Gibson Energy Inc.

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the Gibson Energy First Quarter 2026 conference call. Please be advised that this call is being recorded. I would now like to turn the meeting over to Beth Polak, Vice President, Capital Markets and Corporate Development. Ms. Polak, please go ahead.

Thank you, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us to discuss Gibson Energy's First Quarter 2026 results. Joining me on the call today are Curtis Philippon, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Riley Hicks, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Additional members of our senior management team are also present to assist with the question and answer portion of the call. Listeners are reminded that today's call will reference non-GAAP financial measures and forward-looking information, which are subject to certain assumptions and risks. Descriptions and reconciliations of these measures, as well as related disclosures, are available in our investor presentation and continuous disclosure documents on CDAR Plus and on our website. I will now turn the call over to Curtis.

Thank you, Beth, and good morning, everyone. I'm pleased to be here today to discuss Gibson's first quarter of 2026 results. Before getting into the quarter, I want to start with something that we're proud of at Gibson. This quarter, we reached a major milestone at our gateway terminal, safely loading our one billionth barrel. This achievement speaks volumes about the strength of our operations team, the trust of our customers, and most importantly, the commitment of our people to safety and execution excellence every single day. Turning to the quarter, the macro environment was certainly eventful. We've all been reminded of the important role North America plays in supplying the world with reliable energy. Gibson's crown jewel assets are a critical part of this energy supply chain. Geopolitical developments created some headwinds. Unpredictable and chaotic markets make it challenging for customers to make long-term commitments. Shipping availability and market uncertainty temporarily disrupted exports from gateway customers and negatively impacted infrastructure results in the first quarter. This export disruption was a temporary trend that we are now seeing reversing in the second quarter. Gateway volumes have increased and we expect to be setting new volume records, including pushing close to one million barrels per day in the back half of the second quarter. In December, we outlined our strategy at the investor day. Central to that strategy was a growth plan to achieve an over 7% infrastructure EBITDA per share growth rate through the deployment of capital across five different verticals and unlocking capital-free upside through the increased optimization of the business. The team has made impressive progress advancing this strategy. A few of the most meaningful steps we have taken were on people, progressing the Wink the Gateway project, and closing the Chauvin acquisition. First on people, we're continuing to build out our US commercial and marketing team, including adding Andrew Morales in our Houston office to lead our US marketing business. This investment expands our capabilities and has been instrumental in sourcing incremental supply and enabling volume for our customers at Gateway. During the quarter, we took an important step forward towards achieving the 2% capital-free upside target we outlined at Investor Day with the completion of an organizational restructuring, which reduced our headcount by 10% and will drive an annual gross cost savings of approximately $10 million in 2027. The changes increased the customer focus of our teams, reduced overhead, and reinforced our high performance culture. The leaner organization now has both the customer focus and cost competitiveness necessary to win. Secondly, the Wink to Gateway growth capital projects that were sanctioned at Investor Day are tracking well. These projects involve adding additional tank capacity at the Wink terminal and twinning a pipeline connection at Gateway. The basis for these projects is sourcing additional supply and removing bottlenecks to deliver more volume to Gateway customers. These were strong projects when they were sanctioned, and now in this crude export market, they're even more valuable. And finally, in Hardesty, the successful closing of the $400 million Chauvin acquisition is a milestone moment for Gibson. The acquisition includes a crude oil pipeline and associated infrastructure assets that connect Chauvin to the Hardesty oil hub, increasing our reach into the growing Manville stack area. Supported by long-term agreements, the assets add stable contracted cash flows and provide a clear runway for additional optimization and growth capital deployments. Concurrent with closing, we sanctioned the hardest deconnection project. We've also started engineering work on a pipeline expansion project, which will increase effective capacity from 30,000 to 45,000 barrels per day. We anticipate sanctioning this expansion later this year. We expect to begin realizing the benefits from the acquisition in the second quarter. The integration work has gone smoothly, and we are excited to welcome Chuck Cron's Chauvin Operations Team to Gibson. And with that, I'll turn the call over to Riley.

