Energy Transfer LP

Good day, and welcome to Energy Transfer's Q2 2026 earnings conference call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please schedule a conference question for pressing the star key followed by zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, please press star then two. Please note, this event is being recorded. I'd now like to turn the conference over to Tom Long, CEO. Please go ahead.

Thank you, operator, and good morning, everyone, and welcome to the Energy Transfer Second Quarter 2026 Earnings Call. I'm also joined today by Mack McCree, Dylan Bramhall, and other members of the senior management team who are here to help answer your questions after our prepared remarks. Hopefully you saw the press release we issued earlier this morning as a reminder Our earnings release contains an update to guidance and a thorough MD&A that goes through the segment results in detail and we encourage everyone to look at the release as well as the slides posted to our website to gain a full understanding of the quarter and our growth opportunities. As a reminder, we will be making forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 21E of the Security Exchange Act of 1934. These statements are based upon our current beliefs as well as certain assumptions and information currently available to us and are discussed in more details in our form 10Q for the quarter ended June 30, 2026, which we expect to follow later this week. I'll also refer to adjusted EBITDA and distributable cash flow or DCF, both of which are non-GAAP financial measures. You'll find a reconciliation of our non-GAAP measures on our website. Let's start today with going over our financial results For the second quarter of 2026, we generated a just-evened dollar of approximately $5.1 billion compared to approximately $3.9 billion for the second quarter of last year. DCF, attributable to the partners of Energy Transfer, as adjusted, was approximately $2.6 billion compared to approximately $2.0 billion for the second quarter of 2025. These results were supported by strong performance and all of our business segments, including record midstream gathering volumes, NGL transportation volumes, NGL export volumes and crude oil transportation volumes for the quarter. And for the first half of 2026, we spent approximately $2.6 billion on organic growth capital in the intrastate, midstream, NGL refined products and interstate segments, excluding sun and USA compression capex. Turning to our 2026 adjusted EBITDA guidance, given our continued strong performance in the second quarter across all of our segments, we now expect our full year adjusted EBITDA to range between $18.8 billion and $19.1 billion, which is up approximately a half a billion dollars at the midpoint compared to our guidance range provided on last quarter's earnings call. Let's go to the organic products. Capital Guidance We now expect our 2026 organic growth capital expenditures to be between $5.6 and $5.9 billion, excluding Sun and USAC. Our growth capital spend remains aligned with the major themes driving our business today, including the increasing demand for natural gas and natural gas infrastructure to support the growing needs for power generation, growth in the Permian, and the growing global demand for natural gas and natural gas liquids. As a reminder, the majority of these growth projects are contracted under long-term commitments and expected to generate mid-teen returns and considerable earnings growth over the next decade or more. Beyond these projects, we have a significant backlog of opportunities that are expected to support future growth. Now turning to our results by segment for the second quarter, I'll start with NGL and refined products. Adjusted EBITDA was approximately $1.3 billion compared to approximately $1.0 billion for the second quarter of 2025. This increase included record exports out of both our Nederland and Marcus Hook terminals in the second quarter, in part driven by new chilling capacity placed into service last year at Nederland. In addition, we saw record throughput across our NGL pipelines related to higher Y grade and NGL throughput, as well as higher throughput at our Montbellevue fractionators. Results for the second quarter also included an increase of $212 million from higher premiums from the sale of NGLs for both export and domestic supply, as well as increased margins from our product optimization and blending operations. This also included gains related to our NGL and refined products inventory hedges, 27 million of which we anticipate will be offset in