Earnings Labs

PBF Energy Inc. (PBF)

Q1 2015 Earnings Call· Sun, May 3, 2015

$41.35

+1.37%

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Welcome to the PBF Energy First Quarter 2015 Earnings Conference Call and Webcast. [Operator Instructions]. It's now my pleasure to turn the floor over to Erik Young, Chief Financial Officer. Sir, you may begin.

Erik Young

Analyst

Thank you. Good morning everyone and welcome to our first-quarter earnings call. On the call with me today are Tom O'Malley, our Executive Chairman; Tom Nimbley, our CEO and other members of our Management team. A copy of today's earnings release, including supplemental financial and operating information, is available on our website, PBFenergy.com. Before we get started, I would like to direct your attention to the forward-looking statement disclaimer contained in today's press release. In summary, it outlines the statements contained in the press release and on this call that express the company's or Management's expectations or predictions of the future are forward-looking statements intended to be covered by the Safe Harbor provisions under federal securities laws. There are many factors that could cause actual results to differ from our expectations, including those we described in our filings with the SEC. As also noted in our press release, we will be using several non-GAAP measures while describing PBF's operating performance and financial results, as we believe these metrics are useful, but they are non-GAAP figures and should be taken as such. It is important to note that we will emphasize adjusted, fully converted earnings information and results excluding special items. Our GAAP net income or GAAP EPS figures reflect the percentage interest in PBF Energy company LLC owned by PBF Energy, Inc. which averaged approximately 94% during the first quarter. We think adjusted fully converted net income and EPS are more meaningful metrics to you and they represent 100% of the operations on an after-tax basis. Before discussing our results, I'd like to take a moment to review the non-cash lower cost to market or LCM, inventory adjustment that we recognized in the quarter. This GAAP adjustment is driven by the accounting requirement to carry inventory on our balance sheet…

Tom Nimbley

Analyst

Thank you, Erik and good morning, everybody. The market continues to deliver plenty of excitement and the first quarter was no exception. The work we've done on the East Coast to integrate the operations of Delaware City and Paulsboro, coupled with the organic projects we have put in service, continue to establish the East Coast as a solid earnings contributor for the company. As Erik mentioned, the East Coast contributed almost half of the EBITDA for the quarter. Toledo operations improved following the turn-around in the fourth quarter of last year and a minor crude-unit issue early in the first order. As we mentioned on our last earnings call, we spent about $75 million on improvement projects during the turn-around at Toledo. Since start-up, we have been evaluating the performance of the cat-cracking unit in Toledo. Based on what we have seen so far, we expect to meet or exceed our previous margin-improvement expectations for this portion of the investment. Also during the Toledo turn-around, we installed tie-ins for the completion of the chemical expansion project which we expect to put in service early in the third quarter of this year. After completion of this project, we expect to see an increase in chemicals yields, specifically benzene, toluene and xylene at Toledo which should improve margins by approximately $17 million on an annualized basis. The previously announced hydrogen plant project at our Delaware City refinery is progressing through the permitting phase. Based on current plans, we expect that this unit would be in service by the middle of 2017. This project is expected to be funded by a third party and when complete, would add approximately $70 million to $90 million of incremental margin to the East Coast system. In 2015, we're also beginning work on our tier-3 compliance project…

Tom O'Malley

Analyst

Thank you very much, Tom. Just a couple comments with regard to the first quarter, my first comment was it really was a heroic effort, both on the East Coast and in Toledo, to keep the refineries running given the weather situation we had. We had ice all over the place. The danger of slips and falls was incredible. The danger of incidents in the refineries was something we had to pay a great deal of attention to. The people who work in the refinery did a really good job. Throughput was lower than we would have expected. That really was, given the weather situation - you really had to be careful. While I'm a little bit disappointed in the financial results, I'm happy we didn't have any serious incidents from a broad operating base in the refineries. Secondly, there was some mention earlier about RINs expense and that was about $36 million. If you looked at it over the full year, you would say RINs expense is going to cost about $150 million. The RINs situation is one of the truly goofy things that we're living under. It's something that if I was to draw a simile for you, I would say well, you know what your 2014 income tax rules were, you knew that certainly before the end of 2014. We're four months into 2015 and the government has told us they'll let us know what the rules are at the end of this year. That will be retroactive. The whole thing is screwy. We of course talked to our representatives in Washington, but generally they seem to be more interested in running for office and giving speeches then doing anything about this. The overall RIMs cost across the United States - we call it RIMS, I just…

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions]. We can take our first question from Paul Sankey with Wolfe Research. Please go ahead.