Thank you, Curtis. I'll begin with a review of our first quarter financial results, followed by an update on our financial position and capital allocation priorities. We remain focused on disciplined financial management, maintaining the strength of our balance sheet, and executing in accordance with our financial principles. In the first quarter, infrastructure delivered approximately $156 million of adjusted EBITDA, a slight increase over the same period in 2025. We benefited from a full quarter of contribution from the BATEX partnership. However, as Curtis noted, this was largely offset by macro conditions and their impacts on crude exports at Gateway. While export volumes were strong in January and February, they declined in March, driven by elevated freight rates and shifting global trade flows. which temporarily reduced competitiveness from the U.S. Gulf Coast. Despite these near-term headwinds, we remain confident in our 7% plus growth strategy through 2030, as well as our 2026 infrastructure outlook of 5% EBITDA per share growth that we outlined at our investor day, which is supported in part by our recent acquisition. Turning to marketing, the business continued to face a challenging operating environment during the quarter. A steeply backwardated futures curve, where prompt crude barrels are priced at a premium to future delivery, reduced the economic incentive for storage, while the seasonality of our asphalt business limited the performance of our refined products group. As a result, marketing generated approximately $3 million of adjusted EBITDA, representing a $2.5 million increase compared to the first quarter of last year. Looking ahead, Quarterly results in the marketing segment are expected to be in line with previously communicated guidance given the current volatility of the commodity markets. We continue to remain confident in the fundamentals of the business and focus on delivering long-term consistent performance. On a consolidated basis, Gibson generated adjusted EBITDA of approximately $139 million during the quarter, a slight decrease from the prior year. In addition to the impacts from the infrastructure and marketing businesses discussed earlier, consolidated EBITDA was affected by higher G&A, which we expect to normalize over time as projects come online. A significant portion of the increase in G&A relates to targeted investments in technology and people, including upfront spending on automation and AI initiatives that are expected to drive savings over time. For example, we are currently implementing a new system that will automate thousands of marketing transactions per month, improving efficiency and accuracy. In addition to this, we continue to progress the migration of the majority of our IT platforms to cloud-based systems, with associated costs now reflected in G&A under the rules of IFRS. From a people perspective, we made targeted additions across our commercial, marketing, and finance teams to support the continued growth and execution of the business. And finally, and to a lesser extent, the restructuring resulted in some changes to cost allocations. As an example, we consolidated our corporate and operational accounting groups into a single team, enabling us to do more with fewer resources and at a lower overall cost to the company. While these changes create some near-term noise, the G&A was forecast and considered when we provided our guidance at Investor Day in December. We remain confident in our 5% infrastructure EBITDA per share growth outlook for 2026, and we also expect our consolidated EBITDA per share growth for 2026 to be 5% or greater. Distributable cash flow for the quarter was approximately $74 million, representing a $17 million decrease compared to the first quarter of 2025. This was primarily driven due to lower EBITDA and higher spending on replacement capital, interest, and cash taxes as compared to the same period last year. Turning now to our financial position and capital allocation priorities, we continue to remain committed to our financial principles, maintaining a strong balance sheet, ensuring our growth capital is fully funded, and supporting a sustainable dividend backed by stable, long-term take or pay cash flows. We continue to take a disciplined approach to capital allocation, focusing on high-quality infrastructure investments that drive long-term shareholder value. as reflected by our strategic acquisition of the Chauvin assets. Importantly, both S&P and DBRS reaffirmed our stable investment grade credit ratings following the announcement of this transaction. At the end of the first quarter, net debt to adjusted EBITDA was approximately 3.8 times, representing a decrease from 3.9 times at year end. And on an infrastructure only basis, leverage of 3.9 times remains below our target of less than four times. Our dividend payout ratio was approximately 90% on a trailing 12-month basis, primarily driven by lower EBITDA and distributable cash flow mentioned earlier, as well as the increased share count following the equity offering ahead of realizing the associated cash flow benefits from our acquisition. We expect the payout ratio to remain elevated until 12 months of trailing cash flow from the acquisition is reflected. Over the long term, we continue to target a sustainable payout range of 70% to 80% of distributable cash flow. On an infrastructure-only basis, the payout ratio was 83%, comfortably below our target of less than 100%. As the infrastructure segment continues to grow as a proportion of our earnings, we expect consolidated payout ratios to trend back towards our long-term target range. I will now turn the call back to Curtis for his closing remarks.