the fourth quarter of this year. For midstream, the adjusted EBITDA was approximately $884 million compared to approximately $768 million for the second quarter of 2025. This was due to record volumes in the Permian Basin. which increased 5% as a result of new processing placed into service and improved plant utilization. In addition, we saw an approximate $88 million increase due to higher NGL prices compared to last year. For our crude oil segment, Adjust Deep Agave was approximately $834 million compared to approximately $732 million for the second quarter of 2025. During the quarter, We saw continued growth across several of our crude pipelines, terminals, and gathering systems. Results also included an increase of $106 million related to favorable market conditions, including pipeline and export arbitrage, higher crude oil prices, and strategic petroleum reserve activity at our Nederland terminal. As a reminder, in the first quarter of this year, We had a benefit of approximately $60 million related to our crude inventory value that was offset by hedge losses in the second quarter. In the interstate natural gas segment, adjusted EBITDA was approximately $481 million compared to approximately $470 million for the second quarter of 2025. This increase was primarily due to increased parking, storage, and Liquids Revenue, as well as higher contracted volumes and utilization on several of our pipelines, including Panhandle Eastern, TransWestern and Florida Gas Transmission. And for our intrastate natural gas segment, adjusted EBITDA was approximately $377 million compared to approximately $284 million in the second quarter of 2025. This was primarily due to an increase of approximately $113 million from wider basis differentials as well as an increase of approximately $17 million from early volumes during the commissioning of the Hugh Brinson pipeline. This quarter's results once again demonstrate the quality of energy transfer's asset base and unique operating model and further strengthen our belief that the market fundamentally under appreciates the value of our business. Turning to an update on some of our major growth projects and starting with the natural gas side of our business, We are pleased to announce that our Hugh Brinson pipeline is now in commercial service with progress being made toward placing the full phase one capacity of 1.5 BCF per day in service. Hugh Brinson shipper contracts are coming online in stages based upon the contractually specified effective date in each agreement. We anticipate that Hugh Brinson will be capable of flowing the full phase one capacity by September the 1st of 2026 assuming pipeline commissioning activities continue to progress as scheduled. We continue to expect Phase 2, which includes additional downstream compression, to be in service in the first quarter of 2027 and to come in under budget. In addition, during the second quarter, we completed another 14-mile lateral off the Hugh Brinson Pipeline in Abilene, Texas, and is now ready for service. During the quarter, we also entered into an agreement with to construct the facilities required to provide natural gas to support previously announced 900 megawatt expansion at the AI Factory Campus in Adeline, Texas. Separately, we expect to see additional growth opportunities materialize in the region. Next, we're making good progress on our Desert Southwest Pipeline project. Work recently completed six in-person and two virtual scoping meetings along the proposed pipeline route throughout Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona. In addition, as a continuation of our comprehensive stakeholder engagement program, our teams continue to actively engage with elected officials, county leadership, landowners, and associated communities along the route with discussions remaining very positive. On our last call, we announced the Springville Lateral, which is an approximately 120-mile extension are existing transwestern pipeline and is expected to be in service in the fourth quarter of 2029. This 30-inch pipeline will have a capacity of approximately 625 million cubic feet per day and extend itself to natural gas power generation that is expected to replace two coal-fired plants. We have now locked in pipe and compression costs, and outreach is underway with tribal, state, and federal stakeholders. In Oklahoma, The first of our four connections to serve new power plant loads went into service earlier this year. The next two are ready for service with remaining expected to be in service in the fourth quarter of 2028. In total, these will provide approximately 