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Calumet, Inc. (CLMT)

Q4 2015 Earnings Call· Thu, Feb 18, 2016

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Fourth Quarter 2015, Calumet Specialty Products Partners Earnings Conference Call. At this time all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question-and-answer session, and instructions will be given at that time. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, today’s program is being recorded. I would now like to introduce your host for today’s program, Noel Ryan, the Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Noel Ryan

Analyst

Thank you John for that introduction. Good afternoon and welcome to the Calumet Specialty Products Partners’ fourth quarter and full year 2015 results conference call. We appreciate everybody joining us today. On today’s call are Tim Go, our CEO; Pat Murray, our EVP and Chief Financial Officer; Bill Anderson, EVP of Sales; Ed Juno, EVP of Operations, and Steve Kosik, our new VP of Specialty Operations. Before we proceed, allow me to remind everyone that during the course of this call, we may provide various forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. Such statements are based on the beliefs of our management, as well as assumptions made by them, and in each case, based on the information currently available to them. Although, our management believes that the expectations reflected in such forward-looking statements are reasonable, neither the Partnership, it's general partner, nor our management can provide any assurances that the expectations will prove to be correct. Please refer to the Partnership’s press release that was issued this morning, as well as our latest filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission for a list of factors that may affect our actual results and could cause them to differ from our forward-looking statements made on this call. As a reminder, you may now download a PDF of the presentation slides that will accompany the remarks made on today’s conference call, as indicated in the press release we issued earlier today. You may access these slides in the Investor Relations section of our website at calumetspecialty.com. With that, I’d like to introduce Tim Go to the call.

Tim Go

Analyst

Thank you Noel. And Good afternoon to all of you joining us today. Since I joined Calumet as CEO just 50 days ago, we have witnessed significant volatility in both the commodities and capital markets, as crude oil prices have fallen more than 20% and our equity unit price has declined nearly 30%. While I had hoped for a warm welcome, the past two months have more closely resembled to trial by fire. Suffice it to say, this isn’t my first rodeo and it won't be my last. One of the key lessons my three decades in the energy industry have taught me is to manage businesses with a long term investment horizon in mind, while adopting to near term market realities in a way that mitigates risk. The reality is this; my leadership team and I are focused on managing all those factors within our control. If we optimize our assets, improve our operating efficiency, capture increase feedstock advantages and expand our product distribution efforts, among a long list of potential opportunities that we will discuss today, we will generate stable to growing cash flows that justify a premium value for public debt and equity. Our fourth quarter results were disappointing, and for our team we view this as the bottom from an operations perspective. From a capital spending perspective, we are hitting the reset button as we commit ourselves to doing more with less. From here, we will work our way up and we will do it together, as one team with a well-defined vision. No excuses, only accountability. In my first conference call as CEO, I will begin by discussing our full year financial performance, although the bulk of my prepared comments will introduce my vision for Calumet, with specific emphasis on the supporting strategic initiatives that…

Pat Murray

Analyst

Thanks Tim. Good afternoon everyone and thank you for joining us today. Please turn to Page 14 of the slide deck for a review of our fourth quarter results. As Tim mentioned clearly our fourth quarter results did not reflect the level of strength evidenced in our overall business during the first nine months of 2015. Although we achieved record fourth quarter throughput and record sales volume within our fuel product segment, fuels refining margins decrease materially between the third and fourth quarters, as reflected a by 45% quarter-over-quarter decline in the 2/1/1 Gulf Coast crack spread, along with a significant narrowing in select crude oil price differentials. Our ability to source increased volumes of cost advantaged crude oil is possibly one of the most important actions we can take to increase profitability within our fuel product segment. As Tim referenced earlier, we have initiated efforts to increase the volumes of heavy Canadian crude oil processed in our system. To that end, we processed 14% more WCS linked crude oil in the fourth quarter of 2015, which is priced at $12 below WTI when compared to the prior period. As we continue to increase our WCS exposure within our refining system, we anticipate significant raw material cost savings, subject to market conditions. In January, we declared a quarterly cash distribution of $0.685 per unit or $2.74 per unit on an annualized basis for the fourth quarter on all of our outstanding limited partner units. This distribution level is consistent with the amount paid to unit holders in the previous quarter, and on a trailing four quarter basis distribution coverage excluding special items is 1.1 times. During the fourth quarter 2015, affiliates of our general partner provided Calumet with an unsecured $75 million loan at an annual interest rate of 6%,…