Thank you, Riley. To close, the first quarter reflected both the strength of our underlying business and the impact of a more volatile macro environment, particularly at Gateway. Despite that, our infrastructure platform continues to perform well, supported by high-quality assets and long-term contracted cash flows. We're making solid progress against our strategic priorities. Safety performance remains best in class. We continue to drive increased utilization across our system and we are advancing key growth initiatives, including the Chauvin acquisition and our Wink the Gateway integration project. At the same time, we are building for the future, advancing our technology and AI capabilities, while continuing to strengthen our high-performance, customer-focused culture. Looking ahead, we remain confident in our long-term outlook. While the current environment has introduced volatility, It has also reinforced the importance of secure, reliable energy supply, an area where Gibson is well positioned. Our assets, particularly Gateway, play a critical role in connecting North American barrels to global markets, and we have demonstrated our ability to adapt and capture value as conditions evolve. Our teams have responded well in a dynamic environment, leveraging our integrated platform to manage risk and capture opportunities across the value chain. With a strong balance sheet, disciplined capital allocation, and a clear strategy, Gibson is well positioned to deliver continued infrastructure-led growth and long-term value for our shareholders. And with that, I'll turn the call back to the operator to open the line for questions.

Thank you. At this time, we will conduct the question and answer session. As a reminder, to ask a question, you will need to press star 11 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star 11 again. Our first question comes from the line of Jeremy Tonnet of JPMorgan. I'll open.

Hey, this is Eli Johnson on for Jeremy. Just wanted to start on the export trends at Gateway. It looks like U.S. exports are at record highs. So can you just describe some of the upside for Gibson and Capitalize beyond contracted levels? Any sensitivities or color on export upside would be helpful. Thanks.

Yeah. We're seeing that firsthand. As exports are increasing, Ingleside is exceptionally busy. I was down in Corpus a couple weeks ago, and you can visually see the increased traffic that's coming. to the U.S. right now and the increasing number of ELCCs that you're seeing transiting in the area. It's quite impressive to see. We're feeling that uptick right now at our facility, as I mentioned, where we expect that we'll be pushing a million barrels a day of throughput as you get into May and June. So new records for Gateway, quite significant. It's notable for what that means for our customers. The one thing I would temper a little bit on There is a nice upside if you get some upside on that activity, but there is also a little bit on who's shipping the volume has an impact. Typically, our customers are paying for an MVC, a guaranteed window of volume. What you're seeing right now is virtually all customers are fully utilizing their MVCs. you're seeing very good volumes, but on some of that incremental volumes, that's just customers using their contracted volumes, and so there's not an incremental revenue associated with it. So we expect you'll see sort of normalization and a slight uptick from what you saw in Q1, but you shouldn't expect a sort of a dramatic uptick in Gateway as you get into Q2.

Got it. That's helpful. And then maybe switching over to marketing, I know you provided some color for the outlook to remain consistent with prior guidance, but just thinking about what would need to kind of change to see structural improvement in that business. Is it just the deeply backwardated curves normalizing or what else could we see that would lead to improvement in that business? Thanks.

On marketing, you're exactly right. It's the backwardated nature of the market is where you see still some limited opportunity. And in Western Canada, you still have a very efficient egress situation. And so some of those apportionment type plays are not there right now. And so we continue to do well in volatile markets and our marketing teams do a good job of that. And also as you look at sort of the refining crack spreads, you see some uptick in our Moose Jaw facility. But I would say it's still fairly incremental for us that we're seeing some upside out of these things, but we still expect that our guidance of sort of zero to 10 a quarter is still the right way to be thinking about it.

Got it. I'll leave it there. Thanks.

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Robert Hope of Scotiabank. Your line is now open.

Morning, everyone. Maybe turning over to the higher corporate costs that we saw in the quarter, you know, how should we think about these trending through the year and to what magnitude? Do appreciate the commentary that in the prepared remarks that they will normalize. And then also, you know, just want to confirm that the higher corporate costs as well as the $10 million of incremental savings were part of the longer term guidance presented at the investor day.

Yeah, thanks, Rob. We can confirm that those were a part of the presentation at Investor Day and our longer-term guidance. And then in terms of where we sit on corporate costs going forward for 2026, we would expect to be in the $17 to $18 million range per quarter as we continue to work through some of these projects. We would expect to see the benefit of those projects in 2027 and beyond, but I would note that there's the opportunity for us to continue to evaluate solid IT automation and cyber projects going forward that we might invest capital in as well.

