include a focus on evolutionary technology and for lower carbon opportunities. We have to have a strong technical focus on these opportunities. For example, for hydrogen, outside of the rather large presence we have today through our petrochemical assets, ING's evolutionary technologies team, that's a mouthful, Randy, is leading the initiative to research and analyze where we might go next in applications for things like transportation and storage. And your team is also responsible for helping us understand the technology behind sequestering our own carbon. In addition to hydrogen and carbon capture, there are other new low-carbon areas that could be a fit. For example, as a member of the Alliance to End Plastic Waste, we are clearly interested in the different technologies used to recycle plastics and what opportunities might exist for enterprise in handling the resultant products. As to new initiatives, we always have commercially sensitive things we're working on, but most of the things we're working on expand and, in some cases, converts what we already have. Think in terms of product upgrade and repurposing underutilized assets done in a manner that gives our customers new markets. Some of these initiatives even fit the definition of energy evolution. However, profitability will always be a prerequisite. Things are never typical, but what has become typical is regardless of the environment, enterprise people perform. The groundwork for our performance today was created 5 to 10 years ago, and what we will become in 5 to 10 years is being created today. A natural extension of our value chain in 5 to 10 years could very well be things like hydrogen transportation and storing, storage are sequestering carbon and transporting, storing, and upgrading the byproducts produced from recycled plastics. While nothing is off the table, demand for fossil fuel and its derivatives will continue to grow, and that will remain our foundation. And with that, Randy, you got it.

Okay. Thank you, Jim. Good morning, everyone. Starting off with the income statement, as far as on the first quarter, net income attributable to common unit holders for the first quarter of 2021 was $1.3 billion or 61 cents per unit on a fully diluted basis. This compares to $1.4 billion or 61 cents per unit on a fully diluted basis for the first quarter of 2020. Net income for the first quarter of this year was reduced by a non-cash asset impairment charge of of approximately $66 million, or 3 cents per fully diluted unit. The impairment charges were largely related to our legacy coal seam natural gas gathering system and Val Verde treating facility in the San Juan Basin that was held for sale at the end of the quarter. Notably, net income for the first quarter of 2020 included a $187 million, or 8 cents, benefit from deferred income tax benefits. Moving on to cash flows, cash flow from operations was $2 billion for both the first quarters of 21 and 20. Free cash flow for the 12 months ending March 2021, that is cash flow from operations, less cash used for investing activities, netting out any contribution from our JV Partners was $3.1 billion. This compares to $3.4 billion for the comparable trailing 12 months. We generated over $350 million of discretionary free cash flow in the first quarter. That's cash flow from operations minus capital investments and also minus cash distributions to partners. We believe we remain on track to be discretionary free cash flow positive for the entire year. We declared a distribution of 45 cents with respect to the first quarter to be paid on May 12th. This distribution represents a 1.1% increase compared to the first quarter of 2020. While we settled $14 million of unit repurchases in early January, these were associated with open market purchases in the month of December and really just the settlement of them. We did not execute any new additional unit purchases in the first quarter of 2021. EPD's distribution reinvestment plan and employee unit purchase plan purchased a combined $33 million of EPD units in the open market during the first quarter. This was equivalent to about 1.6 million EPD units purchased off the open market. Our payout ratio, which we define as the sum of cash distributions and buybacks, as a percent of our cash flow from operations over the trailing 12 months was 68% as of March 31, 2021. As we set on our earnings call in February, while we currently expect to generate discretionary free cash flow for 2021, our first priority is financial flexibility until we get better visibility on regulatory, energy, and tax policies of this new administration in Congress. We believe it would be premature to provide any distribution growth and buyback guidance at this time. Enterprise has a long history of responsibly returning capital to limited partners. It continues to be one of our primary financial objectives and has been since our IPO. And in fact, since our IPO, we have returned approximately $40 billion of capital to our limited partners, including $4.2 billion in 2020. Moving on to capitalization, our total debt principal outstanding was approximately $29 billion at the end of the first quarter. Assuming the first call date for our hybrids or the final maturity date for the hybrids, the average life of our debt portfolio was is 16.7 years and 21 years, respectively. Our effective average cost of debt is 4.4%. In the first quarter, we repaid $1.325 billion of maturing senior notes using the remaining proceeds from our August 2020 senior notes offering and proceeds from the issuance of short-term notes under our commercial paper program. Adjusted EBITDA for the first quarter of 21 was $2.2 billion and $8.3 billion for the 12 months ended with the first quarter. Our consolidated leverage was 3.3 times after adjusting debt for the partial equity credit on the hybrid securities given by the rating agencies and further reduced for unrestricted cash. This is at the lower end of our leverage target of 3.5 times plus or minus a quarter, or our target leverage range of 3.25 to 3.75 times. Our consolidated liquidity was approximately $5.1 billion at the end of the quarter. That includes availability under our existing credit facilities and approximately $229 million of unrestricted cash on hand. At this time, we do not foresee the need to access the debt capital markets in 21. However, depending on market conditions, we may elect to approach the debt capital markets later this year to pre-fund our 2022 maturities. And with that, Randy, I think we can open up with questions.