Operator

Operator

Certainly, [Operator Instructions]. Our first question comes from the line of Richard Roberts from Howard Weil. Your question please.

Richard Roberts

Analyst

Maybe to start on the shift to running more Canadian crude, can you maybe just walk us through how much of that shift is really just on the logistics side and getting more crude to the refineries versus how much actual change of the steel you have to make in the plants themselves? And then maybe to follow on with that, just how much you would expect your product yield to change as you increase the Canadian crude throughput this year?

Tim Go

Analyst

Richard, this is Tim. Let me try to answer your question. So, from a logistics standpoint, we’ve talked a lot about the Montana expansion project, which involve quite a bit of steel, as you mentioned, as we’ve completed that project or in the process of starting up now, most of that increase is going to be happening in that Montana site, where the expansion project has already been built. When you look over at our Superior Refinery, where we’ll have the other knob to turn on increasing WCS, at least in the short term we’re trying to do this with existing facilities, with no additional processing units; although we may have to do some debottlenecking on loading and transportation of the asphalt outside of the plant.

Richard Roberts

Analyst

Maybe to stay on the fuel side, so generally you’re selling into some pretty niche markets with your fuels refineries. Can you just update us on maybe how the demand picture looks in some of your primarily markets? And maybe, what kind of competition, if any, you’re starting to see some coming in from the outside and trying to push into those markets?

Tim Go

Analyst

Richard this is Tim. I’ll try to take your question on again. We do have local niche markets that we believe we are advantaged for in the long-term. I think what we saw in the fourth quarter was as the Bakken drilling was the slowing down, as diesel demand continued to drop in that North Dakota region, obviously that impacted our DPR Refinery significantly. We also saw some carry on effects in both our Montana, and specifically our Superior refiners. So what’s happening is as diesel demand was extremely high one or two years ago, it was pulling diesel in from those out of state markets, and as the diesel demand started coming back in, what we saw was a backing up of the diesel back into those respective production areas. And so we saw a significant drop in the fourth quarter at both our Superior racks, as well as our Montana rack. As we continue to launch that, we've seen that the inventory is starting to clear, and the Superior racks in particular have rebounded significantly here in the last week or two. So we’re hopeful that as the inventory has been run off, that we’re going to return back to the more typical supply demand balances that we have seen in those local regions.

Richard Roberts

Analyst

Great thanks. And then maybe one more from me. So another past couple of quarters you guys have been talking about looking at distribution increase in 2016. I'm just wondering, given yield is today, certainly a clear shift in the MLP settlement towards having more coverage and not so concerned about distribution growth. Just does it make sense still trying to raise distribution this year? Is that on the radar? Maybe just any comments around the distribution that you could provide would be very helpful?

Tim Go

Analyst

Okay Richard. Let me take one shot and then I’ll let Pat answer more of your questions there too. But back on your fuels demand question, I will point out that we had a record fuel sales year last year. So that in the market that we serve, it just shows we do have local advantage, where we can place our products and we continue to see that through the course of 2015. In terms of our use of cash, let me turn that over to Pat, let him answer that question.

