Earnings Labs

Kinder Morgan, Inc. (KMI)

Q3 2017 Earnings Call· Wed, Oct 18, 2017

$31.71

-0.27%

Key Takeaways · AI generated
AI summary not yet generated for this transcript. Generation in progress for older transcripts; check back soon, or browse the full transcript below.

Same-Day

+0.38%

1 Week

-3.34%

1 Month

-8.45%

vs S&P

-9.29%

Transcript

Operator

Operator

Welcome and thank you for standing by. And welcome to the Quarterly Earnings Conference Call. At this time all participants are in a listen-only mode until the question-and-answer portion of today's call. [Operator Instructions] Today's conference is being recorded. If you have any objections you may disconnect at this time. I will now turn the call over to Mr. Rich Kinder, Executive Chairman of Kinder Morgan. You may begin.

Rich Kinder

Analyst · Morgan Stanley. Your line is open

Okay, thank you Brendon. And before we begin as always I'd like to remind you that today’s earnings releases by KMI and KML and this call include forward-looking and financial outlook statements within the meaning of Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, the Securities and Exchange Act of 1934 and applicable Canadian provincial and territorial securities laws, as well as certain non-GAAP financial measures. Before making any investment decisions, we strongly encourage you to read our full disclosures on forward-looking and financial outlook statements and use of non-GAAP financial measures set forth at the end of KMI’s and KML’s earnings releases and to review our latest filings with the SEC and Canadian Provincial and Territorial Securities Commission for a list of important material assumptions, expectations and risk factors that may cause actual results to differ materially from those anticipated and described in such forward-looking and financial outlook statements. With that behind us, let me start by making just a few remarks. Steve and Kim will detail the financial results. But once again the cash flow of KMI remains strong and demonstrates in my mind the strength and stability of the assets underpinning Kinder Morgan. Now let me remind you that a segue into the fact that generating strong, sustainable and growing cash flow is our prime objective at Kinder Morgan. Until late 2015 after the collapse in oil prices occurred, our strategy was to distribute essentially all of that operating cash flow to our shareholders through dividends and to fund our expansion CapEx by issuing equity and debt in roughly equal increments. That approach worked through thick and thin for about 18 years, but it became prohibitively expensive with the events of the weakened energy markets after the oil collapse and thus in December 2015 we cut our dividend.…

Steve Kean

Analyst · Bernstein. You may begin

Alright, thank you Rich. I’m going to update you on KMI performance and then turn it over to Kim as usual to take you through the financials. Following that I'll update you on KML and turn it over to Dax Sanders, CFO of KML, to give you the KML financial and capital raising update. Then we’ll take your questions on both KMI and KML. Starting with KMI, we had a good third quarter and a good first three quarters of 2017. We are running ahead of plan year-to-date, but as we've been saying all year, we are calling that timing and expect to be essentially flat plan for the year after adjusting for the impact of the IPO, KML, as well as the impact of Hurricane Harvey. Looking back over the first three quarters of the year we have completed the two key steps that we outlined in beginning of the year to strengthen our balance sheet and put us in a position to return value to shareholders. We completed the JV of our Elba Island liquefaction facility in the first quarter, consistent with our budget assumptions and in the second quarter we secured acceptable financing for our Trans Mountain Expansion Project, creating a self-funding entity on the strength of all of our Canadian pipeline and turmoil assets. We continue to expect that we’ll end 2017 with the debt to EBITDA ratio of 5.2 times, versus the 5.4 that we projected at the beginning of the year. Now for a few business segment performance highlights. First, we made promising progress on our Gulf Coast Express expansion project. This 1.9 Bcf a day pipeline would connect growing Permian Basin gas supplies with our existing Texas Intrastate network. We announced earlier this month that we are working to finalize definitive JV documents…

Kim Dang

Analyst · Morgan Stanley. Your line is open

Okay, thanks Steve. Today we're declaring a dividend of $12.50 per share, consistent with our budget. On performance, first let me highlight a few points and then I'll take you through the details. I’ll start with the GAAP numbers and then I'll move to DCF, which is the way we look and think about the numbers and performance. On earnings per share, third quarter earnings per share is up $0.25 or 249%, versus the third quarter of 2016. However, the way we look at it adjusted earnings per share, which includes certain items is flat, versus the prior period. Our DCF per share, which is the primary way we judge our performance is $0.01 lower versus the third quarter of 2016 or approximately $26 million down, primarily attributable to reduced contributions from SNG as a result of the 50% sale in the third quarter of 2016. Reduced revenue due to Hurricane Harvey, higher sustaining CapEx and pension contributions, as well as the reduced contributions from our Canadian assets due to the IPO of the 30% interest in those assets. These items are partially offset by lower interest expense, nice performance on TGP and multiple new build Jones Act tankers entering service. For the third quarter and year-to-date, as Steve mentioned DCF is ahead of our budget, but that is largely timing with sustaining CapEx and natural gas O&M being the largest contributor. For the full year absent the impact of KML and the hurricane very roughly $20 million each or $40 million in total, we would expect the DCF to be on budget. Taking the impact of KML and Harvey into account, we expect DCF to be less than 1% below budget. On the balance sheet, we ended the quarter at 5.1 times debt to EBITDA flat to the second…