All right. Appreciate that. And then maybe moving back over to Gateway, you know, just changes in the geopolitical dynamics there, does that have you rethinking longer-term expansion plans at the facility as well as, you know, can you remind us kind of, you know, how you would look to expand that facility?

So, when we think about Gateway right now, we're pushing a million barrels a day. You've got very high utilization of the facility. I would point towards the Wink the Gateway integration project as something that we'll do that will drive some additional volume and help us de-bottleneck in particular the Eagleford supply coming to that facility. So those are some nice incremental growth that we'll see as those come online in the back half of the year. Some of the larger scale projects we've talked about sort of longer term, sort of plus five years out on the dock expansion. I think those are still really interesting projects. I think the world needs U.S. crude The Permian's a prolific play that will drive additional barrels to export over time, and I believe that Ingleside is the most cost-competitive way to go export barrels, and I believe that Gibson's got the most capital-efficient way to add additional export capacity in Ingleside. So I think that still looks very good, but I still put it in the five-year-plus territory, Rob, because You still fundamentally need to see production uptick a bit more in the Permian. You need to see pipes expanding from the Permian to Corpus. Or you need to see other supply coming into the Corpus market to drive additional barrels. Because right now you still have very good capacity at our terminal and our neighbor's terminal in Ingleside. So we're able to sort of effectively keep up with the current amount of corpus pipe capacity with the current docks that are in place.

Thank you. Thank you. Our next question comes from Aaron McNeil of TD Cohen. Your line is now open.

Hey, morning all. Thanks for taking my questions. Maybe big picture, just given that we've got a lot of potential brownfield expansions and even potentially new greenfield crude oil pipeline expansions in Canada, can you speak to the potential opportunity pipeline at Hardesty and Edmonton? And sort of within that, I'd be most curious about potential timing. I'm just giving an example here, but let's say a pipeline expansion comes online in two years from today. When would we sort of need to see an announcement or a positive FID for a new pipeline? sort of tank expansion at one of your hubs.

Yeah, more, Naren. I think clearly the sort of overall macro backdrop of the world needs oil, the political environment in Canada getting considerably better than it's been for a decade has a lot of optimism out there right now. You're seeing some very interesting egress projects getting advanced that I think have some good legs to them, and you're seeing all of our customers talking about very good rates of return paths to increasing production in some pretty substantial ways. We see the production coming at us from executing and sanctioning additional capital on our side. Some of the very near-term things we're seeing is the Chauvin acquisition provides this runway of additional capital projects that we see that's effectively extending that Hardesty platform. We've talked about adding this Hardesty connection. on Chauvin, but also this pipeline expansion for Chauvin. But I think what's really interesting and exciting for us around Chauvin is now that we're through the competition bureau, we can actually start talking to customers. And I see us spending, we're already, we're sort of one week into this, and we can now start talking to customers about okay, what can we do to tie in more production to the Chauvin pipeline and more production into Hardesty, and what does that drive? And so I know I'm diverting a little bit from your question, Aaron, but I think that's some of the near-term sanctioning things that I can see right in front of us that you can see us doing over the next 12 months. As over longer term, as some of these big egress projects get sanctioned, I think there's probably some good good activity inside the terminals that we're going to see. In particular, if I had to see firsthand, I think that the TMX projects are really quite attractive for our customers. Getting volume to the West Coast is the hottest ticket in town here that people want to get more volume to the West Coast. I expect you're going to see that growth in TMX volume nicely drive some need for additional tankage for us in Edmonton and you would have heard us talk about before that we've done a lot of work to get ready to add a couple new tanks in Edmonton and so all the optimism around expanding TMX nicely leads into needing to do some additional tank expansions in Edmonton over the next year or two. So those are probably the nearer term. In Hardesty we're pretty well set up right now and so I think we can supply a good amount of additional expansion on egress with current tank capacity and nicely add, I think, even higher rates of utilization and some competitive tension in Hardesty is a good thing. And so I think you're a little further out on needing to sanction new tanks in Hardesty, but I think you see new tanks in Edmonton faster.