Thank you, Randy. Christy, we're ready to take questions from our audience. Before you do that, let me remind our listeners, if you would, to please limit your questions to one question and one follow-up question. Okay. Thank you. Christy, go ahead.

Certainly. And as a reminder, to ask a question, press star, then the number 1 on your telephone keypad. And your first question is from Jeremy Tonette of J.P. Morgan.

Hi. Good morning. Good morning. I recognize it's probably kind of a complex question with URI, but just wanted to know if you guys could provide any color as far as net-net, what type of benefits you saw from the storm response during the quarter and then just to isolate kind of base business trends, I guess, you know, how you see volumes recovering or not recovering at this point.

Jeremy, I'm going to look at Chris. I think around 250 million? Yeah.

Did that answer, Jeremy? And just the base business then outside of that, do you still see it kind of recovering at this point or just trying to get a hold of that?

Absolutely, we see it recovering. If you listen to my script, we're bullish. I mean, you think about crude oil since April of last year has gone up, what, damn near $100 a barrel from a negative 37 print? Got it. Yeah, what's Goldman saying, $80 in the third quarter?

Got it, got it. And maybe just a quick one on energy evolution. Just wondering, you know, as it relates to carbon capture right now, if you see the 45Qs being kind of sufficient policy to make projects economic, such as gas processing there, and, you know, what other opportunities could this breed? I mean, could you have underutilized Permian pipelines move CO2 from the Gulf Coast into the Permian for injection there and kind of tightening, you know, takeaway market? Just trying to think of what's possible here.

Yeah, I think everything's possible, Jeremy. We're not taking anything off the table. What we have done is, you know, we read everybody's going to net whatever, you know, past my lifetime. What we've decided is we've got to take a step back, and that's why Angie's taken the lead on just looking at the technology associated with all of these different possibilities and understanding the technology and and then working with our people in other parts of the company, like our commercial groups and our operations groups, saying, how does that fit here? Hell, if we just captured our own carbon at Mont Bellevue and sequestered it, it would be a nice thing.

Grant? Yeah, quite a bit. Yeah, nothing really to elaborate more on what Jim said. We're still evaluating all of our pipelines, all of our opportunities here. Everything's on the table, and I really just got a focused effort on it now and coordinated throughout the organization.

Got it. Great. I'll leave it there. Thank you.

Thank you. Your next question is from Christine Cho of Barclays. Good morning.

Good morning. Can you give us an update on your outlook for crude production overall and specifically in the Permian market? you know, how that has evolved over the last couple of months, especially with the big surge in private activity in the Permian, how that shapes your volume and price outlook for the rest of this year and maybe next year. And also curious to the competition for getting the barrels from a lot of these private producers, most of which seem to have only one rig operating. And my guess is they don't have much contracted from the machine perspective, but any color would be helpful.