Steve Kean

Analyst · Bernstein. You may begin

Okay. Just a reminder on KML, KML consist of all of the Kinder Morgan Canada pipelines and terminals assets and those include our existing Trans Mountain pipeline system which runs full and is the only outlet for Alberta Crude to the world oil market, also includes our Puget Sound System, which takes oil from Trans Mountain and delivers it to Northwest Washington State refineries it includes Canadian portion of the ocean delivering condensate to Alberta for blending with the oil sands crude as part of the transportation, so crude comes down from the oil sands to our merchant terminal position in Edmonton, we have to move on Trans Mountain or other pipelines or through one of our joint venture crude by rail facilities. We've built our Edmonton tanks position over the last 10 years and continue to expand it with our Base Line terminal joint venture with Keyera, which is on time and on budget with first tanks coming on in early 2018. Finally Vancouver Wharves, our multi commodity bulk terminal in Vancouver harbor and the gateway terminal for mineral concentrates into and out of Western Canada is also part of KML. So in summary, KML was comprised of two strong existing business platforms that are integral to fulfilling the transportation blending and storage needs of producers and refiners in Canada. And it has the substantial upside associated with the Trans Mountain expansion. On that expansion, we call that in Q1 of this year we reached a milestone. We increased the cost projection above the cap which gave the shippers the right to return capacity to us when all of a sudden done, all the capacity was placed that’s reaffirming the market need for this project based on 2017 shipper line up and 2017 oil sands economics. I'm repeating this…

Dax Sanders

Analyst · Morgan Stanley. Your line is open

Thanks Steve. Before I get into results and outlook I want to highlight a recent occurrence in the bank capital markets front. During the quarter, we completed our first offering in Canadian rate reset preferred stock in August, we launch [indiscernible] $200 million in response to significant demand we were able to upsize the $300 million in price with the five and a quarter coupon which netted us approximately $293 million in proceeds. As a reminder, our plan for financing the project contemplates that we will raise $1.5 billion of preferreds during the construction period and those preferreds get 100% equity treatment under our construction facility and generally 50% to the eyes of the rating agencies. Overall the success of this offering was yet another positive step towards KML raising the capital necessary to fully finance the PMX expansion. As I alluded to our viewed results, as I did last quarter I want to preface my comments with the caveat that while will be offering quarter-over-quarter comparison these comparisons have limited value at this point given that we are reporting a quarter where KML was done by the public and will be comparing results for the quarter where it was wholly-owned by KMI and during those periods part of the IPO, there were shareholder loans in place that generated significant FX most of which is unrealized. Interest and other items not reflective of the true earnings power KML therefore we would ask you to focus on the outlook for the balance of 2017 which you will see is consistent with what we've previously discussed, quarter-over-quarter branches will need more of a time and obviously we don’t have a published budget for KML, a standalone company but starting with our budget cycle this year we will publish one just as KMI…

Steve Kean

Analyst · Bernstein. You may begin

Okay, with that, we will take questions on KMI and KML. Okay, Brendon.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. We will now begin the question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] And our first question is from Jean Ann Salisbury with Bernstein. You may begin.

Jean Ann Salisbury

Analyst · Bernstein. You may begin

Hi, good afternoon. I just had a couple on Gulf Coast Express it seems like since Permian flows to Mexico have not really materialized yet, the outlook for Waha in the next year or two keeps getting worse. Can you speak to whether it seems like Permian – those are getting more noticed about in basin pricing for gas over the last six to nine months.

Steve Kean

Analyst · Bernstein. You may begin

Okay, well, I will see if Tom has any other color, not speaking to their nerves but really just speaking to the fact that the contracting process goes – is going a lot faster I think the people are realizing that perhaps here’s another way that they need to get out of Waha, that the volumes going to Mexico as you said are not materializing as quickly maybe as the pipeline capacity to move to Mexico has materialized. And so now with the Texas Gulf Coast becoming more of a premium market, shippers are definitely looking to get there. I think that’s fair to say that tangibly is showing up in the FPA agreements that we are working on with them. So when they get eased they obviously observe the basis differential between the Permian today. And what it is in Houston ship channel when they get eased to our system they can access Mexico through our connections with Mexico including a pipeline that serves Monterey, they can also access the emerging LNG liquefaction capacity that is coming on line on the Gulf Coast plus the petchems plus the Houston area utility power demand in industrial market. And so I think it gives, speaking – not speaking for the shippers but I think it gives producers the option to exploit a large number of different and varied market and not that on or depends solely on what the prospects for power demand growth in Mexico are.

Jean Ann Salisbury

Analyst · Bernstein. You may begin

Make sense. So it really has picked up over the last quarter it sounds like?

Steve Kean

Analyst · Bernstein. You may begin

It has.

Jean Ann Salisbury

Analyst · Bernstein. You may begin

Okay, and then [indiscernible] FID and still hit second half of 2019?

Steve Kean

Analyst · Bernstein. You may begin

Well, we talked about, we didn’t talk about FID, talked about adding it to the backlog I mean I think we are hopeful and working toward trying to get things resolved and done this quarter and I think we are making very good progress on that but its not completely done. And Tom in terms of the – sometime this quarter as we need to get it done.

Jean Ann Salisbury

Analyst · Bernstein. You may begin

Okay. And the 1.9 is that kind of the maximum on that diameter, no real expansion CapEx?

Steve Kean

Analyst · Bernstein. You may begin

Yeah, I think that’s max.

Jean Ann Salisbury

Analyst · Bernstein. You may begin

Okay, great. That’s all from me. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Our next question is from Tom Abrams with Morgan Stanley. Your line is open.

Steve Kean

Analyst · Morgan Stanley. Your line is open

Hi, Tom, how are you this afternoon?

Tom Abrams

Analyst · Morgan Stanley. Your line is open

I’m good, thanks. Just – before I ask my question, a quick follow-up on the Gulf Coast is the first question. Do we have a cost number for your portion yet?

Steve Kean

Analyst · Morgan Stanley. Your line is open

We have not put out a cost or return numbers because it’s a competitive situation out there. But we have a 50% interest that we are contemplating we could go below that to the extent that we end up cutting additional equity yield and exchange for significant volume commitments being brought to the project.