300 million cubic feet per day of new demand growth. In addition, we are finalizing negotiations to serve approximately 250 million cubic feet per day of new power plant demand in Oklahoma. Overall, we're now seeing interest from customers in increasing the commitments that they have previously made for our natural gas services to large data centers and power plants at or near these sites. This includes two customers in Texas who recently added a combined 100 million cubic foot per day to their contracts. We expect this trend to not only continue, but grow in scale. We're highly confident in our ability to reach FID on many more of these type of opportunities and remain in advanced negotiations with customers to provide significant volumes associated with our natural gas business in Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana, Ohio, Illinois, and many other states along our pipeline network. Now looking at the Permian processing expansions, our Mustang draw one plant was placed into service in June. and we are already running near capacity for our Midland Basin processing complex. We continue to expect our Mustang Draw 2 plant to be in service in the fourth quarter of this year. Looking at our liquids business, in June we announced approximately 240,000 barrel per day ethane export expansion at our Needland terminal to meet additional customer demand. The project will also provide an incremental 55,000 barrels per day of LPG capacity. In addition, we'll be expanding our Mont Bellevue to Nederland pipeline system to service the increased refrigeration capacity and two additional NGL ship docks. The project is expected to be placed into service in stages beginning in 2028, with the docks expected to be in service in mid-2029. 100% of the ethane export capacity has been committed under long-term agreements running into the 2040s and 80% of these volumes are expected to be delivered to markets in Asia that are outside of China. Growth capital for the project is expected to be slightly over $1 billion and this 2026 capital expenditure was previously included in our growth capital guidance. In the second quarter, we completed upgrades to our Lone Star Express NGL pipeline which provides more than 90,000 barrels per day of incremental Permian NGL takeaway capacity on the pipeline system and led to record wide grade volumes out of the Permian for the second quarter. As a result of our total deliverability into Montbellevue is now more than 1.3 million barrels per day and our Permian NGL takeaway pipelines are currently approximately 95% utilized. Also in the second quarter, We signed long-term transportation and or fractionation agreements for upwards of approximately 300,000 barrels per day on our wide-grade assets that extend into the 2030s. And at Mont Bellevue, our fractionators remained fully utilized in the second quarter. We expect volumes on our new Fract 9 to ramp up quickly upon its anticipated in-service late this year. Results for the second quarter were better than expected, with market volatility contributing to significant upside, in addition to the record volumes and strong base business performance. As we have previously said, additional upside to our forecast is expected to be dependent upon the duration and impact of market disruptions, and our business is uniquely positioned to capture these benefits should they continue. We continue to expect the ramp up of Mustang Draw, Hugh Brinson, and other projects to contribute to additional growth in 2026. With Hugh Brinson now capable of commercial service and the full phase one expected to be ready ahead of schedule, we expect it to provide significant future upsides and further establish energy transfers, natural gas pipeline business as the premier option for customers seeking dependable natural gas supply. With a large slate of growth projects under construction, We are extremely focused on project execution, as evidenced by Hugh Brinson. Completing these projects safely, on time, and on budget remains among our top priorities. We also remain very focused on capital discipline, targeting a long-term annual distribution growth rate of 3 to 5 percent, and maintaining our leverage targets of 4 to 4.5 times EBITDA. Our unmatched connectivity allows us to move energy from every major supply basin to major trading hubs, fire plants, data centers, city gates, industrial complexes, and other downstream markets throughout the U.S., as well as to international markets through our export terminals. This concludes our prepared remarks. Operator, please open the lineup for our first question.

