ONEOK, Inc.

Good day, and welcome to the second quarter 2021 One Oak earnings call. Today's conference is being recorded. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Andrew Zaiola. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you, Casey, and welcome to One Oak's second quarter 2021 earnings call. We issued our earnings release and presentation after the markets closed yesterday, and those materials are on our website. After our prepared remarks, we'll be available to take your questions. Statements made during this call that might include one of expectations or predictions should be considered forward-looking statements and are covered by the safe harbor provision of the Securities Acts of 1933 and 1934. Actual results could differ materially from those projected in forward-looking statements. For discussion of factors that could cause actual results to differ, please refer to our SEC filings. Just a reminder, before we turn it over to the conference coordinator for Q&A, We ask you that you limit yourself to one question and one follow-up in order to fit in as many of you as we can. With that, I'll turn the call over to Pierce Norton, President and Chief Executive Officer.

Pierce? Thanks, Andrew, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us today. We appreciate your interest and investment in our company. For 32 of my almost 40-year career, I had the good fortune to work with the assets and and the people through various companies that are now a part of One Oak. I'm excited and honored to be back. This company has a strong, experienced management team and a talented workforce, and we are all looking forward to the future. On today's call, we'll be discussing One Oak's strong performance in the second quarter, and I'll provide a few of my initial thoughts as to how the management team and I will continue to build on the accomplishments of those that preceded me in this role. I'm also looking forward to reacquainting or meeting many of you in the near future. Joining me on today's call is Walt Holtz, the Chief Financial Officer and Executive Vice President, Strategy and Corporate Affairs, and Kevin Burdick, Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer. Also available to answer your questions are Sheridan Swords, Senior Vice President, Natural Gas Liquids, and Chuck Kelly, Senior Vice President, Natural Gas. I'd like to first start off this call by recognizing and congratulating Terry on his retirement and thanking him for his availability to advise me in my new role. One Oak has seen tremendous growth and success under Terry's leadership the last seven years as he's navigated the company through several growth cycles and industry challenges, including delivering strong results during a pandemic. Terry championed many companies' successes, the transition to higher fee-based business model with less commodity price exposure, significant improvements in company-wide safety and environmental performance, the successful One Oak Partners merger transaction, and the completion of more than $10 billion in capital growth projects, to name just a few, of his many accomplishments. The company has grown in many ways since I was here last, and I'm looking forward to building on what Terry, the board, the leadership team, and one of 3,000 employees have achieved. It's been extraordinary. During this first month on the job, I've been re-familiarizing myself with our business, holding strategy and planning meetings with the team, and most importantly, listening. I've met with my leadership team and many employees to hear more about their focus areas. These introductions and conversations are very important and will continue. What you can expect from me as a CEO is that we will be disciplined and intentional in all that we do and continue to encourage a culture that promotes safety, reliability, employee engagement, value creation and environmental responsibility. These principles have served One Oak Well for decades and will continue to be a key element of our daily operations and business decisions going forward. The energy systems today were designed to operate on the consumer's requirements for affordability, reliability, and resiliency. We will continue to focus on meeting our customers' needs while also transforming these energy systems to drive the overall lowering of greenhouse gas emissions. Yesterday, we reported a strong second quarter financial result, supported by increasing volumes across our system. The energy and economic backdrop continues to improve, with producer activity accelerating and demand for NGLs and natural gas strengthening. Kevin will talk more in detail about how we're addressing those needs. But first, I'll turn the call over to Walt to discuss our financial performance.