Paul Sankey

Analyst

Mr. O’Malley, I just wanted you to expand a little bit without wanting to be negative on the fact that you were disappointed, I think you said disappointed somewhat in the financial results. Without going further, could you just be more specific? Tom O'Malley*: Frankly always kind of projected in my own mind what we're going to be able to accomplish. In this quarter, if I look at it, it would have been a lot happier if I saw a dollar a share in earnings. Of course we saw a higher operating* cost during the quarter and that was largely a function of really trying to be extremely careful on what we're doing. The conditions that we were operating in over fairly long periods of time were extraordinary. All of you that live on the East Coast certainly know that we had a horrible winter unless you're a great skier or ice skater. But that really drove the results, so sure the disappointment was there. I'm a large shareholder in the company. I always want to see the best results we can possibly achieve but on the other side of the coin, the company's ethic is always operate safely, operate carefully, if we have to cut back on volume metrics and let's do so. Discharging ships, discharging railcars, everything was more difficult. We had to bring more people to bear on virtually every element of our operation. So it's was tough quarter. I'm really happy to say that starting late in the quarter and certainly running now, operations are a lot smoother, we’re doing a lot better and hopefully that will be reflected in the results. Tom Nimbley*: Paul, this is Tom Nimbley, I just would add a little bit to that. We do track loss profit opportunity as a normal governance measure. And we did have some operating problems during the quarter which were basically driven by the weather conditions that both in Toledo right around the beginning of the year where we had to take down one of the crew units and Paulsboro had some problems associated with [freeze ups] [ph] etcetera probably cost us $25 million of EBITDA, maybe a little north of that. That we have to figure out how to not have a happen even in these extraordinary or difficult weather conditions, it's a challenge for us going forward.*

Paul Sankey

Analyst

It sounds like you’re mostly disappointed in the weather above all, but the follow-up would be given - the risk of the export ban on crude being lifted seems high, I was wondering given what you said about rail economics, what will be the potential cost if rail economics just move to be structurally uneconomic for you guys, would there be some sort of write down* or ongoing costs associated with that? Thank you very much.

Tom O'Malley

Analyst

Taking rail out of the system means we would have to absorb some reasonable cost. I would ask Erik to quantify that.*

Erik Young

Analyst

I think overall the cost of the rail if we're assuming in a complete draconian scenario the rail isn't moving at all, we would have to offload our rail cars, we would continue to have the investment in the PBF Logistics rail infrastructure on a net basis that's probably a call it $30 million - $35 million a year cost to the parent company for PBF Logistics on rail offload in Delaware.

Operator

Operator

And we can take our next question from Evan Calio with Morgan Stanley.

Evan Calio

Analyst · Morgan Stanley.

Just a follow-up on Paul's question, I mean I know there is disagreement on whether* the amendment will even be proposed or some set of views to avoid poison bill [indiscernible] any passage on the Iran Sanctions bill yet, kind of [get off the soap box] for Utah. What are your views on Washington's awareness of the Jones Act and impact on North East refining and need to address both pieces of legislation in tandem, if at all?

Tom O'Malley

Analyst · Morgan Stanley.

First of all, the company's stated policy as part of a group of refiners is that we don't have a level playing field, we don't have a free market. In crude oil, we have the Jones Act which from a quantifiable point of view if you move on foreign flag tankers from the U.S. Gulf Coast to the U.S. East Coast in essence it already moves to Canada, it's about $2 a barrel; if you use a Jones Act, it's about $7 a barrel, $5 a barrel simply makes it impossible for us to move domestic crude up to the U.S. East Coast. The only reason that the E&P industry wants to have freedom to exploit crude oil is that they would get a higher price for the crude oil which in turn would raise the price of crude oil in the United States and would be a detriment* to the American consumer because gasoline prices would go up, diesel prices would go up, jet fuel prices* would go up, everything would go up because crude oil represents the vast majority of costs in all of those products. I don't see the political will existing in the United States at this point in time and indeed any time prior to the presidential election to in essence rescind* the export restrictions on crude oil. I don't think anything is going to happen until after the next presidential election. At that point, one then has to prognosticate who gets elected. At this moment in time, I have no idea about that but certainly, going forward it's a battle that's going to be fought. There is going to be a continued drumbeat from the E&P industry to permit exports and there are certainly a very broad coalition which basically says, hey, wait a second, that's a bad idea. The Energy and Security Act of 2007 which basically created all these screwball regulations that have turned into RINs and created a playing field where you're supposed to make fuels out of virtually anything, particularly things that we –eat* ethanol, corn and beef. Well, do we still have a security issue if the country feels we don't have a security issue? Let's do away with those mandatory numbers, do away with the Jones Act and then we would be fine with exports. That's our position, our answer where we're going and what we talk to our representatives about.