Pat Murray

Analyst

Okay, thanks Tim and thanks for the question Richard. I think that there are always a lot of factors that go into consideration of distribution strategy and policy and I think where we are today and what we've have said repeatedly over prior quarters is it's -- to screen quarterly discussion that we have with our Board of Directors and we make recommendations, I think that as we looked up previously, a lot of our decision making is focused around getting the organic projects online and operating in -- we're really pleased to report that those projects have completed now and we think long term those are going to be very good contributors for us. I think that we remain highly focused on distribution coverage as another metric that we would use to inform decision making. We look at overall leverage, and I think that our goal is to of course serve everybody in the capital structure. But I think with this focus on liquidity, we're going to continue to have to take that on a quarter-by-quarter basis, see where we are and see what our outlooks are at that time that we have to make those types of decisions. I think that’s been -- consideration of all those types of items -- it leads us to continuing to look at this on quarter-by-quarter basis.

Tim Go

Analyst

Richard, I would just chime in and say, when we look at our strategy around use of cash, clearly in today's environment, reducing debt is our top priority and managing that. We do have some small quick hit growth projects that I mentioned and we would consider additional cash flow, but it would have to be a robust project like I described earlier. And then of course as Pat mentioned on a quarter-by-quarter basis we would look at impacts to the distribution and whether we would increase it or not].

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Neil Mehta from Goldman Sachs. Your question please.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Good afternoon this is Christina Seaborn [ph] for Neil Mehta. Just a follow up on the distribution question. What is the risk that Calumet actually would need to reduce the payout or potentially switch to an alternative structure such as a variable rate distribution versus the current fixed rate distribution?

Pat Murray

Analyst

Again, to echo our response to the prior question, I think that it becomes a question of looking at several factors each quarter, not only the outlook of where we see the business today, and then also considering leverage, considering where distribution coverage is. Certainly in this environment of a volatile crude oil situation and product pricing, we do have to evaluate the changes in our liquidity around those factors. So there is a lot that goes into that decision each quarter. And so I wouldn’t want to place any one item as the particular risk, but it's a combination of several factors. Our view and our position is that we are fixed distribution MLP and that’s where we are today. Consideration of alternative structures, we are not in a position at this point of comment on this call.

Tim Go.

Analyst

Christine, this is Tim. What I would say is, we are committed to growing cash distributions in the long term. We've got a track record of 40 consecutive quarters where we've paid a distribution. The last 28 were at or above the previous level. So we take that seriously and we will consider to look at all options before we would have to make a decision of changing the distribution like that.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

That's very helpful, thank you. Just two quick follow-ups. One, can you provide any color on what the current asset sale opportunities might be, and just any additional information on what the Company is doing to mitigate near term losses at the oil services business as well as the Dakota Prairie Refinery.

Tim Go

Analyst

Okay Christina you've asked a couple of big questions there that I'll try to tackle one at a time. Let's start with the last one on Dakota Prairie. You know, clearly that has been weighing on our earnings in the fourth quarter as the Bakken field has slowed down significantly. We've made several -- we've taken several steps to improve the profitability of that operation. Remember in the first place that we just started that plant up in the middle of last year, and as we work through some of the startup kinks, I think we're in a position now where our reliability has been significantly improved, and we hope to be able to realize an improvement 2016 based on that improvement. We have also taken some leadership changes, just to be frank at the plant, and we think that has made a significant change. We've already seen the difference here in the last couple of months. And one example of that is we were running a diesel yield at the plant somewhere in the 32%-33% range, and after we brought in some additional resources from some of our other assets that were more familiar and experienced with distillation columns, we were able to make some significant moves to increase our diesel yield to 44% or in that range. So those are some of the significant opportunities that we believe we still have to take at our Dakota Prairie refinery. Our objective is to be cash flow neutral during this bottom of cycle condition. I would tell you we're not there yet, but we have many more steps that we're trying to execute on today to get us into that position. At that point, once we become cash flow neutral, then the role that an asset like Dakota Prairie refinery…

Operator

Operator

Thank you and our next question comes from the line of Johannes Van Der Tuin from Credit Suisse. Your question please.

