Marathon Petroleum Corporation

Welcome to the MPC First Quarter 2021 earnings call. My name is Sheila, and I will be your operator for today's call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question and answer session. Press star one on your touchtone phone to enter the queue. Please note that this conference is being recorded. I will now turn the call over to Christina Kazarian. Christina, you may begin.

Welcome to Marathon Petroleum Corporation's First Quarter 2021 earnings conference call. The slides that accompany this call can be found on our website at MarathonPetroleum.com under the Investor tab. Joining me on the call today are Mike Kenigan, CEO, Marianne Mannin, CFO, and other members of the executive team. We invite you to read the safe harbor statements on slide two. We will be making forward-looking statements today. Actual results may differ. Factors that could cause actual results to differ are included there as well as in our SEC filings. With that, I'll turn the call over to Mike.

Thanks, Christina, and thank you for joining our call this morning. Before we get into our results for the quarter, we wanted to provide a brief update on the business. During the first quarter, our industry continued to struggle with reduction in global economic activity and demand for transportation fuels that resulted from the mobility restrictions related to COVID-19 pandemic. As we started the second quarter with the rollout of vaccinations, we still see industry-wide gasoline demand down around 5% from the historical levels and jet demand down around 25 to 30%. To the extent that a pen-up desire to travel starts to brighten the macro outlook for our business, our team and our assets are poised to take advantage of these opportunities. But in the meantime, as the challenging backdrop holds, we'll continue to concentrate on the elements of our business that are within our control. Our near-time priorities remain the same. Each quarter, we're focused on strengthening the competitive position of our assets, improving our commercial performance, and lowering our cost structure. Slide four highlights some of our actions around our strategic priorities this quarter. First, we're close to completion on the sale of our Speedway business. Second, we continue to take steps to reposition our portfolio. Our board of directors approved our plans to convert our Martinez asset to a 48,000 barrel per day renewable facility. We expect commissioning of Martinez to begin in the second half of 2022 with approximately 17,000 barrels per day of capacity. Additionally, we expect to reach full capacity of approximately 48,000 barrels a day by the end of 2023. In line with our commitment to lowering the carbon intensity of our operations and products, we're planning to install wind turbine generators at Dickinson's facility. Sourcing electricity from wind will lower the carbon intensity of the renewable diesel product at that facility. We'll continue to seek out the right opportunities for investing and partnering on renewables and evolving technologies. Finally, we also continue to exercise strict discipline on how capital and expense dollars are spent. In this quarter, we were able to hold refining operating expenses roughly flat with the prior quarter. I'd like to take a moment on slide five to reinforce our priorities for the proceeds from the sale of our Speedway business. As we approach the close of the transaction, we've appreciated the continued dialogue we've had with many of you. We remain committed to use the Speedway sale proceeds to strengthen our balance sheet and return capital to MPC shareholders. An important priority is our commitment to maintain a solid investment grade credit profile. As we said before, we intend to maintain an appropriate level of leverage for this business, and recently, Fitch affirmed our investment grade credit rating at triple B, and improve the outlook for MPC from negative to stable. With respect to debt reduction, we previously indicated $2.5 billion of debt that could be retired with minimal friction costs. We've repaid approximately $2.1 billion of this amount since October by issuing commercial paper, which we intend to pay down immediately with the proceeds from the Speedway sale. We'll be thoughtful on how to reduce our debt to minimize costs while not jeopardizing our investment grade credit rating. Within this framework of maintaining a solid balance sheet, we expect the remaining proceeds will be targeted for shareholder return, and we plan to announce more details around these plans in conjunction with the closing of the transaction. Slide six demonstrates our execution around lowering our cost structure. Our refining corporate cost results this quarter illustrate the impact of the team's commitment to cost discipline, and while rising utilization will bring variable costs as volume increase, we believe that the structural cost reductions we have made are sustainable. While our results reflect our focus on cost discipline, we have not compromised on our commitment to safely operating our assets and protect the health and safety of our employees, customers, and the communities in which we operate. As you may recall, 2020 was the company's best performance ever in the area, with nearly 30% improvement across both process and personal safety rates, and our very best environmental performance. And recently, four of our refineries received safety awards from the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers Trade Association. These awards recognize facilities that go above and beyond to keep their people, facilities, and surrounding communities safe. Robinson, Detroit, and Accordus and Dickinson all demonstrated outstanding safety performance and leadership that set them apart. Lastly, I'd like to take a moment to provide some comments on our commitment to ESG. From a strategic standpoint, our focus is to meet the needs of today while investing in the energy diverse future. This includes lowering the carbon intensity of our operations and products, expanding renewable fuels and technologies, conserving natural resources, engaging with stakeholders, and investing in our communities. We have three company-wide targets many of our investors know well. First, a 30% reduction in our Scope 1 and 2 greenhouse gas emissions by 2030. Second, a 50% reduction in our midstream methane intensity by 2025. And lastly, a 20% reduction in our fresh water withdrawal intensity by 2030. Our focus on sustainability is pervasive across everything we do, and to ensure this, our compensation now includes a sustainability metric and our bonus target weighted at 20%. We've also linked a diversity metric to compensation in the same way that last year we linked greenhouse gas intensity reductions to our compensation. Reflecting our current commitment on ESG, we are pleased for the second consecutive year to have earned the US EPA's Energy Star Partner of the Year Sustain excellence award. MPC is the only company with fuels manufacturing as its primary business to earn this award, and we're very proud of the work our employees do in this area. At this point, I'd like to turn it over to Mary Ann to review the first quarter results.