Tony, I'll take the first part and then Brent may add on the second part. Permian volumes, like everything else, it's hard to look at the latest EIA reports and make too much sense of it. But the long and the short of it is if you look at frack crews in the Permian, they're back to about almost 80% of their all-time highs. The facts are the Permian is leading everything. The challenge there is every other basin, if we think about oil, is lagging. It's really all about Permian. So where we are is we originally said at our analyst meeting we thought that we'd have somewhere short of 100,000 barrels December year end 20 to 21 of increase across the United States. We think that number at this point is low. It's probably closer to 250 in the year 2021. We also said that we thought in 22 and 23 that we'd have about a million and a half barrels of production increase across the United States. And it's hard to say, is that going to happen in 22 or is it going to happen in 23 or what? Very difficult. But if you add that all up, that's 1.8 million barrels a day of incremental crude over a three-year period, with it very much loaded in 22 and 23. That's a pretty good run rate, and it's very much dominated by the permutation. And, Brent, I'll ask you how you think the privates are faring and how they're contracting.

From our side, we've seen these guys very active. At this point, really, it comes down to geography and where your assets are. I'd venture to guess we've done more deals with privates in the last nine months than we probably did over the last nine years. They're not big capital projects, but they fill up pipeline capacity. They fill up processing capacity. On the crude side, there's some production that's close to our lines. We could do some gathering deals with them, but they're A lot of this stuff is acreage dedication, but we feel very good about their activity and where that's going to end up.

Got it. That's really helpful. And then, you know, earlier this year you guys mentioned that you still expect to capture, you know, $500 million to $600 million of margin from, you know, outside spread opportunities and marketing. With the first quarter out of the way, and I think to Jeremy's question, you said, you know, $250 million from weather impact. Is that $500 million to $600 million still something you're comfortable with, and where should we expect the remainder to come from in the remaining quarters?

I'll start, and then I'll let somebody else jump in. This is Jim. No, I'm not comfortable with $500 million or $600 million. I think we might be approaching that now. So I think it could likely be a little more than that.

What do you think, Randy? Yeah, Christine, because a little bit I go back to something Jim said. Really, I believe he said it on our fourth quarter call of 2020 and our fourth quarter call of 2019, that over the last few years, what we call outsized spreads have ranged $500 to $800 million. And I think his comment was we seem to always find a way to come in and capture opportunities. And, you know, the way this year is shaping up and what we see, I think we may get to that and be back in that same range again this year as well.

Great. Thank you.

Thank you. Your next question is from Jean Ann Salisbury of Berenstain. Hi, good morning.

You were at 100% FRAC utilization at the end of last year. Should we expect another FRAC FID pretty soon?

Gina, this is Brent. That's not in our plans.

All right. You guys have a way to send it to third-party FRACs or something, I guess, if you go over your capacity.

I think if you look at our system and how we optimize our system and what the variable costs are for us to go access additional capacity, the economics are hard to justify for a new FRAC for enterprise.

Got it. And I think you all recently estimated getting approval for the spot terminal in the third quarter of this year. Would you need to see some of the rebound, I think, that Tony just talked about in a previous question? Like, would you need to see volumes to start going up to continue to pursue that, or you're happy with the project as it is, and as soon as you get the approval, you wouldn't need to see the rebound first?

This is Jim. I think we're happy with where it is. We're also in discussions with some other companies as to coming in as joint venture partners, and it wouldn't surprise me if we didn't do that.

Great. That's all for me. Thank you. Thank you. Your next question is from Tristan Richardson of Truist Securities.

Hi. Good morning, guys. Just with the production commentary Tony and Brent discussed and the downstream demand recovery you're seeing, does this put us on a path for a stronger 2022, even despite sort of the non-recurring margin capture we saw in the first quarter?