Tom Abrams

Analyst · Morgan Stanley. Your line is open

Okay, we’ll wait on that then. But my question was on recontracting I think in your 17 Analyst Day, you gave like it was 1.5%, 1% for 2018 and 2019 respectively on what was the risk you thought which is really quite modest. Is there any reason is in developments why that should more or less as you see it now?

Steve Kean

Analyst · Morgan Stanley. Your line is open

I mean nothing material that I can speak to at this point.

Tom Abrams

Analyst · Morgan Stanley. Your line is open

All right, and then attach to that a little bit, I think you heard say in your working capital comments, what Kim said, a $40 million debt pay down at the pipeline level. Correct me if I’m wrong on that particular fact. But do you see additional requirements to make pipeline level debt pay down through 2018?

Kim Dang

Analyst · Morgan Stanley. Your line is open

The $40 million just refers to in aggregate, the difference between the DCF that is in – what’s in our DCF and what we got in distributions from equity investments. And so in some cases, we have at that level that has amortization payments with it and that’s primarily Ruby, and Gulf LNG have some. But that number also just includes timing, whereas sometimes there’s a quarter lag between the DCF and and the distribution coming out.

Tom Abrams

Analyst · Morgan Stanley. Your line is open

Got it. And then second part of the question in terms of anticipated pipeline level debt pay down?

Dax Sanders

Analyst · Morgan Stanley. Your line is open

Anticipated at joint ventures other than amortization, I mean we have a maturity, I guess on Ruby next year of about $250 million and we have a maturity on FEP next year of about $250 million. And so we have – as we go through the budget process we’ll decide whether we refinance that debt or whether we pay it off.

Tom Abrams

Analyst · Morgan Stanley. Your line is open

Alright great. And then if I could stick one more in just looking at some of the kind of quickly hear what you’re talking. So maybe not accurate, but the sales volumes and some gas gathering numbers in the gas segment seem to be declining a little bit, any commentary around that?

Steve Kean

Analyst · Morgan Stanley. Your line is open

Yes, we had, I think, we had sales volumes down on the interest rates for transport volumes up, right, in almost equivalent amounts. But on gathering and processing we have – we think we’re starting to see some sequential month to month pick up in gathering volumes. But we have experienced certainly on a year-over-year basis declines in the key basins in which we access. And in some cases those declines have exceeded what the overall basin decline is, I think, the key example there is Haynesville, which is actually grown year-over-year. The primary shipment that we have there has not been an active exploiter of what we think is very good rock is under their acreage. We expect that’s beginning to change. But we haven’t seen the recovery there yet. So we’ve seen declines that are commensurate plus a little more, I’d say than declines that are overall apparent in the basins from Q3 of 2016 to Q3 of 2017.

Rich Kinder

Analyst · Morgan Stanley. Your line is open

We expect growth in the fourth quarter, so we feel like we’ve bottomed out pretty much also all our more gathering systems.

Tom Abrams

Analyst · Morgan Stanley. Your line is open

All right, that’s great. I’m sorry.

Steve Kean

Analyst · Morgan Stanley. Your line is open

Tom, coming back to Kim’s answer on Ruby and FEP those are both eight-eights she gave you we obvioulsy own half of each of those pipelines.

Tom Abrams

Analyst · Morgan Stanley. Your line is open

Alright, thanks for that. I’ll get back into queue. Thanks a lot.

Operator

Operator

Our next question is from Shneur Gershuni with UBS. Your line is open.

Rich Kinder

Analyst · UBS. Your line is open

Hi Shneur, how are you?

Shneur Gershuni

Analyst · UBS. Your line is open

Good, how are you Rich.

Rich Kinder

Analyst · UBS. Your line is open

Great.

Shneur Gershuni

Analyst · UBS. Your line is open

Just a couple of questions maybe the sort of follow-up on Gulf Coast Express. I realized because you are in a kind position you can’t discuss capital costs, but on a previous call you’d mention that it would be north of a $1 billion. I was wondering if it’s possible to put an upper range in terms of the entire project cost as…

Rich Kinder

Analyst · UBS. Your line is open

I think last time I said $1 billion to $2 billion. And I’m sticking to it.

Shneur Gershuni

Analyst · UBS. Your line is open

Great.

Rich Kinder

Analyst · UBS. Your line is open

I mean it’s fairly transparent. We just don’t want to give our competitors any particular insight into our cost there Shneur.

Shneur Gershuni

Analyst · UBS. Your line is open

No, it’s fair enough. And really she can’t talk about returns by, is it you should if we think about it in terms of your current project backlog would it be kind of similar to kind of the returns you typically expect or could it potentially be higher or lower?

Rich Kinder

Analyst · UBS. Your line is open

Yes, I think comparable to gas backlog.

Shneur Gershuni

Analyst · UBS. Your line is open

Okay, great. And then with crude sort of stabilizing a little bit in some of your hedges are now rolling off on – in the C2O segment. Are there any plans to revisit potentially selling this segment or doing something with this segment?

Rich Kinder

Analyst · UBS. Your line is open

We can’t comment on that in any kind of a specific way about potential transactions, but look we can say again that we like this business. We’re happy with this business. We get attractive returns on the capital that we invest. I think we’ve got two specific businesses and niche business for us, but we have two very key advantages that we bring to it. One is access to CO2, which is a scarce commodity. And the second is a really talented EOR team that knows what they’re doing with the enhanced oil recovery fields that we have. And so we’re happy to continue to own this business and think we bring real advantages to it. But it is a niche business for us.

Shneur Gershuni

Analyst · UBS. Your line is open

Okay. And then a final question with respect to the share buyback that annonced last quarter, do you see any scenarios where you can potentially execute it at a faster pace than this kind of the three-year plan that was outlined certainly given where your stock prices are currently at?