Johannes Van Der Tuin

Analyst

A couple of quick questions, but first one is, in the past you all have signaled a desired to get to a leverage ratio of four times or below. Is that still kind of the target that you are looking at? And if so, what is sort of the cadence of that? How long do you think it would take to work to that kind of goal?

Tim Go

Analyst

That certainly remains our goal. I think that the cadence to which we’re able to reach that goal depends on several things, including the outlook of where earnings may play out over the course of the year and given where fuels refining economics play out. I think though that as we singled before, in terms of our capital spending and our focus on quick hit, quick return projects versus a long cycle time between capital investment and ultimately harvesting earnings, I think under this model and vision, I think we have certainly on balance a better opportunity to get there faster, all other things being equal. But that firmly remains our goal. We didn’t make as much progress on that goal in 2015 near the end of the year based on what we’ve already talked about, but that certainly remains a goal, for us to be below the 4 times leverage.

Johannes Van Der Tuin

Analyst

And not to press the point on the dividend too much, but I was curious if you could give us some framing as to what sort of trends in the market or in your actual balance sheet would cause you to have really think about whether or not you needed to cut the dividend or adjust that in any particular way?

Tim Go

Analyst

I think that -- to go back to earlier comments, I think it's a view on overall liquidity. It's a view on trend of earnings in the segments. I think it's where we are overall on distribution coverage. So I don’t think there is any -- it’s a convocation of all those factors more so than setting a specific line item. It has to be this or it has to be that in one factor or another. So it's really a combination. To reiterate what Tim said, our goal is to keep the distribution unchanged. But again, we have to look at that on a discrete quarter by quarter basis and see where we are. And in this type of volatility, we have to think about things in multidimensional levels and that’s what we’re going to do a couple of months from now. And we’ll know more in a couple of months than we know today.

Johannes Van Der Tuin

Analyst

Okay. Then more on the operational side, in the past you’ve given some amount of guidance as to what you saw the EBITDA generation capacity of Montana and Missouri esters and the other recently completed projects would be. Given the current macro environment, is that guidance in your mind still the target that you’d be looking at or is there risk to it?

Noel Ryan

Analyst

This is Noel Ryan. The single biggest driver underlying the economics or our portfolio of organic growth projects is the WCS WTI spread, as it pertains to specifically the Montana project. And currently the WCS discount is about $12 below WTI, which is within the range of what we had forecasted for purposes of that EBITDA contribution that we’ve previously given. With regard to the opportunities around say the Montana refinery, we do increase, or do intend to increase the amount of processing of heavy Canadian crude oil than we have in the past by virtue of the increase in capacity of that facility. But I would say that really the story has become increasingly on the fuel side of the business oriented towards the pace at which the Canadians continue to produce and the apparent lack of pipeline offtake capacity that has resulted in the structural disconnect between WCS and WTI. I think moreover, as it pertains to say our solvents and esters products, we are selling on test products in both facilities and we do intend to take advantage of that in the full year ’16.

Johannes Van Der Tuin

Analyst

And apologies for being a little bit greedy, but just one last quick question. I do appreciate, good to hear from you Noel as well. For the Canadian that you’re going to be increasingly running in Montana and at Superior, how is that likely to change the product slate for those refineries, given the heavier molecule going into them?

Noel Ryan

Analyst

Sure. So basically we’re going to be producing incrementally more asphalt. And as Tim referenced in the prepared comments and the script, we recently entered into a long-term marketing contract with Alan [ph] that we’re going to be taking product of our midcon markets where we sell asphalts. And we produce asphalt at refineries like Superior and Montana, at Shreveport and I believe Princeton as well. And those four refineries generally sell their product into the midcon. We have a retail marketing relationship on the East coast with off states. But we have never really done much on the west side -- western portion of the country. So our marketing efforts with regard to that incremental production a lot of it is going to be going through Alan [ph] and their southwestern marketing terminal.