Yeah, I'll start off. Yes, I think we're pretty bullish. I mean, I think Tony said it best. We've always had debates between Tony, and I've always been more bullish than he is. And, you know, it's non-recurring or whatever we call it, and Randy just said it. When you do it every year, why is it non-recurring? It just happens somewhere else. If it's not gas marketing, it's NGL marketing. If it's not contango, it's backwardation. We have a footprint that lends itself to when there are issues, we have opportunities.

That's helpful. And then you talked about some of the carbon capture, hydrogen, renewable gas opportunities. Should we think of the $1.5 to $2 billion of high-level sort of annual spend as including some of these more energy evolution-oriented projects or technologies, or would a project that comes in under that sort of umbrella be incremental to that annual number? I think the annual number is all inclusive. Thank you, guys. Appreciate it.

Thank you. Your next question is from Shaner Gershuni of UBS.

Hi. Good morning, everyone. You know, Jim, it was very good to hear about the initiatives that you're embarking upon and Angie's new responsibilities. You know, maybe a follow-up to Tristan's question here. So when I'm sort of thinking about enterprise in terms of FID and CapEx, you have 800 million FID for 2022, and you gave the $1.5 to $2 billion longer-term number. If I understood Tristan's question correctly, some of that may include some of these evolutionary opportunities. Can we assume that's going to be the case for the 22 calendar year? You know, how far down the path are we in terms of Angie's new responsibilities? Are there any technologies in particular that, you know, are in the later innings that would get us closer to FIDing, whether it's hydrogen or whether it's carbon capture? I'm just wondering if you can give us a little color on that.

This is Graham. We're still – identifying what those projects are. Always our first opportunity is to really take the low-hanging fruit, utilize existing assets, and minimize the capital and get a big bang for the buck with the assets that we have. Over the longer term, we'll develop probably more extensive projects as the technology improves and becomes economical. So at this point, we're really looking at how do we capture the biggest benefit with the assets that we have.

You know, we produce how much hydrogen, Graham, 150 million?

About 150 million. 150 million a day.

So we use 40, 50 million a day, something like that?

Yeah, we're looking to use more of that. We're looking at technology that allows us to reuse a lot more of that at our Montbellevue facility. It's a big bang for the buck on the emissions, but it doesn't cost us a lot of capital. And those are the type of projects that we're really trying to move forward with as quickly as possible.

So if we can optimize what we have within our own system and then let it evolve to see what other commercial opportunities might evolve from that. Carbon capture, if we can sequester our own carbon, then what other opportunities evolve from that? We're not going to announce a CO2 pipeline out of the Permian today, but who knows down the road.

Now, that makes a lot of sense. I appreciate the color there. And maybe as kind of a follow-up on kind of your current existing business, you know, I was wondering if we – and I'm not sure if this is a Jim or Tony question here, but can we talk about the, you know, kind of where you see the direction for hydrocarbons right now? We have upstream companies that are looking to be disciplined, you know, with respect to growth, so kind of more muted companies. At the same time, you have changing consumption patterns, whether it's energy transition or whether it's just, you know, commutes post-pandemic. You know, is exports the path that you see forward to spot, give enterprise an opportunity to kind of optimize your asset footprint where you move crude to spot, add more LPG and ethane export capacity in the channel? You know, do you consider exporting refined products? I was just wondering if you can opine on that, if you can.

I'll take it. You know, the forecast of energy economists of late, many of them, a large portion of them are showing that the world will be back to 100 million barrels by the end of 2021. And you see it in diesel consumption just because of the amount of money there is and pent-up demand, and now you're seeing it in gasoline comment Jim made in his script. Glad to hear him say that because that That is the case around this town. While downtown is somewhat sparse, it's amazing at traffic levels. There are no cars on the car lots for sale around Houston. I mean, there are some, but there's a tremendous shortage. People have money. I don't know if you've noticed, but the savings rate in the United States has doubled. Those are meaningful stats. So then we look at the news. We see what's going on in India. which is not real positive for India. But at the end of the day, the U.S. and others are pitching in to get vaccine to India. Europe is going to catch up. We just look at the world and we look at the change in GDP from 2020, 2021, and the potential for 2022. There's no way to deny the numbers. They're very meaningful. So do I think that hydrocarbon demand in the world we're going to see all-time highs probably in 2022 could well happen. I'll say I'd be surprised if it didn't. Randy, you feel different?