Yes, thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question, you may press star then 1 on your telephone keypad. If you are using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. If any comment or question is unaddressed and you would like to withdraw it, please press star then 2. At this time, we pause momentarily to assemble the roster. And today's first question comes from Theresa Chen with Barclays.

Good morning and thank you for taking my questions. First, I'd like to congratulate Mackie on his retirement. Thank you, Mackie, for your many years of leadership. Looking at the fundamentals, if you wouldn't mind elaborating more on the drivers of the volumetric outperformance demonstrated across your segments in second quarter and how this outperformance helped Thank you so much. key variables are you looking at as you determine the effect of these disruptions on the remainder of your year?

Thanks, Teresa. This is Dylan. And let me try to address all that by taking us back and looking at the full first half of the year. So as most of you know, we increased guidance in the first quarter by $750 million. And that was really related to Approximately 600 million in Q1 results and 150 million from just stronger performance that we saw continuing through the balance of the year on our business. In this quarter, we're increasing another 550. Majority of this is strong beats across almost all segments this quarter. Midstream, intra, crude, we're all about 100 million roughly beats and NGL over 200 as we really saw just strong activity across the board on the NGLs, everything from Stronger export and domestic sales, higher fees across the docks, stronger blending margins. And so this is all setting up for a stronger second half of the year. Now, when we look at the plan, we expect the base business to remain strong. We expect volumes to pick up and grow across all our segments as we go through the back half of the year. There are a number of projects obviously coming online here that are going to help drive this. The early start to Hugh Brinson is super important to us. very pleased to get that online coming online as we are looking at that coming online early and under budget which we think is really important because you need to remember this is this is the same team these are the same folks that are going to be working on Desert Southwest so we think this is this is a great precursor to what we're going to deliver on that project as well but those contracts those are going to those are going to step up here as we go through the balance of the year and so We're really going to see the majority of that impact really starting January 1st as we get to full all the phase one contracts will be kicked in by then. Mustang Draw 1 and 2, Mustang Draw 1 is on. We're hitting new records in the Permian almost daily there as we really push these assets to full. And so we'll see that impact through the balance of the year. That'll flow through also into our NGL volumes. Mustang Draw 2 will come on late in the year. We'll expect that to fill up very quickly, but pretty limited impact to 2026. That'll be a big 27 push, same way as the Hugh Branson pipeline. And then Fract 9, additionally, late this year. Once again, we expect that to start filling up pretty quickly when that comes online, but it's happening late in the year, so limited 2026 impact there. So when you look at all these, the base business is strong. Expect that to continue through. Going over to the volatility, we've seen the wider spreads, the higher commodity prices that we all saw happen through Q1 and Q2. We don't really have much of that in our plan for the back half of the year. The more of this that continues to play out, I think, is setting us up to where, with some of this volatility, we can very easily achieve that high end of the guidance range.

Okay, thank you so much for that.

Please. Hey, Teresa, I'm sorry to interrupt. This is Mackie. Thanks for your nice comments, but let me summarize a little bit what he just said. The first half of this year shows the extreme benefit and value that our assets have in every condition. Our ability to move gas through our intra-interstate pipelines, west to east, east to west, from all major hubs, our ability to chill less ethane, more ethane, more propane, more butane. I think what happened of course the war had a lot to do with it but there's always weather variables whatever but I think it really showed the diversity of our assets and our ability to pivot and benefit from whatever is happening either domestically or internationally in a big way and I think our assets our people proved that the first half of this year.

Thank you and just to clarify Dylan In relation to the commodity price environment, the volatility that we've seen over the past few months, is the takeaway that without a significant uptick in volatility, your revised guidance is very achievable? And if we were to see this volatility persist or take higher, that would be additive to the updated range?

Yes, absolutely.

Great. Turning to your dry gas assets, great to see the progress on Hugh Brinson Phase 1 really coming in ahead of your own expectations, it sounds like. Can you provide some more color on how Desert Southwest is progressing, including permitting and overall project execution? Given the scale and visibility of this project, how has that development process progressed relative to your own expectations? And as you think about maximizing the value of that corridor in general, what opportunities exist to add incremental demand through laterals, power generation connections, data center load, and so on, off of Desert Southwest and Transwestern over time?

Hey, Trish, this is Mackie again. We were excited about Hugh Brinson and we're equally as excited about DSW. It's going to be a game changer, especially for that part of the world. It remains to be seen how much new markets developed. Even yesterday, we had a call from utility in southern New Mexico wanting to tie to us. So we'll see kind of the upside to New Mexico, but there's enormous growth in the Phoenix area and in Arizona. Grant and his team have done a great job on government relations getting out in front of this to all stakeholders all constituents whether it's the indigenous folks which are many different in that state and then all the both local and state and federal agencies were on top of that on a day-to-day basis as far as our expectations we're probably a little ahead of our expectations on survey permission and on making progress on getting this pipeline built Everything is going exceptionally well. As everybody knows, the steel was ordered a long time ago. The compression was ordered a long time ago. We've got the same team as Dylan mentioned with Mike and what his team has done on Hugh Brinson. We expect the same on DSW. So it's going to be a great benefit for our assets, for our partnership, for the southwest portion of the United States. And we're very excited and expect to bring that on time in the latter part of 2029.

Thank you.

Thank you. And the next trust constant, Jean Ann Salisbury with Bank of America.

Hi, good morning. Are you surprised that Waha basis has narrowed so quickly? And do you believe that there's still stranded gas in the Permian waiting to come online? And again, congrats on getting Hugh Brunson online early.