Dax Sanders

Analyst · UBS. Your line is open

Well, our intention is to execute over that three-year period. And as far as the exact timing and clearly we are not happy with our stock price right now, its trading in it, is a whole midstream sector is not trading well and we’re trading poorly, particularly on price to DCF basis. But the share buyback is part of the long-term plan of return value to our shareholders and the implementation of that is going to be just as we said in 2018, 2019 and 2020.

Shneur Gershuni

Analyst · UBS. Your line is open

Okay. And one final question. Do you haven’t have the CO2 CapEx spend for this quarter?

Kim Dang

Analyst · UBS. Your line is open

Yes about $100 million.

Shneur Gershuni

Analyst · UBS. Your line is open

Great. Perfect. Thank you very much guys.

Operator

Operator

Our next question is from Brian Zarahn with Mizuho. Your line is open.

Rich Kinder

Analyst · Mizuho. Your line is open

Good afternoon Brian.

Brian Zarahn

Analyst · Mizuho. Your line is open

Hi Rich, how are you?

Rich Kinder

Analyst · Mizuho. Your line is open

Good.

Brian Zarahn

Analyst · Mizuho. Your line is open

Just following-up on the buyback question in the scenario that the midstream capital market – equity markets remains soft, is there possibility to expand buyback authorization and potentially not grow just the dividend as much in the out years?

Steve Kean

Analyst · Mizuho. Your line is open

Well, we’ve said Brian repeatedly that we intend to return all of our operating cash flow above our capital expenditure level to our shareholders and either dividends or stock buybacks. And we’re on record is saying what our dividend policy is for the next three years. So I would anticipate we would follow that. Now certainly if you get beyond that period of time and I’d certainly believe this will be the case that you have a disconnect between what we believe the disconnect between evaluation and where the stock prices we would look at it differently. But for the forseeable future, I think, we’ve committed to this dividend policy and this share buyback policy, and I think that’s where we are at this point.

Brian Zarahn

Analyst · Mizuho. Your line is open

Okay, fair enough. Shifting to Trans Mountain, perhaps if you could clarify a bit some of the prior comments that you still expect late 2019 as of now if you can execute on these contractor efficiencies otherwise as a nine-month delay. And then potentially can you just discuss a bit more about the unfolding events in courts and how we should think about or likely an appeal from – on this case and if I can better understanding of the parameters of the potential and the service date?

Rich Kinder

Analyst · Mizuho. Your line is open

Okay, yes, I think there’s really not a lot to add to what’s in the release, which is that if you just as the delays experienced to date and just flow that through the schedule, we believe that results in a nine-months delay, but that’s unmitigated. And we also have a case where with with a lot of mitigation, and with several assumptions we can call back to the December 2019 in service day. And so there’s work to be done on mitigation, there’s work to be done on on permiting, and working with our contractors, which we really haven’t had an opportunity to do in terms of bringing them into examine our assumptions on cost, and schedule and the rest. And we’ll be doing that over the coming weeks and months. In terms of the the appeals, we think a couple of observations there. So there’s the BC provincial approval, there’s the federal Order in Council. The BC provincial approval we think it’s very worthy of note that the current BC government is defending the EA, the environmental assessment order, in terms of the adequacy of consultation with First Nations by the prior BC government, okay. And so I think that’s a noteworthy development, that’s a development within the last few weeks really. On the Order in Council, what we would say the federal order, is that we believe that we and the federal government did everything that the Northern Gateway order advised us to do in terms of additional consultation work suddenly we think the federal government did an excellent job of defending the orders that it issued and took into account all the relevant matters. It’s always hard to predict court proceeding outcomes. And what happened and whether someone takes an appeal or not. Appeal is not automatic to the Supreme Court of Canada, just like it’s not automatic here. But again I think it’s noteworthy that the D.C. government is defending the prior order and, I think, it’s also noteworthy that the federal government did a lot of additional consultation and additional work in order to meet the concerns that we identified in the northern gateway decision.

Brian Zarahn

Analyst · Mizuho. Your line is open

And then just lastly, if there is an appeal to the federal Supreme Court, how do you think about timing in that scenario?

Steve Kean

Analyst · Mizuho. Your line is open

Again very hard to predict or project. We’ve had experience with our Anchor Loop Project, which was a project that we felt through the national and provincial park and we had NED certificate or NED order it was appealed, we prevailed on that appeal. Ultimately appeal of that court decision was denied. And so it’s – just it’s it’s hard to know how that would play out until we see the facts.

Brian Zarahn

Analyst · Mizuho. Your line is open

Thank you, Steve.

Operator

Operator

Our next question is from Darren Horowitz with Raymond James. Your line is open.

Rich Kinder

Analyst · Raymond James. Your line is open

Hey Darren, how are you?

Darren Horowitz

Analyst · Raymond James. Your line is open

I’m fine thanks, Rich, I hope you and everybody doing well. Steve, I just had a quick question for you on Gulf Coast Express. And I appreciate that from a volume commitment level it’s still very fluid as you guys finalize ship agreements. But you’ve discussed before having access to one Bcf/d of gas across the system Texas Intrastate taking out BPNG volumes as well. So how do you balance the economic decision with regard to how much gas on the line you could source both on KMTP and EPNG and have the ability to get that synergies to got with in terms of capacity utilization upstream of the pipe versus what could be 0.5 of Bcf/d with associated gas coming out of the sealed gates [ph] of targets processing plants and of course what DCP you would contribute from their assets including what they’re going to do at sand hills?

Steve Kean

Analyst · Raymond James. Your line is open

Darren as always you load a lot into a question. I think what you’re getting at those is how do we look at getting in transport commitments versus purchasing the gas ourselves, which we need for our Intrastate State Texas portfolio of sales activities now which you’re – what you’re getting that.