Yeah, you know, a little bit. We'll come in and again, a little bit of a thing that we talk about is you still have 3 billion people, almost 40% of the world living in energy poverty, meaning, you know, cooking with with not having access to clean cooking. So either cooking with charcoal or cooking with wood and leading to four or five million deaths a year with in-home pollution. So there's still a huge need just to improve human life. And I think we've seen it over the last hundred years that nothing has improved human life better than the products that come from natural gas and oil production.

And I think relative to exports, I'm going to start a little bit and then I'm going to hand over to Brent. But where do you think, let's think long term in that regard, and where do you think the U.S. is going to go as far as electric vehicles and hybrids? You know, certainly we're going to have more of them. We're going to have efficiency standards on our gasoline. We're going to do more from an industrial standpoint here. But I don't talk to as many foreign customers as Brent does, but the message is always the same. We see them on Zoom calls. We see them in person now, and they want to know that we believe that the U.S. producer is in it to win it long term.

I think that's the question is, I mean, do you believe that the U.S. is going to increase production on crude NGLs, and are there economics for them to do that? And then at that point, if you believe that, you believe demand here in this country is staying flat to declining, then what's the most efficient and effective way to get to the water? So when you look at the projects that we have that we've talked about in the past, you guys talk about spot, you know, that's the most efficient way to get crude oil to the water. Now, there's some contractual issues that exist right now, but those will go away. and that project is more strategic to our upstream system, and that's why we like it. On the NGL side, we still believe in NGL production and that, frankly, it has to price to export. So there's different ways that once these things happen that we can optimize the system.

Great. Perfect. Really appreciate the expanded discussion. Thank you very much, and that's all for me today.

Thank you. Your next question is from Michael Bloom of Wells Fargo.

Thanks. Good morning, everyone. Just maybe stay on the exports for a minute. I'm wondering if you can give us any kind of real-time look into what you're seeing in terms of LPG export demand in light of the surge of COVID cases in India.

What are we exporting?

This month is...

16 million, Justin?

It's around there. So it's not what you saw in fourth quarter, and there's some balancing going on right now. I don't know if it's much. The demand's there long term, but if you look at just what prices have done on propane, first quarter, 20, it was 37 cents. Fourth quarter, it was 57 cents. First quarter, 21, it was 90 cents. So markets work, and saw the backwardation in some of the LPG markets. And so I think you saw some deferrals or you got some cancellations. And then ultimately, this is how this is going to balance until production starts doing what Tony has talked about in the past. So we've seen some drop off in India, but certainly China has been able to step up and help fill that gap.

Got it. My second question is, really relates to pipeline capacity rationalization. You talked a bit about that at your analyst day, and I'm wondering if you could tell us, are there any discussions going on behind the scenes within the industry to make this happen, or do you think it's just something that's going to be very difficult because there's just too many hurdles to actually achieving it, either yourselves or for the industry?

You're talking about repurposing pipelines, Michael? Pipeline rationalization, however it could get done. You're referring to some of Brent's comments on the last earnings call. Correct. Yeah. I hesitate to have Brent speak for himself. We're looking at repurposing for sure, and I think you'll see more of that. What Brent was saying last quarter is, as he was saying, Brent, there's some of these guys that are going to have problems.