Evan Calio

Analyst · Morgan Stanley.

I agree on the will issue, on the will point. My second question you raised your MLP* EBITDA from 120# to 200. Can you discuss any details here, is this a higher earnings potential within existing midstream assets, or are you ring fencing other former refining assets, maybe I missed that, any update more generally on kind of dropdown pace without - what's currently being discussed?

Tom O'Malley

Analyst · Morgan Stanley.

Erik, why don’t you take that?

Erik Young

Analyst · Morgan Stanley.

The increase in overall qualifying income at the parent company level, we have gone out and actually looked at fuels distribution, some chemicals and some lubricants production there. So some of that is marketing businesses combined with actual infrastructure that exists at the different plants. Those were things we weren't comfortable quantifying when we went out with the IPO last year. Since that time, we've done a lot of background work in-house and feel fairly comfortable that the $200 million is something that is money good and I would just reiterate we told folks on the last logistics call that we're targeting 15%** distribution growth. We think this increase in backlog bolsters that 15%* distribution growth. The announcement on the potential deal related to the Delaware City products pipeline and truck racks*, we think is representative of the focus on PBF Logistics.

Operator

Operator

And we will take our next question from Roger Read with Wells Fargo. Please go ahead.

Roger Read

Analyst · Wells Fargo. Please go ahead.

I guess I would like to come back around and talk a little bit about the flexibility of the water borne versus rail. Can you help us understand especially given the volatility, how quickly you can switch between water and the rail opportunity, and is it two weeks, four weeks, six weeks?

Tom O'Malley

Analyst · Wells Fargo. Please go ahead.

Let me take that and Tom can jump in. We have - generally if you look at the way we operate, we have established the types of crude that we're going to take in about 45 days in advance. So if you assume this is May 1, really the month of May is pretty well set and certainly half of June is pretty well set. We can adjust within that framework so we could divert rail delivered crudes to other people on the U.S. East Coast that might have a shortfall or might want to take in more if we see an opportunity to bring in and imported cargo and we have done that on various occasions. So when we look at it, we can make the decision today, but that decision generally has an impact 30 to 45 days out. So we know pretty much what our rail program is for the balance of this quarter, we know what our water borne program is for the balance of this quarter. But again we can make adjustments at the margin within that time period.

Tom O'Malley

Analyst · Wells Fargo. Please go ahead.

I will just add, Roger, it's important - if look at the East Coast, there is 330,000 barrel a day, 320 on crude it's out of our system. Remember, Paulsboro, we base load 100,000 barrels a day of [indiscernible] crude which is water borne crude. So what we're talking about is typically if we have good railroad economics we're going to run 45,000 or 50,000 barrels a day of heavy Canadian in Delaware and we're going to run 100,000 barrels a day of Bakken.* As those rail economics deteriorate and as Tom said we continue to [indiscernible] but it will take 30 - 45 days to make the switch, those of the knobs we are turning. We’re going to run mostly 70,000 to 75,000** barrels a day of crude by rail into the East Coast in the second quarter. We saw that coming so we downsized how much we were running. We started that in the first quarter and we’re continuing that in the second quarter as long as these economics remain.

Roger Read

Analyst · Wells Fargo. Please go ahead.

The other question I had, on the balance sheet, you've built up a fairly significant amount of cash here. Debt doesn't need to be re-paid anytime soon. I recognize the acquisition opportunities are always out there. Can you help us think about what the right amount of debt is and if an acquisition doesn't come along, do you accelerate share repurchases? Do we look at a higher dividend? Thinking about general return of capital to shareholders versus the other options?

Tom O'Malley

Analyst · Wells Fargo. Please go ahead.