Darren Horowitz

Analyst · Raymond James. Your line is open

Yes.

Steve Kean

Analyst · Raymond James. Your line is open

Okay, okay. That is something we’re looking at, I think it’s fair to say that we are first and foremost filling out with 10-year transport commitments. But there’s definitely a benefit to us accessing additional sources of gas particularly as we’ve seen both declines in the Eagle Ford maybe leveling out now, but also an overcapacity out of the Eagle Ford. So adding to our sources of supply as you say, is a positive and it is something that we’re evaluating that is entering into a purchase agreements for supply that we can use for our own system needs.

Darren Horowitz

Analyst · Raymond James. Your line is open

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Our next question is from Danilo Juvane with BMO Capital. Your line is open.

Danilo Juvane

Analyst · BMO Capital. Your line is open

Thank you for taking the questions. How are you guys today?

Rich Kinder

Analyst · BMO Capital. Your line is open

Good.

Danilo Juvane

Analyst · BMO Capital. Your line is open

Good. Quick question from me on Utopia. None of the pipeline has shift to ethane only, does that at all impact the contracted volumes on the pipeline?

Steve Kean

Analyst · BMO Capital. Your line is open

No, there’s no change to the contracted volumes.

Danilo Juvane

Analyst · BMO Capital. Your line is open

Got it. And you guys filed year-to-date assumptions in Gulf LNG. I was wondering if you had any updates on the arbitration process there and when you’re planning to the ultimately advance this of course your liquid fashion?

Steve Kean

Analyst · BMO Capital. Your line is open

Yes, so two things. Really the arbitration is proceeding, we believe our case is exceedingly strong. We may get a result by the end of the year in that case. In terms of opportunities on Gulf Coast liquefaction those are things that we continue to evaluate. But I think looking at kind of the worldwide market situation for LNG, we’ve got the current buildout taking place really across north – across the country, across the U.S. And then I think most analyses which show that it’s really 2023 to 2025 before we see another significant uptick and demand. And so we may be waiting until, now you have to start earlier than that to meet that demand. But we may be waiting until the market is ready to start addressing that increase in demand. So that’s ways off.

Danilo Juvane

Analyst · BMO Capital. Your line is open

I appreciate that. One final question from me. You announced, I think, one project on SNGs to Fairburn Expansion, is that the only project that we’ve announced since that the JV was announced by the company?

Steve Kean

Analyst · BMO Capital. Your line is open

Yes.

Danilo Juvane

Analyst · BMO Capital. Your line is open

Do you see visibility to any incremental growth or expansion as a result of this JV going forward?

Rich Kinder

Analyst · BMO Capital. Your line is open

I mean there are certainly opportunities that we’re discussing with our partner and in the marketplace. So I would expect that we’ll see more overtime.

Steve Kean

Analyst · BMO Capital. Your line is open

Yes, fair to say too, it takes time, Fairburn Expansion is preceeding well, they have third-party shipper interest and contracting for capacity on that expansion. So I think that’s going well, according to plan.

Rich Kinder

Analyst · BMO Capital. Your line is open

Our partneship with Southern Company is a very good partnership both from our standpoint and their standpoint.

Danilo Juvane

Analyst · BMO Capital. Your line is open

Do you have any sort of order magnitude as to what incremental growth could be from that?

Steve Kean

Analyst · BMO Capital. Your line is open

Yes, not really an estimate that, I think we can give you at this time.

Danilo Juvane

Analyst · BMO Capital. Your line is open

Okay. That’s it from me.

Steve Kean

Analyst · BMO Capital. Your line is open

I think it’s working according to plan. I mean when we announced that transaction and the things that we thought about that transaction at the time not just the balance sheet benefit that we would get, but the value of associating ourselves with Southern Company an active developer of gas-fired generation capacity and a large customer on the system I think those are materializing. And I think the working relationship is quite good.

Danilo Juvane

Analyst · BMO Capital. Your line is open

I appreciate the answer. Those are my questions. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Our next question is from Colton Bean with Tudor, Pickering, Holt. Your line is open.

Rich Kinder

Analyst · Tudor, Pickering, Holt. Your line is open

Colton, good afternoon.

Colton Bean

Analyst · Tudor, Pickering, Holt. Your line is open

Good afternoon. So I just wanted to speak on the Nat Gas team. You guys are currently moving to the permitting process on the NGPL Southbound Expansion project. So just assuming that project goes ahead, how much more reversal capacity would you have available and just looking at a couple years you’ve got Rover and Nexus and ultimately the Alliance expansion dropping up quite a bit gas in the Midwest. So it seems like all that will be looking to find a home further south. So just maybe timing and thoughts around any potential projects beyond what you currently got queued up?

Rich Kinder

Analyst · Tudor, Pickering, Holt. Your line is open

I mean I think there’s now probably 250 to 400 more that we could do the additional expansions and that that’s probably another couple of years out through the thrid process, but those discussions are ongoing with Gulf Coast customers as well as even Canadian producers some extent as well as producers also of Rockies Express.

Steve Kean

Analyst · Tudor, Pickering, Holt. Your line is open

You’ve identify I think the right trend there, which is we do think that there’s going to be Canadian gas that wants to find its way to another market further south and we think that there will be – there will be additional westbound supplies coming into NGPL that also want to get south to Mexico, to LNG, et cetera.

Colton Bean

Analyst · Tudor, Pickering, Holt. Your line is open

Got it. Thanks for that. And I guess so you’ve touched on Utopia, I think, you’ve also just recently received authorization for [indiscernible] on TGP, so just thinking about you and TGP kind of longer term thoughts around NGL takeaway from the northeast, where do you guys stand on that currently?

