Timothy Go
Analyst · Janney.
Yeah. Hi, Mike. This is Tim. Yeah, when we think about self-help, we think about structural improvements that we're making to our business that are sustainable. So, things that just happen through fluctuations in the marketplace. For example, WCS spreads and Midland TI spreads, we don't consider that part of self-help. We're really looking at things and efforts that we're making to structurally change our earnings potential. So, from a RIN standpoint, the blending things that you're talking about, to the extent that we can get more biodiesel in the blends, to the extent that we can take advantage of generating RINs themselves structurally, we would include that in self-help, but we wouldn't include anything like hardships or mark-to-market price drops or anything like that. In terms of what we think about when we do self-help, we really think about three types of drivers. We think about raw material improvements, things that we can do to help lower the cost of our raw materials. And a lot of that, again, not just market fluctuation. We don't include that. But to the extent that we enter a new agreement with a pipeline or we create some rail capability where we can bring in some advantaged crudes or to the extent that we're in our specialties business, resetting our raw material quality or feedstocks, so that we can take advantage of a quality differential in our raw materials. Those are things that we're looking at in our self-help for raw materials. The second category is really around operating costs and operating efficiency, how we can continue to lower our footprint in terms of cost per barrel both on a fixed and variable basis. And in the third category is really product upgrades, how can we continue to offer higher-margin, higher-valued, more specialty product that can command the higher netbacks and the higher premiums. And so, for example, at Shreveport, we set another unleaded premium gasoline record at the site here in the first quarter as we continue to look for those opportunities to upgrade our products. I'd say a year ago, we weren't making any premium at Shreveport. Now, we're making quite a significant amount just through, again, the self-help initiatives of upgrading our products. So, that's kind of how we think about it and those are some examples of some of the things we've made here in the first quarter as well as in the last two years of the program.