Let me take that and Erik can jump in as he likes. We had that exact discussion at our Board meeting which took place a couple days ago - what is the appropriate amount of cash and what is the appropriate amount of debt that the company should have. It certainly looks like we're going to experience a fairly significant cash build within the company, more cash than we need, certainly, to cover the operations of the existing company. We of course always want to be in a position to make an acquisition. I think the clear message from our Board and from Management is be conservative, but let's recognize we either have to grow or we have to continue to return cash to the shareholders. We did a pretty good job last year, bought in about 5 million-odd shares within the company, got our share countdown to little more than 90 million shares outstanding. Certainly if we continue to build cash, you'll see us buy in some more shares and you will see us consider an increase in the dividend. But I will say on the dividend front, I believe we still are the highest on a percentage basis, in terms of dividend payment to our shareholders in our industry sector. Again, I would come at you as a very large shareholder in the company I want to see the shareholders taken care of.

Erik Young

Analyst · Wells Fargo. Please go ahead.

I would also comment that Roger you want to break down that cash balance really into two pieces, at PBF and PBF Logistics excluding marketable securities, there's about $450 million of cash at the end of March. We're at a similar level today. There's an incremental $235 million of securities that are there as a result of the IPO structure at PBF Logistics. On a normalized basis, a lot depends on where hydrocarbon prices are from a flat-price perspective. But it's probably safe to assume you're going to keep between $300 million and $500 million of cash on the balance sheets and make sure you have enough liquidity and flexibility with fluctuations in the market. We're currently at 25% on a net debt to cap basis. We think that's probably low. We have done a very good job of de-levering the business, really, since we got started. I think going forward, you'll see that ratio probably fluctuate depending on what we're doing from the acquisition side of things, between probably 20% and 40%. I think between 30%, 35% is your normalized long-term run rate net debt to cap target.

Operator

Operator

And we will take our next question from Ed Westlake with Credit Suisse. Please go ahead.

Ed Westlake

Analyst · Credit Suisse. Please go ahead.

A couple questions, obviously, I think this Friday we're going to get an update on rail regulations. I think the speeds are fine, but obviously new rail cars. Are you hearing anything on that, in terms of your ability to execute the rail purchases?

Tom O'Malley

Analyst · Credit Suisse. Please go ahead.

Just quickly, we were the first refining company come out to use only the modern rail cars, those built I believe since about 2010. They, in all the regulations, are being given more time to make whatever changes are going to be suggested. With regard to the speed, we continually make the point that we can supply whatever equipment is mandated in terms of rolling stock. But it really is up to the railroads to keep these trains on the railroad tracks. The accidents that have occurred, have occurred because of derailments. Derailments are in the hands of the rail company. There's no point in our trying to pretend that we can keep the cars on the tracks. We are not running them. On a speed basis, we think that great care should be taken. We're not concerned if it takes another two or three days to get the rail cars to us. We're not concerned if the speed limits are dropped in various areas. If this was inside a refinery, we would simply be keeping the railroad cars on rail tracks. I certainly don't mind if what I'm saying is repeated to those companies that in essence provide our services. It's a message we continually give. The focus should be on that. The focus should be on the condition on the track, speeds that they run, et cetera. That's where the problem has been. You could build a rail car with another 16th of an inch steel thickness. You could insulate that rail car. You could change the valves. The railroads, honestly, have to keep the cars on the tracks. That's the only way we can safely operate.

Tom Nimbley

Analyst · Credit Suisse. Please go ahead.

This is Tom Nimbley. In addition to that, I think absolutely what Tom said is what we have been advertising in the ASPM. Their API has been preaching that, as well. You're simply not going to avoid these things unless you keep the rails - the cars on the rail. That being said, Canada and DOT are going to get together and shake hands on Friday, it appears or perhaps as early as Friday - we were expecting May 12 or earlier - and come out with a new set of rules. The key will be both Canada and DOT had in their original proposals staged retrofitting requirements. Those staged retrofitting requirements dealt appropriately with old DOT 111 cars first, then unjacketed CPC 1232. As long as they stay with something similar to the time frame that they give to retrofit, there will be - it will not certainly be a material impact on PBF. As Tom said, our cars are already CPC 1232 and it would be pushed out - the retrofitting requirements would be much lower, because the cars are already jacketed in many cases and the time frame - you'll get cars that will come off lease and replacing the cars that were already rebuilt to fit this service.

Ed Westlake

Analyst · Credit Suisse. Please go ahead.

Would you guys put out a statement once you see the rules and how to interpret them, we'll give you a call. It may be helpful.

Tom O'Malley

Analyst · Credit Suisse. Please go ahead.

Why don't we wait until we see what they come out with. Certainly, we will communicate with our shareholders what we think about that. We are supportive, candidly, of anything that improves safety in this transportation system, whether it costs us a bit of money, time, effort etcetera. If it makes things safer, we support it.