Rich Kinder

Analyst · Tudor, Pickering, Holt. Your line is open

Yes, correct. We did get the advantment it is a project that we continue to work on. I think, but there’s nothing new to update or material to update there at all. And I think that there will be with all the expansion capacity coming to takeaway capacity coming online, and production presumably increasing behind it. I think that there’s a bit of a wait and see in terms of how much NGL capacity, is how much NGL production is going to want to find a way home and where it’s going to want to go, what the impact of the Shell facility is going to be in Pennsylvania and the other expansion projects out of it – out of the basin. So I think there’s – there are several things that have to play out over the coming months.

Colton Bean

Analyst · Tudor, Pickering, Holt. Your line is open

Okay. So just continuing to advance the project, but nothing really new to comment on that.

Rich Kinder

Analyst · Tudor, Pickering, Holt. Your line is open

Right.

Colton Bean

Analyst · Tudor, Pickering, Holt. Your line is open

Got it. Alright, well thank you. Helpful.

Operator

Operator

Our next question is from Faisel Khan with Citigroup. Your line is open.

Rich Kinder

Analyst · Citigroup. Your line is open

Good afternoon Faisel.

Faisel Khan

Analyst · Citigroup. Your line is open

Hey, good afternoon Rich, Steve and Kim. Just a couple of questions. Just I want to understand some of the text in the press release around Trans Mountain. The nine months, nine months delay is that – how I figured that into the uncapped versus the capital cost of the line. Understanding that you can completely mitigate that cost if you could?

Rich Kinder

Analyst · Citigroup. Your line is open

Yes it’s really, Ian you want to answer the question.

Ian Anderson

Analyst · Citigroup. Your line is open

Yes, I don’t think nine-month, It’s Ian Anderson, I don’t think the nine-month delay scenario that we could be based with have a bearing on the capped versus the uncapped. If we have additional AFUDC, for example, over a period it would flow equally to proportionally to the capped and uncapped as it’s currently fine.

Faisel Khan

Analyst · Citigroup. Your line is open

Okay understood. And then if I understand the Federal Court appeals case right now, and there what you’ve heard, I guess old arguments and briefs. So I mean this sounds like if just one of the final thesis of a ruling that you need, I mean what else am I looking at here? My understand some the stuff around the DCEO, but for FCA, I mean if you – once you get this ruling is that what else and what are the challenges can be assume not be against you?

Rich Kinder

Analyst · Citigroup. Your line is open

I mean, we have the ruling that we need in terms of the federal government’s order and council. It’s just that order in council is being appealed. The fact that there’s appeal and depending on the outcome of the results of that appeal doesn’t mean that we can’t construct and we encountered this in the U.S. as well where somebody might be appealing an aspect of a first certificate, for example. But depending on what the court finds and if it does find an infirmity depending on what that infirmity is, that doesn’t necessarily stop us from continuing to progress the project. So look we can’t predict outcomes of court proceedings and this is the key one, there’s no question. But we have the authorization that we require from the federal government.

Faisel Khan

Analyst · Citigroup. Your line is open

And depending we see to some of the further permits and approvals is that mutually exclusive of the FDA or is there any link to that?

Rich Kinder

Analyst · Citigroup. Your line is open

No, those are different things, those are different things. So for example, what we’re talking about and what we received here just recently Friday of last week and then Tuesday, I guess right this week were permits from the Alberta and British Columbia provincial authorities giving us access to crown lands. So that’s a separate – that’s a separate set of permits, not having to do with the order and council that’s on appeal in the federal court.

Faisel Khan

Analyst · Citigroup. Your line is open

Okay, okay, got it. And then shifting back to the U.S. on the – regarding on processing side, so I just want to understand just the commentary on this. So the volumes are down about I guess 5% or so sequentially quarter quarterback, I guess the 150 million a day or so to 2.5 Bcf/d. We’re just trying to understand like, how much of that was related to hurricanes and how much was sort of the base decline rate taking place in these two businesses, I guess?

Rich Kinder

Analyst · Citigroup. Your line is open

Okay I’ll ask Tom to give you any other specifics that he has. So our volumes are gathered volumes if you look from 2Q to 3Q of 2017, would have been affected by the hurricane. And so what I mentioned earlier the petchems shot in that’ll have a cascading effect and refineries, that will have a cascading effect upstream to like gas processing plants like our Houston Central plant, for example, where if we’re not processing the gas, we can’t put it in the gas stream because it won’t be quality specs, it hasn’t been dried out, the liquids have to be extracted.

Faisel Khan

Analyst · Citigroup. Your line is open

Okay.

Rich Kinder

Analyst · Citigroup. Your line is open

And so then in turn that box if you will upstream to the producers who have to be shut in if their gas is too rich to be taken into and it’s not pipeline quality gas. Now there whether Harvey effects like some producers got effectively rained out there and had to shut down their operations. We had situations where if they couldn’t control pressures, we couldn’t take a physical risk. And so there are a number of factors. That would definitely have an impact on 2Q of 2017 to 3Q of 2017 volumes, obviously in the Eagle Ford. When I was talking before I was talking about 3Q of 2016 to 3Q of 2017 and the fact that we were having gathering volume declines there, some of which are explainable by the difference between those two periods in the basin performance, right which again we’re starting to see level off and turn around now. You got to do this basin by basin almost. But also some of it is, I think, we’re running a little behind basin volumes here too. And that’s a function of where people are maximizing – where people are optimizing, where they have minimum take obligations, for example, and a number of other factors.

Faisel Khan

Analyst · Citigroup. Your line is open

Well, I guess, let me ask it this way then. Are you back up to the two points, the declines have flattened out in 2Q versus 1Q, and look like, you look like if that working we’re going to be flat sequentially. But is that a fair statement, when I look at where you are today do you have a number today we worked on.