Tim Go

Analyst

Johannes, this is Tim. What I would echo into what Noel said is you've asked about how the product slate changes. It really does blow down to the asphalt pool, but the diesel and gasoline pools don’t really get impacted significantly. But on the asphalt side we make considerably more asphalt. That’s why we entered into this agreement with Alan [ph], to help us retail that asphalt. I think that is consistent with what we have been planning all along in terms of this Montana project. I would also tell you that our asphalt business was very profitable in 2015, and all signs seem to indicate that it will continue to be very profitable in 2016 as well. So we are looking forward to that summer season of the asphalt.

Johannes Van Der Tuin

Analyst

Okay. Are there any particular aspects of the deal that you are doing for distribution with ALJ that you would like to highlight? Something that you think is particularly interesting about it?

Tim Go

Analyst

Probably not at this time, but in a future time we will speak with our partner and we choose to disclose more maybe at that time, but not at the present time.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Brad Heffern from RBC Capital. Your question please.

Brad Heffern

Analyst

So Tim, obviously you spend a lot on the fuels business, I was curious if you could just a little bit about how demand has worked on the specialty product side? Obviously the fuel side is probably a little more consumer driven, specialties probably a little more industrial driven and we have seen a lot of sort of industrial headwinds of late. Have you seen any softness in demand, how the margins looked and so on, kind of the trend over the past several months?

Tim Go

Analyst

Yes, that’s a great question. Let me ask Bill Anderson, our VP of Specialty Sales to comment on that.

Bill Anderson

Analyst

Sure, thanks Tim. In 2015, we actually sold more specialty volume throughout the course of the year than we had in the previous year. We moved all of our products consistent with the types of volumes we have in the past, maintained inventory levels that we were desiring to hit by yearend and continue to see volumes moving nicely out here in 2016.

Tim Go

Analyst

And Brad, what I would say too is I think we have talked about this on a previous earnings call, but the solvents, that group of our specialty segment has seen some slowdown in relationship to the oil fuel services slowdown. But all of the other segments, as Bill just mentioned saw increased volumes. The other thing I would mention is in the past we talked about the lag that we see in specialty pricing associated with dropping crude oil prices. That has been going on pretty much for the year of 2015. What I would tell is that that lag is catching up now, and so you've seen a lot of announcements from some of the large base oil manufactures and price cuts in those areas. Those will certainly put pressure on our base level margins. What I would tell you though is the base oil is just a fraction of our specialty portfolio. The wax is the solvent season, the petrol items, the wide oils, some of our branded products, the Royal Purple, a Bel-Ray, the TruFuel all of those as they are further away from the crude oil supply chain and closer to the retail customer, have continued to see the strong margins that we typically see.

Brad Heffern

Analyst

Okay great, thanks for that color. And then I guess in your prepared comments Tim you mentioned, liquidity enhancing initiatives. Obviously you have the loan from the GP and you spoke about potential divestitures as well. Is there anything else you would throw in that bucket that you would like to put a finer point on?

Tim Go

Analyst

Well, a lot of these are items that I don’t think are appropriate to talk on the phone, but we settled some derivatives early, and liquidated and monetized the value of some of those derivatives. So things like that, that would free up cash.

Noel Ryan

Analyst

I mean there are several -- we've certainly been through cycles of volatile commodity prices before. We understand how the business operates in that type of an environment. So we're always working on several initiatives all at once to enhance, and I think if some of those are operational and some of those are strategic. So it's a -- we think there are multiple options here to improve our situation and we're focused on all of those simultaneously.

Tim Go

Analyst

And I think just to your reference on heritage group, we've got a very supportive general partner. They continue to own about 22% of the LP units and a 100% of the GP. And I think that 6% loan that they gave us was highly supportive. It was unsecured and it really illustrates the long term support that they intend to give this company. So in an environment where MLPs are out of favor, I think having a GP as supportive as ours is a competitive advantage.

Brad Heffern

Analyst

Sure, okay, understood and I guess just one more on liquidity. For the borrowing base, how is [indiscernible] accordion on that? Is it -- was it basically just mark to market for the value of the inventory at the end of the year and so the -- it probably has integrated any more since then or is there sort of a lag effect.