Yeah, I mean, I think it goes without saying that Waha's been hurt. and producers have been hurting. They've been hurting for quite a while. Everything's been bottled up there. And boy, Hugh Brinson has unleashed it. And I know there's another pipeline also that's coming online. It's not already. So common sense when you have all of a sudden a BCF growing to maybe four, four and a half BCF by the first quarter of next year, things are going to get better. And that's already proven itself. So this is not unexpected. It probably is narrowed quicker than we thought. which goes to the second part of your question. There's a lot of pent-up volume, a lot of shutting gas, a lot of ducts that they bring online and producers have been holding back. And this is really going to unleash production in a big way. Oil for sure, but on the gas front and the NGL front, volumes are going to grow exponentially. Who knows? If we can really fill up 4.5 BCF in the next year, we'll see. But we're pretty excited about, very excited about bringing that on and I know our customers are as well.

Very clear, thank you. And congrats on the recent ethane export expansion. Can you talk about how you expect that capacity to ramp? I know you talked about when the docks are coming in, but are there other limiters like VLEC builds or just the time for the international ethane crackers to come online? I don't know if those are new international ethane crackers, but any more you can give on how you expect that to ramp would be helpful.

Hey, yeah, this is Adam. So, you know, we've We timed it to where we expect the units to start up in mid-28 and then continue to ramp through mid-29. That coincides with what our expectation is from our customer, which these are new build crackers. So there will be a ramp reflective of them bringing two units online.

Very clear. Thanks, Adam. And congrats to you, Mackie.

Thank you. Thank you. And the next question comes from Keith Stanley with Wolf Research.

Hi, good morning. First, I want to go to, there's a reference in the release to expecting new gas pipeline announcements later this year for power customers. Are you referring to larger backbone type projects you're making progress on or more laterals for data center demand?

All of the above. We've got numerous opportunities. Some of you are aware of, some you're not. on laterals that are you know less than 15 or 20 miles some just a few miles and then yes we are working on another at least one large intrastate pipeline and we're also working on another interstate pipeline we're a little premature to talk about that very optimistic we'll get those to the finish line and hopefully we can talk more about those in November.

Okay great. Second question so The Green Chile project for Project Jupiter for Oracle, is the plan now to reroute around the New Mexico state lands and then looking forward for Desert Southwest? Can you talk about regulatory strategy for New Mexico and how the process for Desert Southwest should be different than what we saw with Green Chile?

Hey Keith, this is Adam. I'll take the first half and let Mackie jump in on the second half. but on Green Chili without getting into specifics you know we've been very focused on that project and you know won't go through exactly kind of what the process from here on is but we do and have been working with both the FERC and the BLM and all the stakeholders that are involved and are very confident that they understand the importance of these data center projects and the importance on the ability to execute through the regulatory process to be able to bring these These projects which are very important to our industry and the country online. And so we're in constant communication with them and are very confident this pipeline will be put into service and will be ultimately successful.

Yeah, and I'll answer the second part of that. The answer is no. We don't anticipate any similar type challenges on DSW. Primarily what the issue is, it's a data center. and as we know in this country for years and years there's been all these false beliefs about climate change and the world's coming to an end and a lot of those same environmental activists are also shifting over and now they're trying to stop data centers. So it's kind of become a four-letter word. We think Oracle has done a much better job of getting out the facts of how these are closed-loop systems. They're not using near as much water as being advertised. In this particular case they've actually gone to bloom technology which is a lot less emissions. So this, we believe, is much more of a data center focused kind of protest activity. But as Adam just said, we're confident we're going to get there. Maybe delayed a little bit from where we first anticipated, but we're going to get there. And as I said, DSW is moving along very well.

Very helpful. Thank you.

Thank you. Next question comes from Jeremy Tyatt with JP Morgan.

Hi, good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Mackie, wishing you the best of luck in retirement. Appreciate all your perspectives over the years. Just wanted to go back to the Permian a little bit more if we could. And as it relates to Hugh Brinson too, if you could just like help us think through, I guess, the rate of ramp there. Just trying to think of, you know, when that's going to be, you know, fully capable.