Ed Westlake

Analyst · Credit Suisse. Please go ahead.

A quick follow-on then, ASCI spreads have come in. Obviously they were quite wide back in February when there was a lot of oil around and refining maintenance. As refiners pick up they've come in, but maybe some comments on how you see the water-borne market at the moment?

Tom O'Malley

Analyst · Credit Suisse. Please go ahead.

I tell you, the thing - you have to watch the election. Let's think for a moment about why the various people, including the Saudis, seem to be unhappy with United States government's - or at least the administration's position in - the settlement with Iran. I guess there were a lot of reasons. But one of the reasons certainly is that Iran is very capable of producing additional quantities of crude oil. Most of you are not old enough to remember, but we used to import quite a lot of an Iranian crude, particularly to the U.S. East Coast. Gash Laran and Argitrari [ph] used to come in here. Frankly, I used to sell it here when I was with Flagro. Iran is going into quickly ramp up on sales - certainly be able to ramp up by more than 1 million barrels a day, in my opinion, within 12 months. I bet you they're working on it right now. That additional oil is going to come to the market. It's oil that we can process with no difficulty. Whether the United States takes Iranian oil may be another question. Certainly Iraq, given all its problems and there are massive problems in Iraq, it's still growing a bit in terms of its ability to produce oil. Again, Iraqi crude oil is something we can run rather easily. I mentioned in my opening remarks that we think Cushing has more or less filled up and that oil is now flowing into Cushing and then flowing downstream from Cushing to the Gulf Coast. That's going to start putting pressure on Gulf Coast pricing. As it does that, you see a situation where you have ASCI-priced crudes, you have cheaper crude coming down by pipeline. I think ASCI's probably going to have…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Jeff Dietert with Simmons. Please go ahead.

Jeff Dietert

Analyst · Simmons. Please go ahead.

You highlighted your flexibility in the press release and earlier on the call. As a follow-up on feedstock flexibility, could you talk about rough areas of maximum and minimum levels of Bakken that you think could be reasonable in the portfolio, as well as maximum and minimum levels for Western Canadian Select and your ASCI-based crudes?

Tom O'Malley

Analyst · Simmons. Please go ahead.

Let me quickly take that, then Tom you jump in. We don't have a - well, we certainly have a maximum on the Bakken side of the equation, probably up around 120,000 barrels a day which I don't think we could do too much more than that. On the minimum side we can go to zero. That's not a - we were at zero for a long time, so it's not a problem for us. We can process all sour crudes and reasonably heavy crudes. Tom, why don't you jump in on the Canadian side with regard to our capability?

Tom Nimbley

Analyst · Simmons. Please go ahead.

Yes, obviously everything is going to be refined. The operating envelope will be defined by economics. If it is economics, as Tom said, I would put the Bakken number more like 130,000 in a maximum case, because if Bakken was clearly distressed in its economic, we'll not only run the 105,000 barrels a day which we have already demonstrated in Delaware, but we'll move 30,000, 35,000 barrels a day by barge over to Paulsboro. On the Canadian side, if that's the most economic crude, we can run 80,000 barrels a day of WCS and in combination with more bitumen into the Delaware City refinery. We don't want any WCS in Paulsboro. As I said earlier, that base load is pretty much solely crude for the lubes and then we play around on the other still. 80,000 barrels a day Canadian. That can go to zero and be replaced by Mayas [ph], the South American crudes we are running, ASCI-based crudes. It is a big deal that the optionality and the flexibility that we have, I believe is serving us well now and should stand the test of time. The fact is if Bakken goes out of the money, then the East Coast, the other refineries in the East Coast have to look at west African crudes, the same type of situation that caused the loss of capacity with Marcuso [ph] and Eagle Point. That was also driven by geopolitical problems with Libya and Qaddafi and everything else. It is a real big advantage for us on the East Coast to be able to run any type of barrel.

Jeff Dietert

Analyst · Simmons. Please go ahead.

If I could follow up, on the ASCI discounts, I know they were really attractive in January, February, March time frame. But even in the April, May OSPs, although they're higher, they're still substantially below the OSPs that were in place in 2014. Are those barrels still very attractive relative to your alternatives?

Tom O'Malley

Analyst · Simmons. Please go ahead.

