Greg L. Armstrong
Analyst · Barclays
Dan, I mean, you raised a great question, and there's a lot of art to the science of forecasting in our business model. I think probably the best way I could summarize it is we run a number of iterations about what could happen in the future. And we look at our tool chest of resources that we have, both assets and hedging opportunities, to lock in opportunities when they show up. And after numerous iterations, we come up with what we feel like is a pretty baseline performance that will -- we'll be able to hit almost no matter what happens in the future. What we don't take into account in that forecast are situations that we think are likely to occur but are very difficult to predict when they will occur. And so we leave that really as upside, and we exclude that from our baseline. Over time, I would tell you we would be disappointed if we didn't have performance above that baseline, because we do think there will be volatility, and we think we have the tools and the business model and the assets to be able to capitalize on that. So we've got a fairly robust outlook for the third -- fourth quarter and also for the first quarter of 2013, that we've kind of dialed into our forecast. I'd tell you, we probably haven't taken full advantage of what we think could happen, but we're starting to give them some credit. And in fact, beyond the first quarter, we've assumed things kind of return to more of a normalized margin per barrel. And unfortunately, we can't break that margin per barrel down into what that translates into a Midland-Cush differential or a WTI-Brent differential, because it's the result of an amalgamation of a number of different forecasts we run to get to that baseline. So frankly, I know what you're kind of looking forward, where do we think there's likely to be opportunities out there? And the answer is we think they'll be just about everywhere. Anytime an area appears to be getting imbalanced, where takeaway capacity equals production capacity that needs to move out of that area, if you have a refinery downtime or you have a pipeline project that's delayed, et cetera, that creates volatility backs of differentials. And of course, we've got pipelines, trucks, railcars, barges, and a significant amount of inventory that we carry as well as terminals to be able to store more inventory that enables us to capture that market. So if you believe the future is going to be volatile, we think PAA's probably the best place to pay attention to.