Yes, we really haven't changed that. Phase two, we still anticipate being on probably mid first quarter. Maybe as late as March 1st, but it could go sooner. Like I said, Mike and his team have done such a great job. We don't put anything past them being early. But right now, kind of mid second quarter. I'm sorry, mid first quarter.

Got it. But this could take commissioning flows in the fourth quarter, you know, early, like what we've seen with phase one.

Well, the last phase is predominantly compression, and so as we get that in, we'll be starting the commissioning very likely sometime in the latter part of January, early part of February.

Got it. That's helpful. Thanks. And just one last one, if I could. With regards to incremental Permian egress needs, how do you see things unfolding at this point as far as when the base would need more egress and where do you think that gas wants to go in you know how's ET's strategy there?

What a great question for us. Where does it want to go? You can't really ask a lot of companies that because they don't have the ability to get it to where people want it to go. A lot of the customers on Hugh Brinson are actually Florida customers so we'll take volumes wherever our Customers, our shippers wanted to go and we have such a vast capability to that of taking it from the Permian Basin, moving it to Phoenix as we just talked about, moving it to South Texas, moving it to the Dallas-Fort Worth area, to Carthage, Texas, of course to Houston Channel, I'm sorry, Katy Houston Ship Channel. So we have enormous capabilities of moving it west to east. As we've alluded, we also have a great capacity to move from east to west with some of our customers. Power Plants and Data Centers. We're wanting to source theirs from Katie in Carthage, which we can do and nobody else really can. So we're set up very well in Texas and likewise in Louisiana and going east. We have the enormous capability of taking an MMBTU from a field in southwestern Pennsylvania and delivering it to a customer on the coast of Louisiana or even to Florida. So the answer to that question is we will move volume and move MMBTUs wherever the customers want it to go.

Got it. That's very helpful. Thank you.

Thank you. And the next question comes from Jackie Cortis with Goldman Sachs.

Hi, thank you so much for the time. First, you pointed to some NGL recontracting into the 2030s. I was wondering if you could remind us what your recontracting exposure is for the remainder of, through the end of the decade. Are you seeing downward pressure on rates or has the expected influx of gas and those associated NGL volumes impacted market pricing or created some type of balance, more and the supply-demand dynamics.

Yeah, hey, this is Adam. So we're extremely excited about the progress that we made year-to-date on recontracting our Y-grade business out of the Permian. You know, we mentioned in our prepared remarks that in the last quarter we signed 300,000 barrels a day of Y-grade deals, and this plus what we're expecting out of the growth in our midstream segment coming from our affiliates, we feel like puts us in a really great position through the balance of the decade on our Y grade business where we now can kind of turn our focus towards expansion at Mont Bellevue and looking at things like potential new fracks, additional new ethane exports given that our Y grade business really is what feeds the beast. The second part of your question or first part around rates, we are recontracting at market rates and there has been more capacity brought online but we do believe that we've seen The bottom of those rates and that we expect going forward that all, you know, additional contracting will be at higher rates.

Got it. Appreciate that color. And then I guess sticking on recontracting, Enbridge did note a rerouting of MLO2, which does require capacity elsewhere relative to DAPL. Do you see other opportunities to leverage this asset with other projects being contemplated in Canada? And how does the 250 of open capacity impact your conversations for, you know, recontracting on that pipeline from here?

Yeah, this is Adam again. I'll start, you know, we still are believers in MLO2. We still think that project as envisioned and as presented to the market is ultimately going to win the day. DAPL is steel in the ground. MLO2 is a very executable project. But as far as pivoting to what we're focused on on DAPL, we're in conversations with all the Bakken producers and we're encouraged by how those are going But we're really re-envisioning how the DAPL ecosystem is going to be used going forward And like I said, ultimately, we think MLO2 comes back into that mix But don't forget that we previously announced the Southern Illinois Connector Project, which moves 100,000 barrels a day of Canadian Heavy for 15 years on the ECCO line. The work that we're doing to expand the ECCO line and to be able to facilitate that product movement allows us a lot more flexibility out of Patoka to the Gulf Coast to enable us to move Pad 2 volumes to Pad 3 volumes. And we expect to be able to optimize those flows and to capture incremental commercial opportunities through that Patoka South business.