Thanks, Mike. Slide 8 provides a summary of our first quarter financial results. This morning, we reported an adjusted loss per share of 20 cents. Adjusted EBITDA was ,000,000 for the quarter. This includes results from both continuing and discontinued operations. Cash from continuing operations, excluding working capital, was $613 million, which is a nearly $500 million increase since the prior quarter. This also marks the first time since the start of the pandemic that cash from continuing operations has been above our quarterly dividend payment, which was $379 million. Slide 9 shows the reconciliation from net income to adjusted EBITDA, as well as the sequential change in adjusted EBITDA from fourth quarter 2020 to first quarter 2021. Adjusted EBITDA was nearly $650 million more quarter over quarter, driven primarily by higher earnings in refining and marketing. As a reminder, both the fourth and first quarter results reflect Speedway as a discontinued operation. Moving to our segment results, slide 10 provides an overview of our refining and marketing segment. The business reported positive EBITDA for the first time since the start of the COVID pandemic, with first quarter adjusted EBITDA of $23 million. This was an increase of $725 million when compared to the fourth quarter of 2020. The increase was driven primarily by higher refining margins, which were considerably improved across all regions in the first quarter as compared to the fourth quarter. Total utilization for refining was 83%, which was roughly flat with the fourth quarter utilization of 82%. Operating expenses were in line with the previous quarter, despite the slight increase in utilization. Distribution costs were lower by $69 million due to variations in quarter to quarter timing of costs. In March, severe winter storms impacted our industry. We estimate that the cost impact across our refining and marketing business was roughly $39 million this quarter, with an additional $12 million to be incurred in the second quarter. Although our Galveston Bay and El Paso refineries both had to shut down for a period of time, neither experienced any significant mechanical damage or safety incidents, as the team was steadfast in safeguarding our operations and ensuring the safety of our employees and the surrounding communities. El Paso was able to quickly resume operations, and Galveston Bay was able to begin its planned turnaround during the period. The efforts of our people during this time demonstrate the values that are integral to the way we conduct our business. Flight 11 shows the change in our midstream EBITDA versus the fourth quarter of 2020. Our midstream segment continues to demonstrate earnings resiliency and stability with consistent results from the previous quarter. Here again, the team continues to make excellent progress on reducing operating expenses, which helped to partially offset headwinds from lower gathered and processed volume and reduced revenues. We estimate the cost impact from storms on our midstream business was approximately $16 million. Slide 12 provides an overview of speedway results as a discontinued operation. Speedway fuel and merchandise volumes were impacted by usual seasonality in the first quarter. Fuel margins decreased and merchandise revenues were lower due to rising crude and product cost in the quarter. Overall, we continue to see lower foot traffic and transaction counts than pre-COVID levels. Fuel margins were 26 cents per gallon. Slide 13 presents the elements of change in our consolidated cash position for the first quarter. It reflects both our continuing and discontinued operations. Within continuing operations, operating cashflow before changes in working capital was $613 million in the quarter. Changes in working capital was a $348 million use of cash in the quarter. This was primarily driven by the rebuilding of our inventory position in the first quarter and partially offset by a benefit for the increase in crude prices this quarter. During the quarter, net debt increased $865 million as we used our short-term debt facilities to manage capital needs during the quarter. In March, we retired $1 billion in senior notes utilizing short-term liquidity. We returned $379 million to shareholders through our dividend. Our cash balance at the end of the quarter for both continuing and discontinued operations was $758 million. Turning to guidance on slide 14, we provide our second quarter outlook. We expect total throughput volumes of roughly 2.7 million barrels per day. Plan turnaround costs are projected to be approximately 100 million in the second quarter, which includes activity at our Galveston Bay refinery. Total operating costs are projected to be $5.20 per barrel for the quarter. Distribution costs are expected to be approximately $1.25 billion for the second quarter. With that, let me turn the call back over to Christina.

Thanks, Mary Ann. As we open the call for your questions, as a courtesy to all participants, we ask that you limit yourself to one question and a follow-up. If time permits, we will reprompt for additional questions. We will now open the call for questions. Operator?

Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. If you have a question, please press star then one on your touchtone phone. If you wish to be removed from the queue, please press star then two. If you are using a speakerphone, you may need to pick up the handset first before pressing the numbers. Once again, if you have a question, please press star then one on your touchtone phone. Our first question comes from Doug Leggett with Bank of America. Your line is open.

Thank you. Good morning, everyone. Mike, I wonder if I could ask about the return of cash. I know it's kind of a routine question that comes every quarter, but you talked about the appropriate level of leverage. I'm wondering how that's changed or what the latest thinking in there as to what that looks like. And then as I kind of follow on to that, when you think about buybacks, how big of a consideration is lowering the dividend burden on the X speedway refining in midstream business? So basically, debt level and buybacks, I realize MTLA's share prices run away from the now, so that's probably off the table anyway.

Yeah, thanks, Doug. I'll start and I'll let Marion jump in. So throughout this process, we've been getting the question about what does appropriate leverage mean. When we pick a metric, we've been saying one to one and a half times mid-cycle, and then everybody says, well, then what do you think about mid-cycle? And my standard answer is, I don't think about the 50 yard line, I think about the banks of the river, and I try and do scenario planning around what we think could be good times and bad times. Obviously, everybody's excited about vaccine rollouts and getting recovery here, and certainly the market is moving in that direction. At the same time, Doug, in our prepare remarks, we said, gasoline demand is still 5% lower year on year overall, the West Coast is still considerably down compared to the other areas. So we're gonna have to evaluate it and it'll be dynamic, but in general, the best guidance we've been trying to give is these are the parameters we think about, one to one and a half kind of leverage. We said we had two and a half of debt that we could do right away. You heard in our prepare remarks that we've essentially got most of that done and we'll finish that off once we close with Speedway. And then we're gonna evaluate to try and minimize any friction costs, but make sure that we leave enough dry powder that our balance sheet comes out to the place that we wanna be. And then absent that, as that evolves, we're gonna return capital. And we tried to be as transparent as we can throughout this process that we have core liquidity that we wanna make sure the balance sheet's in good position. We have debt level that we wanna make sure is in good position. And then we're gonna return capital. That's been our goal from the start of this. And I go all the way back to, at one point, we were gonna spin Speedway out to the investors so they would get that return of capital via that way. We decided to go a different path. We're ending up with this partnership with 7-Eleven that we're looking forward to getting into the next phase where they own the assets and we supply fuel. We think there's some real good opportunities for both parties after that. So we're gonna continue to evaluate that as we go forward. But that's the best color I can give you on the balance sheet. And let's Mary Ann, you wanna jump in with anything there?