Steve Kean

Analyst · Citigroup. Your line is open

Well, the biggest single area that we saw declines from Q2 to Q3 was in Copano South Texas, which was the Eagle Ford. And yes we are back up to pre-storm volumes here early in the fourth quarter. We also fall somewhat of a decline on our Kinder hub system and that’s largely dependent on BHP activity, which we view that as timing that will we expect to growth volumes there as we proceed into the fourth quarter and into 2018.

Faisel Khan

Analyst · Citigroup. Your line is open

Okay got it. The last question from me, just on the Jones Act tanker market, where you guys seeing rates right now and how are things sort of trending and I guess another vessel and truck. Where are the spot rates and where do think things are right now versus a quarter ago?

Steve Kean

Analyst · Citigroup. Your line is open

John Schlosser is the President of our Terminals Group this year, so John.

John Schlosser

Analyst · Citigroup. Your line is open

Sure. Our rates in 2015 we were roughly 62,000 a day across the entire fleet. Last year they hit a high watermark around 67,000 a day. And because of the decline this year we’ve seen them come back down the 62,000 a day across the entire fleet. That’s an average fleet.

Steve Kean

Analyst · Citigroup. Your line is open

Average fleet, correct.

Faisel Khan

Analyst · Citigroup. Your line is open

Okay and then – if the end demand is that coming back or if some of these contracts roll off?

Steve Kean

Analyst · Citigroup. Your line is open

The market is continued to soft. We anticipate that same soft through 2018, we think that will be more like 2019 now.

Faisel Khan

Analyst · Citigroup. Your line is open

Okay that’s very helpful. Thanks guys I appreciate it.

Operator

Operator

Our next question is from Jeremy Tonet with JPMorgan. Your line is open.

Rich Kinder

Analyst · JPMorgan. Your line is open

Hi Jeremy, how are you?

Jeremy Tonet

Analyst · JPMorgan. Your line is open

Good thank good afternoon. Just a couple of quick clean up questions here. Just want to make sure as clear as far as the hurricane impact on your results for the quarter and how you’re treating it. So for the $175 million of EBITDA that would exclude any damages, but lost business for the quarter would be included in that number. Is that the right way to think about it?

Kim Dang

Analyst · JPMorgan. Your line is open

Yes.

Rich Kinder

Analyst · JPMorgan. Your line is open

That’s correct.

Jeremy Tonet

Analyst · JPMorgan. Your line is open

Okay. So it would have been even higher, gotcha without that. Thanks. And then as far as going through the portfolio that you guys have right now and thinking about non-core assets, do you guys think you’ve kind of completed that process at this point or are there other things that you might look to – you might look to sell at this point?

Steve Kean

Analyst · JPMorgan. Your line is open

Yes, I think we’ve done some divestitures of non-core assets, particularly in the Terminals Group in our bulk terminals business. There’s nothing that I would say is currently on the list, but it’s also something that we continue to review, and evaluate and see if it makes sense if we get a higher price in somebody else’s hands, whatever higher value in somebody else’s hands if you need to work on the balance sheet, et cetera. But I think we’ve done a lot of that work already.

Jeremy Tonet

Analyst · JPMorgan. Your line is open

That’s helpful. That’s it from me. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Our next question is from Robert Kwan with RBC Capital Markets, your line is open.

Rich Kinder

Analyst · RBC Capital Markets, your line is open

Robert, how are you?

Robert Kwan

Analyst · RBC Capital Markets, your line is open

Good, thanks Rich. Just on the Trans Mountain permit, I’m wondering you have a number of how PC permits were needed when the NDP came in and how many had been granted post the change of government?

Steve Kean

Analyst · RBC Capital Markets, your line is open

Yes, Robert it’s Steve. It’s difficult to boil it down to those numbers, given the fact that there are so many, for example, Ministry of Transportation, permits that we require of BC, north of 900. And those will come kind of in bundles by location geographically that we’ve prioritized. And what I can say is that the parcels and tracts of land that we got access to this past week were 327 of 631. So above a little more than half of all of the BC Crown land access that we needed, we were granted last week. We’re working hard on the process to satisfy the condition or satisfy the permit requirements for the Ministry of Transportation. But there’s tough to them and many of them marked really required as for construction schedule to next year, depending on location. We’re working hard on kind of the Northern interior sections spread three and four. There’s probably about 80 there that we’re anticipating were seen up soon. And then there are a number of smaller ones related to things like wild life and stream access, but the number overall is well over a 1,000 that we need from the British Columbia. And we’ve continued to get in the hundreds since the NDP took their seat. And I think the other message there Robert is that the bureaucracies and the statutory authorities of BCF continue to do the work. We don’t get to see any evidence of any political influence.

Robert Kwan

Analyst · RBC Capital Markets, your line is open

I understood. And with the lower 2017 spending estimate just drilling down into the nature of that, is it pretty much all just a delay in what you’re going to have to spend on contractor and construction activities or are you also delaying some of the ordering of longer lead time materials?

Steve Kean

Analyst · RBC Capital Markets, your line is open

No it’s essentially all related to delays in permitting out approvals and conditional release that we need in the varying sections of construction and land access would be a part of that as well.

Rich Kinder

Analyst · RBC Capital Markets, your line is open

Let me just add that as we’ve said in the release and Steve as said, the permitting has been slower than we expected it to be. And we certainly need that permitting in order to build this project obviously and what we’re doing here and I think Steve and Ian are doing a great job on it. We’re not going to waste shareholder money. We’re being very careful on how we spend the dollars because of the situation that we’re currently in and that’s the numbers as Steve gave you and we’ll continue to look at spending levels as we go forward and then just in accordingly.