If you look at pipelines that don't have contracts, you know, if somebody asks about CO2 being repurposed, I mean, that looks like a good project if you don't have contracts and you're exposed to an arc from a market to another market that's fairly flat. All the Permian capacity is very competitive, regardless of the commodity. And, you know, no different... Another company is Enterprise, tries to figure out the most efficient ways to move NGLs and crude oil in our system. And, you know, we have a seminal pipeline that's in crude service, and we have an NGL pipeline that, frankly, we only own two-thirds of. So there's different ways that we can, as Enterprise, try to rationalize and optimize our capacity to the benefit of Enterprise. As far as the others, I assume they're doing the same thing.

Your contracts on crude oil go out to 28.

We are glad our contracts go out there, yeah.

Thank you. Your next question is from Keith Stanley of Wolf Research.

Hi, good morning. I wanted to ask on capital allocation, and Randy, you said, again, that you wanted flexibility on redeploying free cash flow early in the year, and highlighted just uncertainty on federal policies, including, I think you said, tax policies. Can you just elaborate on what you're mainly focused on in the new administration's infrastructure and related tax plan or any other potential policy changes you're focused on for capital allocation?

Keith, when you come in and you look at what's been introduced thus far this year, and one of those things you better look at the newspaper every day to keep in touch, You know, in the last 100 years, there's really been three big moves in tax policy, and that was the New Deal. It was the Reagan-era tax policy. And now, as we emerge into the Biden era, this is like the third major tax swing that we've seen in 100 years. And so I think we're paying attention to see you know, which of these proposals actually make it into legislation and then actually get passed. And I think we'll be a lot smarter three months, six months from now than we are today. And we think it's just responsible to, you know, let's come in and focus on financial flexibility. And, again, we'll be a lot smarter here in three to six months.

Okay. I guess I'm just curious, like, from being an MLP, just how you're thinking. Are you thinking the tax policy changes could affect you directly or just any further thoughts on the tax piece of that?

Yeah, Keith, honestly, we've got a 180 of possibilities out there. You know, you've got this Finance Our Energy Future Act, which is bipartisan legislation that's been introduced on the House and the Senate. that is actually taking existing MLP tax law and really expanding the scope of it to bring in new activities as qualified earnings, such as handling some of this green or blue hydrogen coming in and being able to get into renewables, whether it's wind or solar energy, and some of these other activities. So I actually would be broadening the scope of what qualifies as earnings for an MLP. On the other side of the equation, you know, there's been a proposal that came out of Senate Finance Committee. It is not bipartisan. It is partisan. And I think it's actually legislation that's been introduced at least a couple of times before to but never went anywhere. And with that one, it would come in and take, you know, business activities that handle fossil fuels, so what we do today, and you would no longer be qualified for pass-through treatment and you would be taxed as a C-Corp. So really there's, you know, the range of possibilities is 180 degrees in here, and, you know, I think we'll be spending a good bit of time up in D.C., Some of the legislation is just sort of counter to what some of the objectives that you hear are, whether, again, this coming in and taking traditional MLPs and then making them subject to taxation sort of goes counter to what we're trying to do with that Finance Our Energy Future Act. It's sort of counter to that. It's sort of counter to the infrastructure bill, too, that you're out here with a package trying to promote infrastructure, but it seems like it's counter to infrastructure. And finally, the last thing it seems like it might be counter to is this whole pivot to Asia. One of the reasons we've been able to, as a country, I think, are able to pivot to Asia is the energy security that the United States has and that we're not relying on the Middle East. So Some of what we're seeing out there on the tax front is there seems to be some inconsistency on some of the proposals, but I think this will be an active year in D.C.

Thank you. That's a very helpful color. Second question, I guess it's kind of summing up some of the earlier questions, but last quarter you guys for the first time indicated 2021 EBITDA could be kind of flattish versus 2020 EBITDA. You had a pretty good Q1 with some storm benefits and you've pretty positive tone on the macro environment and on marketing potential and differentials for this year. Is it fair to assume 21 EBITDA at this point is now tracking better than 2020 or just any rough sense how to think about the year?