Yeah, Doug, I think Mike covered it quite comprehensively. Just a couple of other additions. As we continue to say, it was our objective and continues to be to maintain an investment grade balance sheet, as you've seen. And Mike talked about, Fitch has already confirmed that. So another key variable that we will continue to consider, we wanna be sure that the debt repayment is efficient. But other than that, I think Mike has covered the comments quite well.

And the only other thing I'd add is we have committed, we've restated it many times that once we get to close, we'll provide some more details. We're getting really close and hopefully that's not too far away from now. But we've been resistant to doing it ahead of time. So we're just, as soon as we get close, we'll give a little more color to the marketing and then continue to communicate the way we have been, I think.

So Mike, just for clarity, to be clear on Mike, my point about the dividend, you're obviously losing substantial cash coverage from the dividend. Should we expect some kind of accelerated buyback to accelerate the reduction in that dividend burden or how are you thinking about that?

Yeah, big picture, Doug. We believe in our dividend and we think we have a competitive dividend. Obviously we're gonna reduce share count as a result of this. How that gets reduced is still to be seen as far as the way this lays itself out and where the share price is over time. But we are committed to a competitive dividend. That's something that we've had in our mind all throughout this process. We'll see at the end of the return where we end up as far as share count and then kind of evaluate where we are. But hopefully the takeaway that you've seen from this is we're committed to our dividend. We do believe in returning capital.

We

have a nice opportunity here that's unique as a result of this sale. And that return of capital will be a little bit of a differentiating factor for us for some time here.

No kidding, well, thanks for that. My full love, I wanna be respectful to everyone else. I'll be real quick here. The cost structure looks like you're making big holes or big strides in getting your costs down, but you haven't talked much about the broader portfolio review or restructuring. One of your competitors suggested the other day that if the RFS doesn't get resolved one way or the other, we could see further rationalization of the planning capacity. So I just wonder if you could bring this up to date with the overall portfolio review and stickiness of the cost you've achieved so far. Thanks.

Yeah, Doug, on the portfolio, we decided very early on that the two facilities that we idled, we did not see being long-term assets for us.

We

do have an ongoing portfolio assessment, but we did pause a little bit because we wanna kind of get through this pandemic and see what the other side looks like and what the new normal looks like. So we still have ongoing work internally on portfolio, nothing that we're ready to disclose yet, but a conscious decision on our part to kind of pause as we went through this pandemic and started to see the light at the end of the tunnel. And I know everybody's anxious to get this behind us. And hopefully we're getting really close. The vaccine rollouts have gone very well. We'll get a little better sense of what a new normal looks like and kind of do a final check on what we think about the portfolio in general. But so in a near term, nothing to announce right now. We'll get through this new normal. We'll see what that looks like. But I will tell you, Doug, it's gonna be an ongoing effort on our part to continue to ask ourselves all the time, where is our cost structure? How is it evolving? What is the assets that we have in the portfolio? Because we are a believer that over time, this energy evolution will continue to play itself out. And as it does, we're gonna be adaptive to the market. And obviously, one of the high priorities that we put on ourselves was to get our cost structure down so that in our base business, we were in a much more competitive position. And I think we've done that to some extent, and that's not gonna be an effort that we give up on. We're gonna continue to do that. In fact, I often get asked the question, what inning are we in in that regard? And overall, I think Ray and his team on the refining side are gonna continue to look at it. In fact, I'll let Ray make a comment as to where we are on cost as well. So hopefully that answers you on portfolio, but let me let Ray make a comment on the cost.

Yeah, Mike brought up what inning we're in, and I'd have to say we're not in the first inning and we're not in the ninth inning. So we challenge ourselves every day. What can we do to take more discretionary costs out of our system? Hey, the biggest thing that we did early on, and you kind of alluded to that, is we took some of our high cost facilities out of the system. And on the West Coast, you have seen that quarter over quarter as we idled the Martinez refinery as an oil refinery, and through the subsequent quarters, we completed a majority of the idling costs. And hey, going forward, Doug, we just continue to look at efficiency cost savings every day while maintaining our emphasis towards safe and reliable operations of our assets. Those are non-negotiable. Discretionary spending is negotiable.

Thanks, fellas.

You're welcome,

Doug. Thank you. Our next question will come from Neil Mehta with Goldman Sachs. Your line is open.

Good morning, team. I just want to build on some of your comments and the prepared remarks on the Speedway transaction. Mike, it sounds like you're really close, and I just wanted to get some clarity. What really close means from your perspective? Are we talking days? Are we talking months? Or are we talking quarters? And in terms of the gating factors, just maybe you talk about what are the things we should be monitoring from a closure perspective.