Great, thank you so much. And congrats, Mackie.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And that's for the customer now, Gupta with UBS.

Congrats on a good quarter in the guidance race. I quickly wanted to ask you about the Hainesville shale. There's a clear resurgence over there, some M&A activity also, but you also have some very strong Hainesville assets in the form of, you know, both Tiger and Galfran. Can you talk about ET's leverage to the resurgence in Hainesville shale that they're seeing out there?

In Hainesville, yeah this is Mackie again. Yeah Hainesville as everybody knows lives and dies on gas. Oil has nothing to do with it so when we saw it peak out at 17 and a half or so BCF number years ago and fall off to 14 that's why it's coming back. I think We and probably most of the industry are very bullish on gas prices as you look out three or four years and beyond. So a ton of reserves in the Hainesville. We're extremely well situated with all of our pipes. We actually have four 42-inch pipes that run through northern Louisiana. A lot of those cases we're selling some of that capacity out at really good rates. And it's a flexible system. We actually move some gas from Perryville back into the marketplace and down Gulf Run to the south. So we're very well positioned with any kind of volume growth and we think we're going to continue to see volume growth in the Amesville for years to come.

Thank you. My quick follow-up is a little bit more of a macro. You remain very confident of the incremental nat gas demand. There's a little bit of a bearish thesis out there that gas turbines are taking longer to get delivered. Permits are getting delayed. But from your initial comments, it appears that everything is absolutely intact and the demand for nat gas for power remains incredibly strong. Can you comment a little bit about that? Thank you.

Yeah, this is Adam. We're just not seeing the slowdown. I mean, yes, we hear kind of the same things about permit delays and about some of these data centers getting delayed and building out. We alluded to it in our prepared remarks. One of the trends that we're seeing and we think is really great for us and for the industry is that in areas that these data centers are being built, they're now expanding in those same areas. These are areas which are friendly like Abilene and with the Stargate 1 project and then the Stargate 2 project immediately adjacent in Shackleford County. We expect more growth to happen in areas like that. You've seen the meta-announcement in Louisiana where they are increasing the capacity which they're building for their data center in an area that is obviously welcoming them. So we don't really see the slowdown. We do see some of the companies pivoting and looking more to where they're already building and they're already welcome versus new greenfield sites. Yeah, this is Max.

Let me add a little bit to that.

Yeah, I'll add a little bit to that. If you look at some of the projections we're now seeing in LNG data, Demand growing to early 2030s, 2031 to 36 BCF. That's about 16 BCF growth. We know what's going on in our systems with power plant growth as well as industrial growth. We're chasing markets like steel companies, two steel companies in two different states. There's a lot of industry, even Oklahoma, that we're chasing. So it's not just demand for power plants. It's demand for LNG. It's demand for population growth in the south. is the man for commercial business. I mean, it's everything. And it's hard not to be bullish on natural gas growth over the next 10 or 15 years.

Thank you so much.

Thank you. And the next question comes from Julian DeMille in Smith.

Hi, good morning. This is Andrew on for Julian. And thank you for taking the question. um maybe just two on my front you know one um you know with the data center interest that we're seeing you know kind of in the Texas that uh DFW corridor region and also with the potential grid interconnection delays that we're also seeing you know really as recent as last week with the legislative hearings can you maybe kind of speak to the opportunity set that you guys are seeing in that region just given the connectivity that you have with Hill Brinson and maybe more specifically, can you speak to kind of how are you seeing the competitive dynamic in that state? Kind of what differentiate you guys versus competitors and do you expect that competitive dynamic could potentially, you know, deteriorate your return profile for these projects? Thank you.