Yeah, Keith, really, I think we'll just stick with our guidance. We'll let you guys model it up. You know, we don't provide formal guidance, not really looking to start on this call. But you do a great job as well with some of your peers. So we'll pass on that. Okay. Thank you.

Thank you. Your next question is from Michael Lapides of Goldman Sachs.

Hey, guys, thanks for taking my question. It's actually a little bit of a follow-on on thinking about D.C. and legislation. Just curious, I mean, Congress is pretty divided. Few people think a 28% tax rate happens. Most think it's a lower number than that. But it's also, we're 18 months out from the next election in a very divided Congress. How long do you wait, right? Like, we may have uncertainty for a long time. Legislation is hard. When you're thinking about capital allocation, at what point do you say, you know, we start ramping the process because, to be blunt, D.C. may take some time?

Yeah, I hear you on that, but it seems like this is a, let's just say this is a noteworthy Congress and a noteworthy time. And, you know, we've got the luxury that we can come in. And I think if we come in and we see, you know, good capital projects, we're going to allocate our capital there. But to come in and say anything beyond that, I think we'd like to see what tax policy looks like. And, again, I think in three to six months we'll be a lot smarter.

Got it. Okay. And then one last question, just curious. If you move forward with spot, how should we think, I mean, given the fact, I don't know, we're exporting as a nation, what, two and a half to three and a half million barrels a day, just depending, you know, what week we're looking at. And we have a lot more capacity than what we're actually exporting. How do you think that ripples through the broader supply and demand matrix for existing export facilities, including some of your own?

I think contracts matter. That's going to take some time. But, you know, that project has a long runway. But, I mean, there's no question that crude export capacity is overbuilt. But I do think it will do it the most efficient way. It will do it the most economic way. And, frankly, when you look at who's producing crude oil now and it's larger type companies, At the end of the day, I do believe they want to deal with larger companies on the service side, and they do want to do it the most efficient way.

Got it. Thank you, guys. Much appreciated.

Thank you. Your next question is from Michael Cusimano of Heikinen Energy.

Hey, good morning. I wanted to first talk about the propylene business. Propylene from FRAC seems to be doing really well. Can you just maybe talk about it? to your expectations for that business for the rest of the year and maybe your outlooks on spreads also for the rest of 2021.

Chris, you want to take it?

Sure. The outside spreads that we've seen over the last several months really are a result of the hurricanes and the winter freeze. So we think things are going to normalize here. But we're bullish overall, the need for primary petrochemicals, and it goes to the same story as LPG, just the improving quality of life around the world.

Got it. Okay. And then as a follow-up, I wanted to talk about that $1.6 billion CapEx number. Is there anything you're looking at for 2021 that could move that higher or any risk to that number?

Jim, I don't think so.

Okay, perfect. Well, thank you all. I appreciate it.

Thank you. Your next question is from Christine Cho of Barclays.

Hi. I just had a follow-up on the response to one of your earlier questions. You mentioned the possibility of repurposing a pipe to CO2 service. But I was under the impression that this is pretty difficult to do with a liquids pipeline and may be possible with a gas pipeline since the CO2 pipelines require thicker pipelines and a lot more compression. So curious as to your thoughts here and how capital intensive such a conversion could be.

Yeah, Christine, we were just using it as an example. We agree with you.

I think, Graham, pipelines come in all shapes and forms and some are suitable for conversion to CO2, and some aren't. And we have some that are.

Christine, we're not making any announcements.

Right, right. I just was curious as to how that would work in actuality. But okay, great. Thanks.

Christy, this is Randy. If there's no other questions, I think we can go ahead and give our listeners the playback information. And then also wanted to thank everyone for joining us today and have a good day. Thank you.

And ladies and gentlemen, to access a replay of today's call, you may dial 800-585-8367 and reference ID number 306-8988. Again, that number is 800-585-8367 and reference ID number 306. This does conclude today's conference call. You may now disconnect.