Hey, Neil, that's a good way to frame it. I think the best way to answer it is exactly the way you set it up is, what we believe at this point is that we're in weeks, not months. We're not days, it's not gonna be tomorrow or the next day, but we think we are down to weeks. And what we've tried to do in this process is to be an intermediary communication tool because it's really between the FTC and 7-11. Obviously, we're at the table trying to understand if we can help the process at all. But I guess the best way to describe it is the FTC communicated to us that we're in the final stage of the process. So with that in mind, we think we're within weeks. I guess that's the best way to give you our sense of it. We don't think we're in months, we don't think we're days, but we think we're very, very close. And that's why we chose the word close to completion. I hope that helps you, and I know everybody's anxious for us to give the next set of disclosures relative to this. We're also anxious to do that. This has been a process that's taken a long time. I'm hoping the market appreciates that we've tried to be as transparent as we can. We thought for a long time there, we thought we were gonna hit by the end of the quarter. That kind of came and went a little bit. Process takes a little bit longer, sometimes when you get into the details at the end, but we are very, very close, and hopefully we're talking within weeks.

Yeah, that conviction comes through, so thank you, that's great, Mike. The follow-up is on Martinez. Maybe you could just step back and talk about the renewable diesel project. And if you could level set us, how are you thinking about the total capital associated with the project to the extent you can provide it? I think you've given the guidance for $350 million of renewable spend this year, but just the total spend associated with the project. And how should we think about the returns associated with this project? And there are a lot of moving pieces, but the biggest fear, I guess, is the soybean prices continue to move higher. So how do you manage the feedstock flexibility to ensure this is a good -the-cycle investment?

Yeah, it's a great question, Neil, and obviously we've communicated that we've gotten full board support for this project. So I'll let Ray start off to give you some color on how we're thinking about it, and then let Brian and Dave jump in as needed on feedstocks, et cetera.

So,

you guys are right. Sure, Mike. You

know, from a project standpoint, I'd like to give a little bit of a color on where we stand from a timing schedule standpoint. At this point, phase one, we're targeting completion in the second half of next year, 2022, and that would be for 17,000 barrels of renewable fuels coming online. And then that would be followed up by pretreatment in 2023, and then finally the rest of the facility, the back half of 2023 for a total of 48,000 barrels of renewable fuels production. Now, if I go back to Doug's comment, our question before, as far as OpEx, I commented that Martinez was a very high-cost oil refinery, but there's some real gems at Martinez that make it a very good project for us from a renewable fuel standpoint. 300 processing units, two hydrogen plants, the infrastructure that provides us the ability to have a very cost-competitive brownfield project. And so I can't give a lot more CapEx guidance than you've already alluded to, you know, but we're very excited about this project. And just what we've done in the last quarter in Q1, we progressed our engineering. We're toward the end of definition engineering and have also made a lot of progress on our permitting efforts with regards to getting the environmental impact report kickstarted and out for review in the near term.

Yeah, Neil, I'll turn it over to the commercial guys in a second. I guess one way to think about it is there were three major hurdles the way we think about this project. You know, do we have the right location and logistics? And obviously Martinez is sitting on the demand. You know, Dickinson, on the other hand, is very close to the supply. So we like our location and our renewable facilities. You know, Ray just mentioned, you know, the second big hurdle is capital operating expense. You know, basically, what do you think of the hardware? You know, and Ray just described it, you know, the full asset facility was relatively high cost, but the real gem, as he mentioned, was in the hydro processing area. So it became obvious to us that the best use of this asset was to put it in the service. And then the last piece of the puzzle is the one that's ongoing, and that's, you know, feedstock optimization. And that'll continue. So I'll let the guys comment a little bit on that.

Okay, hi, it's Brian Davis here. So maybe just picking up the feedstock question. I think the first thing here is that Ray and his team have done a good job in creating a sufficient optionality there through on-site pretreatment over time, but also the capability to receive feedstock by rail as well as by water. So that opens our commercial flexibility quite considerably. We're evaluating a portfolio of options to give us the right mix of feedstocks, which will deliver value over the life of the project. We have a number of commercial negotiations underway with a wide range of suppliers, and we've been leveraging our existing capabilities and relationships because we have been buying these feedstocks for a period of time for our existing biodiesel, and now more recently for Dickinson.

Okay, thanks,

guys.

Appreciate it. You're welcome,

Neil. Our next question will come from Phil Gresh with JPMorgan. Your line is open.

Yes, hi, good morning. My first question would just be on the OPEX results on the West Coast. The OPEX for barrel there was even lower than it was in 2019, despite the fact that utilization is still pretty low here. At this point, so maybe you could just, obviously, you know, Martinez, I think, is probably out of those numbers now, so maybe that's the biggest factor, but any other things that we should think about as to the drivers of the lower OPEX and how you think about the potential there as utilization ramps back up?

Okay, Neil. I'll go ahead and take this question. This is Ray. You're right. Martinez is largely out of the OPEX numbers. There still is some residual OPEX for tank cleaning and work that will carry on to this year, so there is a little bit of martini to spend. I will say on the West Coast, Q1, quarter one was a challenging OPEX quarter, primarily because the energy costs, you know, put a big demand on us in the last part of February and early March. I will say on the West Coast, we were partially able to mitigate the impact of those natural gas spikes by reducing our natural gas purchase requirements close to balance by producing more internal fuel from our operations. I think this was a real key for us as far as managing the winter storm, not just in Texas, but across all of our operations. And I really got to give a shout out to our commercial group. Close coordination with our commercial group and the refineries really allowed us to pivot quickly. You know, on the day when natural gas went up by a hundredfold and adjust our operations, reduce our demand requirement for natural gas, you know, and have as minimal of an impact on our OPEX as possible. So, you know, that was across all of our system. It really was impactful on the West Coast as well. You know, aside from that, I will just go back to what I said earlier as far as every day we challenge ourselves, you know, discretionary spending from got to do, stay in business type of spending. And that's starting to show in the numbers.

Okay, great. That's helpful. Thank you. My follow-up on renewable diesel, I guess I'll just try to glue these together very quickly. If you could just talk about how you feel things are going with the startup so far at Dickinson, what you've learned from that startup process. And then just on the feedstock side of things, would you consider signing up for, you know, some kind of joint venture or something like that for soybean crush capacity? Like we've seen from one of your peers, is that one of the things you're considering? Thank you.