Got you. Okay. You referenced it in passing, Curtis, but as we swing into warmer weather, I'm hoping you can just give us a bit more of a status update at Moose Jaw. Like where are sort of the, I don't know, 2-1-1 crack spreads or other relevant benchmarks versus historical in the markets you serve? And is there any sort of, you know, I don't know what to call it, but like an inventory-based margin pickup that we should expect because you're building inventory earlier in the year and then prices inflected later in the year? Like how should we be thinking about sort of profitability of that asset over the next two quarters?

A couple of things I think about on Moosha. So one, overall, yes, this is a better environment for the Moosha refiner. I think for all refiners in North America, you're seeing it in the world, you're seeing an uptick. The big thing that we will watch is, one, what does road construction look like across North America? We're a significant player in that market. I think what we're seeing right now, early feedback from customers is, costs are up and customers are re-evaluating what is the scale of their road construction projects for the summer. So Q1, obviously not a big road construction quarter, so we didn't see a lot of activity around that. As we get into Q2 and Q3, just how active our customers are going to drive just what the asphalt side of that business is. That's obviously the biggest product line coming out of Moose Jaw. And then the second one that we watch closely on Moose Jaw is our is our drilling fluid business, and so that typically follows more of a diesel crack spread price. Obviously, pricing is attractive on that, and what we'd be watching for now is just what does activity look like? I think everybody's watching. What do rig counts do in Canada and the US over the coming quarters? I'm a believer that you're going to see an uptick in activity. These prices are going to be stronger for longer, and that's going to ultimately drive more activity in both Canada and the U.S. on the drilling front, and that will be beneficial to our drilling fluid business. But I would say we haven't seen that yet, that we're still seeing a fairly muted response from producers to the increased pricing, and some of the rig activity has not significantly upticked and impacted the drilling fluid business yet.

Okay, great. Thanks, Curtis. I'll turn it back. Thanks, Aaron.

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Robert Catalay of CIBC Capital Markets. Your line is now open.

Yeah, I just have one follow-up question here. You know, with the geopolitical events really resurfacing the importance of North American oil exports, you talked about what you're seeing in activity levels, but I'm curious to see, to learn from you if there's, the customer interest is leading to longer-dated commitments at Gateway. Is that entering the discussion or is it still skewed to a bit shorter duration optionality here?

Hi, Warren Robb. Yeah, it's one of the things we've seen is definitely in this amount of market uncertainty, you're seeing people really just focused on the very short term right now. And so, you know, initially you saw just sort of a pullback in the uncertainty in the market even caused people to pull back initially for us, our customers anyway. And now we're seeing them rushing to go find supply, but they're still very much living in the prompt here right now and trying to find ways to solve short-term problems. And people are having difficulty sort of determining what does the long-term situation look like and make long-term commitments is a challenge for our customers right now. The one The one really notable trend, though, I would say for us is we've seen a real uptick in the number of customers at Gateway. And so if you look at Gateway, historically, it's been a relatively small group of customers that we've supported. And probably over time, there's probably been no more than a dozen different customers that have loaded out of Gateway. Over the second quarter, we will load over five or more new customers out of Gateway. So almost a 50% increase in the number of customers that are touching the terminal. We're going out of our way to try and help people out here right now and find ways to squeeze in additional cargoes. To be clear, these are, for the most part, relatively short-term spot volumes and things we're doing to help people out in this crisis moment. I believe there's going to be a long-term payoff from that. I think people have long memories, and we're helping people out in times where they're having some challenges. These are some really notable customers, including some supermajors. We're going out of our way to help out. And I think it's also given them a chance to get a taste of Gateway. And I think we've got an impressive facility, an impressive team out of Gateway. Getting used to working with that group and getting that into the flow of their operation really sets us up nicely to think about longer-term arrangements with these customers in time. But for full transparency, I think right now people are very focused on meeting their short-term needs, and a lot of the activity has been very short-term focused right now.

Yeah, that's a helpful context, and it makes a lot of sense, and hopefully that converts to something longer term.

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Sam Burwell of Jefferies. Your line is now open.

Hey, good morning, guys. Apologies if I missed this, disclosed anywhere, but curious if you could share with us gateway volumes February, March, and April, if you have them. And if you can't quantify it, just sort of a trajectory over the past few months would be helpful.