Robert Kwan

Analyst · RBC Capital Markets, your line is open

Okay, that’s actually great lead in my final question. With the up to nine months delay that you’re looking at right now, and you’ve talked about the potential to try to mitigate that delay given we’ve got some of the court cases over the next few months. How do you kind of assess your desire to mitigate the delay versus a desire to mitigate risk by waiting instead for the court decisions?

Rich Kinder

Analyst · RBC Capital Markets, your line is open

I mean, I think is principly a matter of mitigating the effects of the delay on schedule assuming we can do that in a very cost efficient way. And I’m optimistic that we can as work with our contractors in the permitting authorities to create more efficiency and timeliness of those processes of the events a last of weeks are very ecnouraging. And I’m optimistic as a result of those, but we need to maintain that and we need to be work with our contractors now to look for ways and means to keep schedule. The court actions as Steve said, we’ll play out as they play out, and I’m not going to speculate or predict of when or how those involve, we feel good about the cases that were put forward to the panel, viable to federal government anything in ourselves. And those decisions will flow in the normal course, but we’re not at this point attaching any schedule impacts as it relates to the FCA preceedings.

Robert Kwan

Analyst · RBC Capital Markets, your line is open

Great, understood. Thank you very much.

Operator

Operator

Our next question is from Becca Followill with U.S. Capital Advisors. Your line is open.

Rich Kinder

Analyst · U.S. Capital Advisors. Your line is open

Hi, Becca, how are you?

Becca Followill

Analyst · U.S. Capital Advisors. Your line is open

Good thank you. Three minor questions. Kim, on the certain items that are listed in footnote one gas pipeline to negative $44 million to negative $20 in terminals positive 2018. Can you outline what those are? Why you’re looking – I’ll ask the second one, the legal settlement you’ve talked about, what was that for and can your mind for the amount?

Kim Dang

Analyst · U.S. Capital Advisors. Your line is open

The legal settleement was associated with the UPRr right away.

Becca Followill

Analyst · U.S. Capital Advisors. Your line is open

Okay.

Kim Dang

Analyst · U.S. Capital Advisors. Your line is open

And that was approximately $65 million. With respect to certain items – I can – why don’t we just do this offline?

Becca Followill

Analyst · U.S. Capital Advisors. Your line is open

Okay, we’ll do that.

Kim Dang

Analyst · U.S. Capital Advisors. Your line is open

I can talk to you about what each of those are, for example on thermals it’s probably associated with the sale of our interest and deep rock, which is a gain on that. Our natural gas it’s probably associated with the Eaglehawk settlement, which is a positive impact. But then you’re going to have contract amortization on a fair value of that charter rate and in terminals, which is going to potentially increase the gain, because that tax rate revenue that we record. We report as the certain item. So there’s a whole host of items which I’m happy to just do it in off line.

Becca Followill

Analyst · U.S. Capital Advisors. Your line is open

Okay, the last question is on the Southwest Colorado Production CO2 segment, the gross numbers are top and that numbers are down is there something unusually going on there?

Steve Kean

Analyst · U.S. Capital Advisors. Your line is open

Yes, absolute, gross numbers are up and better down, and so we had an expansion on one of our Southwest Colorado pipeline assets, and our partner in that expansion went non-consent, which means that we got the benefit of that of the higher interest ownership until pay out of that investment. Did I get that right? Okay.

Kim Dang

Analyst · U.S. Capital Advisors. Your line is open

This is on the volume from CO2, that right.

Steve Kean

Analyst · U.S. Capital Advisors. Your line is open

Yes, but she is talking about that why is the gross different from the net.

Kim Dang

Analyst · U.S. Capital Advisors. Your line is open

That’s from the production, they were non-consent on the pretty field.

Steve Kean

Analyst · U.S. Capital Advisors. Your line is open

On the field.

Kim Dang

Analyst · U.S. Capital Advisors. Your line is open

On the field not on the pipe.

Steve Kean

Analyst · U.S. Capital Advisors. Your line is open

Pipeline expansion. So partner went non-consent and then when the project paid out the partners interest returns.

Becca Followill

Analyst · U.S. Capital Advisors. Your line is open

Okay, gotcha. Thank you. That’s all I had.

Operator

Operator

Our next question is from Dave Winans with Prudential. Your line is open.

Rich Kinder

Analyst · Prudential. Your line is open

Good evening Dave.

Dave Winans

Analyst · Prudential. Your line is open

Hey thanks guys. Just easy one, after the adjustments what’s the total budget capital spending budget at KML now?

Steve Kean

Analyst · Prudential. Your line is open

In for 2017.

Kim Dang

Analyst · Prudential. Your line is open

Q3 and Q4 are 214 and 267 roughly.

Dave Winans

Analyst · Prudential. Your line is open

Thanks for taking one from a bondholder, appreciate it guys.

Rich Kinder

Analyst · Prudential. Your line is open

Do you get that Dave?

Dave Winans

Analyst · Prudential. Your line is open

Yes, I got it. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Our next question is from Faisel Khan with Citigroup. Your line is open.

Faisel Khan

Analyst · Citigroup. Your line is open

Sorry guys, just one last question. The the pension contribution in the quarter, how much was that in that like to sort of show you for the year?

Kim Dang

Analyst · Citigroup. Your line is open

Yes it’s $22 million and that’s all we expect to make this year.

Faisel Khan

Analyst · Citigroup. Your line is open

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

At this time I’m showing no further questions.

Rich Kinder

Analyst · Morgan Stanley. Your line is open

Okay. Well, thank you all very much. And Yankee fans watch the game, I know the Astros friends will be. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you for participating in today’s conference. All lines may disconnect at this time.