Okay. This is Ray again, and I'll start off with the first thing. As far as what we learned from startup, one of the things we learned, we already knew is that startups are hard. You don't just push a button and everything works perfectly. But I will tell you, in the first quarter, we achieved 90% of our design capacity at Dickinson. And we also qualified and got a provisional score for our renewable feedstocks, which is soybean oil and corn oil. And, you know, that's a lower number than the temporary score that we start off with. But as you know, we're not seeking to get to 90%. We want to get to 100% of capacity and get lower carbon intensity scores. So work has continued in that regard. We work with our licensor for the process and catalysts on a new catalyst formulation. We just actually did that work and it's come back up. So, you know, we're working towards getting better, getting toward 100% yield and exactly what we want from the project.

Yeah, and Phil, it's Brian here. On your question about soybean crush capacity, et cetera, now we're looking at all options here. Clearly, we're targeting advantage feedstocks as much as possible, but we think we'll also, the industry will need to use soybean oil in its production as well. So, you know, there's certainly considerations of putting in the commercial mix as we understand the right balance between gaining access to the right feed at the right price with security of supply.

Thank

you.

Phil, it's Mike. The only thing I'll add kind of a tag on to what Neil had asked is, you know, we really like the project. You know, Ray described it well. We think we got really advantaged hardware from CapEx and OpEx. We're concentrating on the feedstock side of the equation now. You know, we're open to a lot of things, as Brian said, but we're anxious to get this project online. We think it's going to be a nice addition to our portfolio and it really does optimize the assets that were available to us at Martinez, where we're going to use the really strong ones for hydro-processing and then take out a lot of costs that were part of the facility from a crude processing standpoint. Okay, great, thanks. You're welcome.

Thank you. Our next question will come from Roger Reed with Wells Fargo. Your line is open.

Thank you and good morning.

Good morning, Roger.

Just come back and take a shot here at the core refining business. So, like Doug mentioned earlier, the RFS, most of your peers have talked about it as being, you know, RENs in general being quite the headwind to capture. Your capture was actually pretty good. I know as Speedway is being separated, you're trying to maintain as much of the blending capacity as possible. I was just curious if you could kind of break out maybe how your exposure to RENs is today, either pre- or -the-spin, and what impact you believe it had on Q1.

Yeah, Roger, this is Brian Partee. I can address that question. So, you know, consistent with the past, we self-generate about 70 to 75% of our RENs through either blending or generation in our biofuels and refining assets. So, Q1 was pretty similar to that historical average. As it relates to the separation of Speedway, yeah, no real impact there. The REN is something that's pretty transparent in the marketplace. It's a real expense. We all have to deal with it. It's not something we can control. We think of it like a commodity. We deal with commodity prices that are volatile and move dramatically up and down. And the one thing I'd leave you with on the REN and the REN expense, I know there's a lot of hyper-focus on it appropriately right now in the environment that we're in, but there's also really good opportunities to optimize in that space. So, depending on how you're modeling and what you're looking at, you have to think about RENs in terms of true obligated volume. Obviously, not all gallons are obligated. So, if you think about stripping off exports, JET, as well as some other boutiquey fuels, and for us, Alaska also is not an obligated state from an RBO perspective. The other thing that I think played out, interestingly, in the market in the first quarter was the -on-year carry-in. So, you can meet obligations in the prompt year with up to 20% of carry-ins from prior year. And we think there's far less carry-in from 2020 to 2021, largely due to the uncertainty around the election last fall. So, and then the last part about the commercialization in the REN space is how you buy and when you buy. I would presume, maybe from a modeling perspective, assume kind of a rateable purchase for RENs. And that could be a strategy. And we try to be very commercial in this space and try to optimize. And obviously, the higher the REN value gets, the more opportunity there is to outperform and conversely underperform in that space.

Okay, thanks. Other question I had, again, kind of sticking with the refining side of things. We're hearing that some of the maintenance in Canada may not happen on quite the same pace because of the COVID issues up there, which I guess might imply it's a little more drawn out. But as you think about light-heavy, whether it's inland U.S. or coastal U.S., what sort of updates can you offer there in terms of crude availability, what you're seeing expectations on crude differentials?

Yeah, hi, Roger. This is Rick Hussling. So the intel you're getting in Canada or from Canada is spot-on. We're hearing the same thing. They've experienced some startup issues with a couple of their maintenance projects, as well as we're hearing one of the producers specifically is having some COVID issues. So, you know, that's certainly not good for production in Canada. So we'll continue to watch that specifically to Canada. In terms of differentials in Canada, I would point you towards, I still think probably your general rule of thumb is the forward market there, which is plus or minus $12. And, you know, the incremental barrel in Canada is moving out via rail. The pipes are full, so we expect that to continue. When you look worldwide and more so on the Gulf Coast, you know, a lot of, there's a lot of conversation around OPEC and the barrels that they're releasing into the market. I'm a little more measured on OPEC and what we might expect on the Gulf Coast than others. Quite frankly, when you look at what OPEC has done the last several months, they've been very measured on how they're managing their production with demand. And currently today, as you know, we've got a tug of war. There's a little bit of slight optimism coming out of the West. And then there's a lot of the fear of the unknown, which is well publicized in India. So we'll just have to see how that plays out.

Great, thank you.

You're

welcome.

Our next question will come from Manav Gupta with Credits Lease. Your line is open.

Hi, in your prepared remarks, you did indicate that while the demand is recovering, it's the recovery, the pace of recovery is slower on the West Coast. I think California is going for a full reopen around mid-June. So I'm just trying to understand going forward, do you see an improved demand recovery based on a full reopen in California?