Thanks, Sam. I think we saw some really nice volumes at Gateway in January and February, touching on average 800,000 barrels a day or so, which was a nice uptick in what we expected with some of the projects we've done over the last year. And then with the spiking freight rates and some of the other geopolitical events that happened, we saw that drop down to kind of what would have been closer to our prior run rate before all those projects, around kind of 600 a day. And so a meaningful drop in March, really around kind of those freight rates and some of the tensions politically. But certainly, as Curtis has mentioned, we've seen that recover quickly here in April and see it pushing up closer to the million barrels a day in the back half of this quarter.

Okay, got it. And then shifting over to Chauvin, is it fair to say that the hard-to-see connection and the pipe expansion would fill the growth CapEx budget for 2027? Just curious if you're able to essentially fill your capital spending needs through just stuff tied to Chauvin, or if we need to see additional other projects sanctioned to get CapEx flushed out next year.

On CapEx for 2027, it will flow into 2027, the CapEx related to those projects, but no, there will be additional sanctioning over and above those projects. Those are a nice base load to start and help us as we've talked about. Those two projects alone, we expect that brings the acquisition multiple on Chauvin down below seven. So quite attractive projects, but there still will be additional projects in action you can expect to see from us over the next year as we go feed into the 7% plus growth rate. Okay, got it. Thank you, guys. Thanks.

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Maurice Choi of RBC Capital Markets. Your line is now open.

Thanks, and good morning, everyone. Just apologize if I missed this, but I just wanted to follow up on an earlier comment about how shippers have changed their attitudes since the war began and how the volumes have gone up to a million barrels a day. Have you actually seen customers change how they look at contracting, wanting to contract longer and perhaps willing to take higher rates, or has that not led to that just yet?

Good morning, Maurice. Right now I would say we're just seeing people scrambling to find supply right now. So you're just seeing a mass scramble across the world as people are trying to find supply. And so it's fairly short-term in nature right now as they're repositioning their supply chains to point them towards the U.S. They're repositioning their VLCC fleet. They have it come to the U.S. And so we're seeing a fairly significant shift on people trying to find that there are there are margin opportunities within some of those within some of that um but i think it's it's a lot of very short-term activities right now our people are just really just trying to deal with an energy crisis right now and find ways to to get supply i suppose if you look beyond these short-term effects what are the long-term effects more durable long-term effects that you're anticipating for gateway Well, clearly from our view, and I think you're seeing the impact of the world, seeing that you need North American energy supply in a bigger way. So I fully expect out of this, you will see people looking for ways to de-risk their supply chain on oil. You're going to see an increasing shift on supply coming out of the U.S., and I do expect that all translated to more longer-term arrangements coming out of the U.S. to supply customers. I think no matter what happens in Iran, and there's all kinds of different scenarios that will play out here, but no matter what, there's a lot of work to do in the world here to sort of replenish some of the supply that's been lost over the last number of months. And then on top of that, I expect you're going to see people need to not only refill their strategic reserves, but you're going to need to see people are going to want to have even more strategic reserves on the other side of this crisis. of this disruption in the world. And so I think you've got a pretty long runway in front of us where there's going to be a big pull on U.S. exports and Gateway is going to be a good beneficiary of that. I think one interesting observation we've seen from our customers is that we've seen some of our Asian customers be a little bit more front foot on this, and some of the increase in activity has been focused on supply in Asia, and we actually have seen a little bit less from some of the European customers. I think that's a notable, interesting trend out of this. In time, I think the entire world has an oil supply problem, and that's going to drive all kinds of demand from all over the world on U.S. supply. I think that's a trend that we're going to still see play out over the next number of months.

Just to finish off, keeping this theme about de-risking the supply chain, I recognize that you do have some DRUs in your billion-dollar five-year backlog. Given your comment about potential for incremental pipeline egress in the years ahead from Canada, How do you see the outlook for DRUs, especially like would you and your partner ever consider proceeding with these DRUs if they aren't fully long-term contracted competitively?