Yeah, this is Mack. Yeah, I may add some. But, and we've said it before, years ago, a couple years ago when data centers kind of started taking off, We looked at the maps, and then we looked at where a lot of the proposed data centers were going, and they were right on top of our pipeline. So for one thing, we're just fortunate that we own so many big-inch pipes that traverse through much of the United States, especially the South. So we have a distinct advantage. For example, Abilene has really grown, and we think it will grow into something very special from a market standpoint. But we just happen to have a 42-inch pipeline being built right by Abilene. as all that kicked off. So some of it, we're just fortunate with assets are, but also we have great teams that are able to go in and negotiate great deals for our partnership. And we use a lot the unparalleled, unmatched capability of selling firm gas to these. Because not only do we have big inch pipe coming from multiple areas and multiple basins, even within Texas, but we also backed it up with storage. We have 237 BCF of storage in six states, in the United States. Much of that is in the South. So we have enormous capabilities in very tough volatile times to keep the gas flowing, which is critical to these data centers. And then as regards to any legislation, all that stuff, one thing that we've done, and I'm not aware of, maybe corrected with Adam here, but if not all, the vast majority of the power plant data centers we do are behind the meters. So it really doesn't have anything to do with all this noise about If there's these 2,000 requests or interconnects on ERCOT, for example, in Texas, it's going to be irrelevant to our customers because they're not connecting to the grid. They're behind the meter. They're going to provide their own electricity. They're not going to bother anybody or any of the customers, which is a lot of the noise that's out there. So most, if not all, of what we're chasing are behind the meter power plants for the data centers that we're sending gas to. And so that's really not going to be an issue for a lot of the customers.

Thank you. Very clear. And I guess as a follow-up, on your growth CapEx outlook, can you maybe kind of speak to the level of visibility that you guys have in potentially sustaining the current, let's say, mid to higher $5 billion of run rate growth CapEx, but at the same time maintaining that same internal return threshold that you guys have? And I think in extension, from a natural gas perspective, Can you maybe speak to kind of the geographic regions besides kind of the more obvious ones in Texas, Arizona, and Florida that you're seeing more constructive commercial discussions in? Thank you.

Yeah, listen, I'll start off here, Andrew. It's a very, very good question. As you can see from all of our conversations today, as well as all the other ones we've been having with you, we have a a lot of opportunities here and it's a great place to be where we are right now be able to see good high returning projects as we look out so if you take not only the ones that we've announced and we're talking about but also what we call the shadow projects that are that are sitting out there they're just right on the cusp of getting to FID I think you can see like the five and a half 5.6 I'm sorry to 5.9 billion that we have for this year if you looked at all the way through 2029 we have enough I think you had a pretty broad question there I think as far as more on some of the geographic etc and I'll turn that over to look over toward Dylan a little bit here.

Yeah let me touch on the I think you're kind of touching on returns there I think when we look at this opportunity set I We're not by any means lowering our return threshold. In fact, I think when we look at these projects, our return threshold is probably going up because the opportunity set is just so great. These are excellent projects. They're primarily demand-driven, and we're building for customers to suit their needs. There's no forcing projects in. It's just such a great opportunity set, and so there's no deterioration in the returns here. So I think that's Tom's Tom just said, we see this $5 billion, $5 billion plus number going through the end of the decade here and at the same strong returns that we're seeing right now.

And this is Adam. Maybe I'll just touch on the geographies that we're seeing these opportunities in, which really is all of them, but that where our footprint is, but specifically Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana, Ohio, Illinois, as well as Florida. We're continuing to see opportunities on the natural gas side across all of these states. Specific to data centers, there are certain states that are more friendly than others and we certainly see more activity there. But like Mackie mentioned in one of his previous answers, a lot of this is reindustrialization too with factories onshoring here in the U.S. We are seeing a lot of that. We're seeing a lot of expansions and all those things need natural gas and need reliable, clean natural gas and need the flexibility that our system can offer.

Gotcha. Very clear. Thank you very much.

Thank you. This concludes our question and answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Tom Long for any closing comments.

Thank you once again for all of you joining us today. As you can see, we've had a great quarter, great year and a very, very bright Outlook as we look out. So we really appreciate it. Thank you all, and we look forward to the follow-up questions you have.

Bye.

Thank you.

The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation.

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