Yeah, Manav, this is Brian Ferbsey. I can take that one. So, you know, what I would say to kind of reiterate Mike's points that he made in his opening remarks, we have seen gasoline demand really grind back across the entire portfolio. Certainly the West Coast has lagged in the East. We've been running over the last several weeks, 2% to 5% off of 2019 comps. In the West, it's been more in the 18, I call it high teens to low 20s. But we have seen a gradual grind back from the early part of this year. And you're spot on, yes. California is prepared to reopen here mid-June. And just looking at some of the vaccination data and just anecdotal discussions in the market, we do expect, you know, meaningful recovery through the summer months. To what extent is very difficult to estimate. You know, COVID has been a very dynamic environment for us. California has been very aggressive. So I'm really hesitant to make a call on where we expect it to go. But we've seen favorable trends in other markets as we've gotten back off and opened up the economy. We'd expect to see a degree of the same out in the West Coast.

And then obviously, the other thing that I would add is kind of what I said earlier is, you know, once we get through this and a lot of these states open up, I mean, California, as Brian just mentioned, is a major indicator as to where, you know, that market's gonna be. But, you know, Florida, New Jersey, New York, some other big gasoline consuming states are also in the process of reopening. The question becomes, you know, where do we end up, you know, after that point? You know, one of the things that I think, you know, we still need to see is, you know, is there potential pent-up demand? You know, is that one of the things that we're gonna see, you know, come out of this? Is there gonna be a new normal with the way people operate as far as work and remote, you know, operations, et cetera, et cetera? So, you know, we're excited that it continues to get better, but we're also cautious as to what it's gonna mean once we get to the other side of this. You know, if anything, I would say, you know, the way we try to think about it is, you know, at the end of the day, you know, vaccines are rolling out well, states are opening up, things are heading in the right direction, to what absolute number, as Brian just mentioned, where that ends up is still to be played out. And to your point, you know, June, like you said, if it's gonna occur in June, you know, it's essentially the second quarter will be over. We'll be talking about results here where we still don't really have as much insight. So I think, you know, it's still gonna play out a little bit more time, understand that pent-up demand, how much of it is robust to stay long-term, and how much of it is just, you know, short-term for people trying to get out from under, you know, the lockdown conditions. So still a lot to learn. You know, like I said, we concentrate on what we control. We'll keep an eye on what we don't control and try and learn as much as we can as to what the new normal looks like.

Mike, one quick follow-up here. We saw you putting in some wind turbines on the Dickinson refinery to lower the carbon intensity. Clearly, you guys are focusing a lot on carbon intensity, and some of what your peers and others are doing is carbon capture and sequestration. Is it something which the MPC could look at potentially to further lower the carbon intensity of both gasoline and diesel that it is producing in its refineries?

Yeah, Manav, I think I'll let Ray and Dave jump in there, but, you know, we are obviously cognizant of, you know, the value of lowering the carbon intensity of the operations of the product, et cetera. You know, the wind situation at Dickinson, Ray, if you want to give a little more color there, or Dave, if you want to give total color on lowering carbon.

Yeah, just to give you a little bit more detail on Dickinson and what we're doing with the carbon intensity, the first thing that you mentioned is wind turbines. So that's a project that we're planning to go ahead with in 2022 to, you know, put enough wind turbines in there to provide about 50% of our electricity demand via renewable electricity, and that lowers the carbon intensity. The other thing that we're doing is we've got a -pre-treatment now down at Beatrice, and that plant has started up. That material has made its way to Dickinson, and so we now have pre-treated corn oil. That's significant from a carbon intensity standpoint, that one, it's pre-treated, so it processes better. Secondly, it's a significantly lower carbon intensity than soybean oil.

Yes, and this, Dave Heppner, just another comment would be, you know, whether it be wind turbines or carbon capture and sequestration, those are all, you know, additional complementary technologies to increase the value of the Dickinson project by lowering the CI. There's other technologies, such as renewable natural gas, solar, and other technologies we're continuing to evaluate, and we'll implement those if and when they make sense for us.

Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Our next question comes from Paul Cheng with Scotiabank. Your line is open.

Hi, thank you. Good morning, guys. Good morning, Paul. My two question, if we're looking at your core structure, whether you put the refining optics, the distribution cores and the carbon cores together or individually, they were really well in the first quarter. And you have done a great job there. I'm just curious that when I'm looking at your total food put guidance is higher, natural gas cost is lower in the second quarter. Is there any reason? Is it just being conservative or that's a some one-off reason why the second quarter unit cost, cost of body and your refining actually going to be higher and your carbon cost and the distribution cost is also going to be higher? So that's the first question. The second question is that going back into the ESG with the energy transition, what's the longer-term plan or objective? Are you going to take the initiative, essentially just trying to lower your own emission or CI or that you're looking at it as an opportunity for you to expand and perhaps that even create a new line of business and also on the renewable, on the feedstock, one of your largest competitor put all the renewable diesel into a joint venture and partner with someone expertise in the feedstock supply. Why? That's not a good idea for you guys. Thank you.

Thanks, Marianne. Let me try to address your first question around the second quarter guidance and certainly as it compared to the first quarter. Just maybe as a bit of a reminder, we are expecting volumes to be up slightly from the first quarter, about 2.7 million barrels per day. As you spoke about the distribution costs, 1.25 is the expectation for the second quarter, again, up slightly. We are expecting some higher product demand and therefore obviously some higher cost to transport product, but overall, fairly flat issues. We look at the increase in the expectation for throughput. And then similarly, when you look at total operating costs, really on a per barrel basis, when you consider that they're about flatish, Q1 to Q2. So hope that helps to address your questions there around the nature of the second quarter guidance. Mike has cleared for you sort of how we're thinking about the second quarter. Obviously, things can play out just depending on how the demand and recovery happens, but hopefully that addresses your question,

Paul. Marianne, I'm sorry, but your unit cost is actually higher in your guidance in the second quarter. That's even on the distribution side, on the distribution cost compared to the first quarter. And that's why I'm not sure is that we have some one-off issue. That's why you expect the unit cost on the per barrel of throughput going higher, because one would imagine that with the higher throughput volume and lower energy cost, that the per unit cost should be going lower, not going higher.