So when you look at the sort of the stack of the five verticals on where we see capital opportunities, I think the DRU would be on the back end of those opportunities that we see probably more actionable things up front as far as new DRU development I think is sort of on the back end of the five-year time frame. But I still think there's a position for additional DRU phases to sort of solve the overall egress solution out of Western Canada. I think you're going to see a number of these pipe projects go forward that's going to drive some good efficient flow of barrels to the US. I'd be a believer that you're going to see some good expansion for producers to be able to get barrels to the US, but I think you're going to be limited on what you can get to the West Coast beyond expanding TMX. I think the play for the DRU for additional phase is two parts. One, it allows you perhaps to give you a way to expand additional export capacity to the West Coast, that there's a way to use a DRU to feed additional export capabilities, or two, as a bit of a very custom supply option to some refineries that want sort of a neat product that can come out of the DRU and a bit of a custom solution. But I think those are probably a little bit further down the pecking order related to things that are going to get sanctioned over the next few years, though, so I think it's It's one to watch and one that I think still has legs, but I think you're going to see other pipeline expansion, other tank expansion type projects from us before you see the DRU.

That makes sense. Thank you very much. Thank you.

Thank you. As a reminder, to ask a question, please press star 1 1 on your telephone. Our next question comes from the line of Patrick Kinney of NBCM. Your line is now open.

Thank you. Good morning, everybody. Just maybe back on the marketing business. You mentioned the headwinds from backwardation, which makes perfect sense, but I guess what I'm not clear on is this dislocation we've seen between the physical spot markets versus the financial markets.

prompt markets and um you know maybe you could just walk us through what's been going on there and if this unusual dynamic does continue going forward if that represents any incremental opportunities for your team hey morning pat yeah i think that's i think we're all seeing the same thing that there is this dislocation of just what what is the what what is the reality of how these markets will play out that's something we watch i think there's within there there's There's volatility opportunities for our marketing customers. I also think clearly within that, there's opportunity for our producer customers to realize a higher price for their barrel as you look out further in the curve. I think that's quite healthy for our customers. I don't believe that's properly priced into the curve yet. So I think that's probably where you see the bigger impact relative. Sure, our marketing group does a great job in volatile times. And so I think there'll be some some small wins around volatility that the marketing group will take advantage of. But the far bigger impact for us is those sort of healthy opportunities for infrastructure customers that I think you'll see as sort of actual prices start to get realized.

Got it. That's helpful. And then I guess just back on the back of the show of an acquisition and you know, as your team looks for that, that next tuck in opportunity, wondering if you could just, um, you know, help us compare and contrast the Canadian versus us landscape right now. Um, you know, if you might be seeing more attractive acquisition multiples in either jurisdiction, um, more buyers than sellers in either market. And, you know, if labor availability also has any impact on how you're thinking about, um, you know, monetizing any growth potential off of any asset that might be acquired down the road?

Yeah, M&A is a good question. I think the Chauvin acquisition was a great one for us. We're just getting our hands around it a week in. But I think it gets a message to the market that we're very open for these types of things. Like we are We are a crude-focused business, and we love assets that potentially tie into our current Crown Jewel assets, both in Canada and the U.S. And so we spend a lot of time with our team looking around at various assets and being proactive, reaching out like we did with Shaw Ventus. Is there a potential fit that we can find a home for those assets within Gibson? I think that's something we'll stay active with. In general, you've probably heard me talk before that I think there's opportunities that come up out there right now where we have some other gas-weighted names that are maybe a little bit more focused on building up their gas portfolio, and perhaps we can help them with finding a different home for some of their crude assets. We look at those sorts of things across Canada and the U.S. to try and find a fit. I think in Canada... just in general on both M&A and on organic growth capital, because of just the overall growth that you're seeing right now in Western Canada, I'd say there's probably a little bit more active environment in Canada related to M&A and organic growth capital. Just growth drives lots of interesting opportunities that fit in well with Gibson. So we're seeing a bit more of that. So we're staying active on the M&A side, looking around. I think we saw with the Chauvin deal that our shareholders would be very supportive of finding other deals like this, and so we'll be very open to that. But just caution around that, that it takes two to do a deal, and there's only so many great assets out there. And so I think there's nothing imminent that I would be messaging that we're going to go find. But we're going to stay proactive and look for good fits.

All right. Thanks, Curtis. I'll leave it there.

Thanks, Pat. Thank you. I am showing no further questions at this time, so I would like to turn the conference back to Beth Pollack for closing remarks.

Thank you. Thanks, everyone, for joining us today. Supplemental materials are available on our website at gibsonenergy.com. If you have any additional questions, please reach out to our investor relations team.

Thank you for your participation in today's conference. This does conclude the program. You may now disconnect.