Tim Go

Analyst

Well, there's a little bit of a lag effect. Our borrowing base is calculated at different points in time, based on where our overall usage of the facility lies. So currently we measure that on a monthly basis. And so there's a little bit of a lag effect in that construction. I think it's one of those -- it does take some time for a change in a commodity price like a change in the price of crude to work its way through. Ultimately the product pricing changes but it flexes up and down based on those changes at the required frequencies that we have to measure it.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Sean Sneeden from Oppenheimer. Your question please.

Sean Sneeden

Analyst

Pat or Tim. Maybe I missed a little bit of the discussion on cash flow neutrality, but can you maybe comment on when you think that you're actually going to get to that point. And just to be clear, when you think about cash flow neutrality, is that really including distributions? Are you just looking at your operating cash flow as CapEx?

Tim Go

Analyst

Sean, this is Tim. Are you referring to DPR in particular, or are you referring the Company as a whole?

Sean Sneeden

Analyst

I guess my comments were about the Company as a whole, but maybe your comments were just about DPR.

Tim Go

Analyst

Yes, that's right Sean. When I use the term cash flow neutrality, and I don't know if anyone else used that as well, we were specifically talking about the Dakota Prairie Refinery. We did see a significant loss in the fourth quarter. That's probably one of the significant bridges for why our fuels numbers were lower than what you might have thought, and the focus of our management team right now is to get that Dakota Prairie Refinery in a cash flow neutral position and we're working very closely with our partners, MDU to make that happen.

Sean Sneeden

Analyst

Okay, got it. I guess maybe on the topic, when you think about general margins for the businesses as we kind of look forward throughout '16, how are you guys thinking about your cash flow position? It would appear to me that you're likely be free cash negative for the full year, but any kind of commentary on how you're thinking about that would be helpful.

Noel Ryan

Analyst

I mean Sean, we don't give EBITDA guidance. We do give capital spending guidance and our capital spending is now at 60% or more year-over-year. So I think the variable in the model right now, the single biggest variable is not specialty. We’re seeing stability there. It's tremendous business, and the margins are strong. We’re really seeing variability and is whether or not you know fuels demand holds up the way it did last year, whether we begin to see inventory build in major markets, things like that that people are talking about with reference to the I guess five consecutive weeks we see in the DOE inventory numbers in terms of refined product build. So the question becomes can refiners begin to cut runs [ph], be disciplined in an industry so that we could have refined product margins stay at a healthy level. The other question, and probably for us an equally important question, it goes back again to where does that WCS spread go. If WCS blows out, those fuels refineries in the north would do really well, and vice versa. And so I think that speaks to Tim’s comments around hedging that spread to the tune of 50% of our WCS WTI -- 50% of our WCS intended purchases in the second half of the year have been hedged. And we’ve done that on a percentage hedge basis to the tune of about anywhere from 69% to 71% of WTI. And then we’ve done a modest amount -- a nominal amount of fixed priced hedges, I think to the tune of about 6,000 barrels a day, but you can see that in the Slide deck. The bottom line is that cash flow is going to depend -- the variance in our cash flow is going to depend on the variability of fuels refined product margins.

Tim Go

Analyst

And Sean, let me just make it clear to you and everyone else on the line, just so that we make sure we don’t spread any false rumors here. When we talk cash flow neutrality, we are only talking about the Dakota Prairie refining. We don’t believe we’re going to be anywhere near cash flow neutrality at the Company. We believe we’re going to be well above that.

Sean Sneeden

Analyst

Okay. And when you talk about cash flow neutrality, you’re talking of just operating cash flow less CapEx before distributions or?

Tim Go

Analyst

Yes.

Sean Sneeden

Analyst

And so I guess, and kind of funding that you’re going to need in the near-term as you kind of walk through the self-help that you’ve outlined and increasing your WCS runs. Should we really be thinking about that being funded entirely under the ABL, or are there further conversations going on with the GP, or how should we think about that in the near term?