Paul, it's Marianne again. So you're right. When we talk about total operating costs based on that demand, it's about $5.20 versus the quarter, which was about $5.16. I was saying about flat, but you're right. There is a slight kick-up as we think about those total operating costs. And then distribution costs, hopefully I tried to address the key elements there that were drivers to the higher cost.

Paul, it's Michael. On your second point, I think it's a combination of cost and portfolio. As Ray mentioned earlier, one of the things that we accomplished, kind of got two birds with one stone, is Martinez was one of our highest cost facilities. Gallup was one of our highest cost facilities. So we want to have when we're processing fossil fuels, a very competitive low cost system, because it's going to be around for a long time and we want to make sure that we create value in that regard. At the same time, the energy evolution is going to tick into renewables and other technologies as they develop. So we found a nice opportunity. We're very pleased with the effort that's going on at Dickinson. And as Dave just mentioned, once we're in that boat, we're going to try and do everything we can to increase the profitability, whether it's low in the carbon intensity, the operation, the product, the feedstocks. It was Brian mentioned. And I'll let Brian comment, as like I said earlier, is location is in a good spot for us. CapEx is in a good spot for us. OpEx is in a good spot for us. Ray's going through some learnings on the startup of the one facility which will help us in the next facility. And then the last piece to your puzzle was feedstock. And I'll let Brian reiterate, but I would tell you, you know, we like our base plan. We feel very comfortable that we have a really good project in front of us. But we are continuing to challenge ourselves. Is there a way to increase value there?

Sure. Thanks, Mike. Yes, as we build out the feedstock procurement strategy and create more options, we're certainly looking at partners along the entire value chain, all the way from the procurement of feedstock onwards. And so we are considering where we can do more with partners than just only a commercial arrangement. But I think, you know, we still have to let those discussions play out. And whatever we do needs to make sense for them and obviously makes sense for us as well from a value perspective.

And Mike, can you also address that on the longer term, do you see the energy transition? Can we create a new line of business for you or that you're looking at it as the order initiative is just to reducing your emission and CI for your own existing operation?

Yeah, I don't think of it as either or, Paul. I think of it as somewhat both. You know, we're going to have an opportunity as this transition, or I like to call it evolution, you know, evolves. There's going to be some technologies that we can implement, you know, in our existing fossil fuel facilities that will be helpful. There's going to be some technologies that get implemented in truly renewable facilities. But I think in time, you're going to see us grow both. And, you know, at the end, you know, what's the end game is what you're asking. And I don't know how long you're thinking out in time, but, you know, the end game is for us to have a very competitive refining offering of fossil fuels and a very competitive offering on renewable fuels and continue to look for ways to grow our earnings. You know, Dave mentioned it. We're looking at a lot of different things right at the moment. We're going to act on them. Once we believe that they will give a good return for us, you know, some things I think are a little ahead of their time right at the moment. The technology still needs to develop a little bit. You know, at the same time, there's some things like Ray just mentioned, you know, we're going to implement some, you know, wind support to our Dickinson facility as early as next year. So some things are on the immediate side. Some things are on the watch side and evaluate. We're going to have a very robust look at through all this. You know, one of the things that everybody keeps asking me and hopefully you'll get to see it through results is what, you know, what are we doing commercially? It's one of my, you know, goals is to improve our commercial performance. And it's not something that we're going to talk about in the forecasting of it, but hopefully we'll point out things, you know, as we go along. And, you know, Ray mentioned a couple today that, you know, happened in the first quarter that helped us minimize our impact around the winter storm. So I think you're going to see the answer to your question is really both. There's going to be some opportunities on both sides of the business as we change the portfolio over time. You know, and that was asked earlier today, you're going to see some more changes in the portfolio as time goes by. And as we get to evaluate that, we'll give disclosures as quickly as we can. So everybody knows, you know, which way we're, we're pointing the company.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

Thank you. Our next question comes from Prashant Rao with Citigroup. Your line is open.

Hi, thanks for taking the question. My questions are both on R&M and specifically on Catbacks. First on Martinez, I know you can't disclose an overall cost, but Mike, I was wondering if, you know, in terms of cadence, 350 million this year and it sounds like you do the first diesel hydro-treater next year and then the three other hydros and the pre-treat come on in 2023. So is it right to think about it as sort of a stair step that the Catbacks for that and therefore the R&M growth Catbacks kind of steps up in terms of renewables next year and in 2023? Is it sort of more evenly spread out and sort of related to that? Just wanted to check that would that be funded, you know, purely from internally generated cash or would you be looking to, you know, think what are you financing sort of options if you, you know, as to how you fund the project? And then I have a follow up.

Yeah, Prashant, I think you're thinking about it right. It is a phased approach to the activity out there, but it kind of dovetails to what Paul just asked. So when you step back and think about it, you know, roughly, you know, 40 some percent or, you know, living around to half of the growth capital that we have in this year is directed towards renewables. But then also half of it is directed towards, you know, our fossil fuel business. So we still think there's going to be continuing monies that we can spend in that business. So like what Paul was asking, I was trying to say we're going to do a little bit of both. But I think you're also seeing the way we're approaching this project, which is in a phased approach. So as Ray mentioned, we'll get it online, you know, early next year, pre-treatment comes on, full capacity comes on. So there will be some stair stepping in capital in that area. At the same time, you know, we're still looking forward to, you know, the 450 million that we're investing in the base business. You know, we still got some activity going on down on the Gulf Coast, you know, with our STAR project that we want to get to the finish line as well. So kind of, you know, dovetail to your question the same as Paul's is that, you know, we're going to have activity occurring in both areas. You know, we're committed to both sides of the business because it's going to be a long evolution. It's not something that's going to happen very quickly. But it's something that we're going to be very attentive to as to where we, you know, deploy capital. I'm hoping everybody's getting a feel for us that we're going to have a strict capital discipline. And that's a mantra that we're going to continue to push and challenge ourselves through all the scenario planning that we do as to what's the best use of that capital, whether it's in our existing facilities and fossil fuels or in renewable facilities, or as Paul mentioned, if we come up with something that we think is a little bit more of a step out. So we'll try and give everybody as much disclosure as we can as time goes by. We're looking forward to the opportunity as, you know, as the evolution continues. And we think it'll provide us some value, you know, opportunities to increase value for the shareholders.

Great. And then sort of related to, I guess, the second part of my question there was on, you know, how you expect to fund projects because it sounds like this is going to be a very large facility at Martinez. But you also have a ramp here in terms of cash flow generation potentially internally generated. So I just wanted to get a sense of if you broadly speaking expect to fund Martinez out of, you know, operating cash that you generate or if there, you know, if you were to finance it, would you look at, you know, project financing or, you know, what would be some of the options in terms of how you fund the build on the project?

Yeah, Prashan. So our base plan, obviously, assuming the market, you know, cooperates is we want to fund it out of operating cash. We don't want to get discolored with Speedway, you know, earnings and we'll get more color on that. That return of capital is kind of separate. And hopefully, as everybody's anticipating, as the market kind of comes back to a normal, you know, we'll be generating operating cash that will fund our capital program, fund our dividend, and hopefully have access beyond that that will have optionality beyond that as well.

Okay, great. And just one last follow up real quick on the maintenance side. I think you've got it to about 250 million this year in R&M. A little early, I know, to answer this, Mike, but any color on how you think about that maintenance number in R&M on sort of a through cycle basis. When we get, you know, volumes back up and as we look at MPC, you know, the years coming ahead, is it 250 not that far off from, you know, how you're looking at maintenance costs? Now that you've rationalized costs across the structure and you will continue to do so, or is it, should we be thinking that this is sort of a low year and there should be a little bit more that we need to layer in as we think about next year and maybe beyond?

Yeah, let me take a shot at that. This is Ray. You know, when I talked earlier about, you know, looking at the needs versus wants, you know, certainly the main maintenance capex is along that along that line. So, you know, we challenge ourselves every day to the point of where we are, whether it's OPEX or capex as far as really scrutinizing those spends. So, you know, our goal is not to go grossly up on on maintenance capex.

Perfect. Thank you very much for the time. Appreciate it.

You're welcome.

Thank you. Our last question will come from Ryan Todd with Simmons Energy. Your line is open.

Great. Thanks. Maybe just one quick one on on the refining side. Your utilization guidance for the second quarter is probably a little more conservative in terms of sequential improvement relative to some of your peers. I mean, your commentaries may be a little more cautious. Is that how do you think about, you know, ramping utilization over the next couple months? And is there a potential upside to your 2Q guidance there?

I think Brian alluded to it early on is, you know, we we have these states that have a lot of impact to gasoline, the West Coast being one of them. You know, they're all talking about going into the next phase of opening up. We just don't know how to totally gauge what that means. You know, Manav mentioned June for the West Coast. We'll see if it turns out to be June or not. I mean, we got to get through the rest of May. So, I mean, we're doing our best to try and forecast that. But I try and remind everybody that, you know, we don't have control of that. You know, we're just just like everybody else monitoring the situation and given our best assessment. But, you know, there's a lot of key states that are saying they're going to be opening up. I mentioned a few New York, New Jersey, Florida on the East Coast. Obviously, the West Coast has been under the most restrictions. You know, Brian mentioned 20 percent down year on year when overall you're about 5 percent down on gasoline. So, it's a pretty, you know, bifurcated situation right now. And we'll just have to see how it plays out. And obviously, we try and give you the best guidance we can. And then as the results come in, you know, we'll give you kind of a post audit of, you know, what things look like.

Thanks. Maybe a quick follow up on Dickinson. I guess as you think about the I know you have the pretreatment up and up and going for some of the corn oil. Do you have I mean, is there a thought for what you think the kind of an average mix might look like in terms of vegetable oil versus versus corn oil at that facility and an estimate of maybe what what you think the average value of the product will be once the once the the wind facilities are up and running.

Sure. The this is Ray. The design basis for for the project is 10,000 barrels a day of soybean oil and 2000 barrels of corn oil, treated corn oil. So, you know, that's that's that's the goal. That's where we're headed to get as we get into the second second quarter. Just a little bit about, you know, the the CI value, you know, the the target CI value for soybean oil is going to be in the mid fifties and take about 30 numbers off that for for corn oil. So that's that's range. You need to be thinking about from a carbon intensity standpoint.

And how much do you think you can how meaningful is the wind energy in terms of is that assuming the wind energy or can you knock a few more points off with with that project?

And Ryan, I would tell you, you know, let us get that up and running and we'll be happy to give you some some feedback after that. But we don't want to get ahead of ourselves. We're excited about the opportunity, but but we don't want to pre-determine how how effective we're going to be there. We're excited about it, but let us get it up and running and we'll give you more color.

Awesome. Thanks, guys.

You're welcome.

Operator, are there any other questions? We are showing no further questions at this time.

Perfect. Well, thank you all for your interest in Marathon Petroleum Corporation. Should you have additional questions or would you like clarification on topics discussed this morning? Please reach out to our team and we'll be available to take your calls. Thank you so much for joining us this afternoon.

Thank you. That does conclude today's conference. Thank you for participating. You may disconnect at this time.