Noel Ryan

Analyst

I think in the near term a lot of the projects remain in the evaluation phase. And as Tim said, we’re looking at certainly priorities for things that require less capital versus more capital. So, I don’t think at this point based on the scale at what we’re talking about in the near term, our abilities to fund would be from available sources of liquidity and not necessarily requiring some special form of funding.

Sean Sneeden

Analyst

And then maybe just as a follow up on the $75 million note. Can you talk a little bit about the terms there? Is that piece paper paired with the unsecured bonds? And what’s the maturity of that facility?

Noel Ryan

Analyst

We’re going to offer more disclosure around that note as part of our 10-K filing. It is a note from a related party. Its tenure is relatively short term, but again it's with the support of general partners. So we’ll work through those matters as we proceed. And it is a low level of interest loan basically to continue to support the ongoing needs of the partnership. I think it demonstrates again a very supportive general partner. When we file our 10-K, we’ll offer some additional disclosure around the note itself.

Sean Sneeden

Analyst

And if I can sneak just one last one in there. On your slide about potentially growing WCS volumes from your 2016 targets, that 70,000 target, what do you think the capital you would need to be able to get there would roughly be?

Noel Ryan

Analyst

Again I think Sean, we’re going to wait for another day to discuss that. I think it's going to be fairly modest, compared to some of the capital spending you’ve seen us do in past years. But it’s something that we’re going to save for another day.

Tim Go

Analyst

I think that’s the right answer, Noel. What I would say is on that chart we show what our 2016 target is and we talked about that. That requires no additional capital, just to reiterate what we said earlier on the call.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Greg Brody from Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Your question please.

Greg Brody

Analyst

Hey guys, most of my questions were answered. Just a few of mine. Liquidating the hedges, it sounds like that was primarily just for liquidity enhancement. Is there any more to that, that I should be thinking about or that's what really drove it.

Tim Go

Analyst

Yes, Greg I think you are thinking about aligned with our consideration as we look at again levers that would be helpful and constructive during the fourth quarter, and that was the driving decision.

Greg Brody

Analyst

And then just trying to think about your EBITDA this year. I know you don’t give guidance but -- clearly sort of Prairie has been -- you putting out was the big overhang. The other three segments -- are those still sort of in the framework of what you started would be in terms of EBITDA. I think last quarter you even said it might be over $100 million. But is that still the way to think about it or is there other things impacting that, just at the Montana refinery?

Tim Go

Analyst

I'm not sure I understand the question Greg. I can't say that we had a very strong year that was supported by a combination of unbelievably strong refined margins on the Specialty side and still very healthy fuels cracks. And again back to the prior question that Sean Sneeden asked at Oppenheimer, a lot of the variance in 2016 is going to be predicated on whether or not we see a consistent strength in fuels refining margins. We don’t expect to see large variances in our cash flow generation within Specialty products. And I would say that oilfield services segment has obviously been very hard hit, but we have been affected at cutting cost there try to get us back to of close to cash flow neutral there. So really, when you talk about the major deltas in the model, it's going to be how well or not well did fuels refining do and we're again taking a conservative tact by hedging a significant portion of anticipated fuels production as well as our hedging around WCS. So we're trying to take out any risk that we can that we think is prudent.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Mike Gyure of Janney. Your question please.

Mike Gyure

Analyst

Yes, I think all my questions have been answered. Thanks, guys.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. This does conclude the question-and-answer session of today's program. I would like to hand the program back to Noel Ryan for any further comments.

Noel Ryan

Analyst

Thank you everybody for joining us on today’s conference call. If you have any questions, please contact our Investor Relations department and we will be happy to assist you. That concludes the call. Talk to you soon.

Operator

Operator

Thank you ladies and gentlemen, for your participation in today's conference. This does conclude the program. You may now disconnect. Good day.