They're okay. Let's not get into very attractive. We see spot barrels, some sweet, some sour, coming to the market at various times. The other thing I would say to you and I believe down at the CERA conference, I think it BNSF presented. I think one of the commentaries was you know what? We have to compete with the pipelines. Rail rates were - I'm not quite sure exactly how they set them, but there seems to be some flexibility in them. It's my view that given the fact the railroads are to a great degree suffering from the loss of shipment of coal, they certainly have a great deal of capacity. The arrival of crude oil shipments was so to speak the answer to the maiden's prayer. Now suddenly the maiden has become more difficult. The rates that the railroad charges to go to the East Coast probably have to be adjusted if they wish to maintain significant volume metrics over the rail lines. I think they do intend to do that. This is kind of a movable feast. We wouldn't want to tell you exactly where we think ASCI should be. We think ASCI should always be more - should be wider than it is. When we see spot crudes coming in and we are seeing that, it becomes in essence an absolute discount to the brand price, it puts pressure on ASCI.

Operator

Operator

And our next question will come from Doug Leggate with Bank of America. Please go ahead.

Doug Leggate

Analyst

Tom O'Malley, I wonder if I could try a couple. First of all, on the brother macro outlook for the northeast in particular, it seems we're coming out of winter with elevated product inventories and obviously margins remain fairly high. I'm curious if you could provide a prognosis as to how you see things playing out in terms of how imports might play in as refinery utilization kicks higher. I'm wondering how you see the risk profile of robust margins going into the summer? I've got a follow-up.

Tom O'Malley

Analyst

Look, I don't think I'd be working for these guys if I could really predict everything that would be happening, nor would anybody else on the call. What we see, remember, the U.S. East Coast is self-sufficient in oil products up in a 30% range. It depends at all times on movements up the Colonial pipeline and then to some degree imports, particularly from Western Europe. What we've seen over the past couple months is the ARB [ph] occasionally opening and more often closing in Western Europe. We have a fairly strong Western European product market. I don't know exactly whether the ARB is open today to move gasoline, but I think it's a very close. We have to see imports. We have to see imports on Colonial and we have to see imports from Europe. What the East and - the biggest thing relates to Colonial. What we see there is tremendous demand from the export side from the Gulf Coast. We see very good Gulf Coast margins and that in turn then says your Gulf Coast refiner, well, I've got to have the - I've got to make up the difference in the pipeline tariff to take it up there. We see a robust second quarter. We are just - it would be like predicting GNP and everything associated with it to try and go much beyond there. We think there has been a basic change in the market and the market has become a bit more demand driven, a bit less seasonal. Certainly on gasoline, in terms of miles of driven, the type of automobiles that are being bought here in the United States at the present time, we see a pretty good environment going forward. Predicting beyond the quarter, I don't think so.

Doug Leggate

Analyst

I guess my follow-up is maybe two quick things. First of all, fairly high-profile disruption in the West Coast. Does it change your appetite any?

Tom O'Malley

Analyst

No, I mean our - we've had a strong appetite. I think what has changed is the appetite of the people on the West Coast to sell something right away. Sadly, we don't have a West Coast refinery right now. If we did, it would be a happy moment in time. Look, good margins are a double-edged sword. Good margins make us happy because we earn money, thank you very much. But very good margins - and we see very good margins - raise the price of assets that might be available for sale and slow down the process. We have the appetite, but the people in the restaurant right now are not providing the right dishes to us.

Doug Leggate

Analyst

My final one, if I could squeeze one in, Tom. To take you back to the export a bit. I realize it's very subjective, but the momentum seems certainly to be picking up. Your comment about rising gasoline prices in the event of exports, most of your peers suggest that gasoline price is already priced off Brent. Given the collapse that some people attribute to the rise - in oil prices - to the rise in U.S. production, why would exports push gasoline prices higher, as opposed to the other way around, that gasoline is priced off Brent, anyway? I'll leave it there.

Tom O'Malley

Analyst

Look, this is largely a philosophical argument. You get into macroeconomics on this thing. It's our belief that the American consumer will pay more for crude oil. In essence, if American refiners pay more for crude oil, the price of gasoline is going to go up. Can you make an argument on the other sid? That's what the E&P industry is trying to do. Their argument has also been we can't process the crude. That is absolutely utter nonsense. We are importing millions of barrels a day of crude oil. We can certainly process the crude. If you look back two years, could we - if somebody would have said, oh well, Delaware and Paulsboro together can run 120,000, 130,000 barrels a day of Bakken, people would have said no, that can't be, but we can. The industry and the rest of the United States can do the same thing. You can always go lighter and sweeter. We can run the crude, certainly. I'd like to take you back in history a little bit. Go back into the late 1970s, early 1980s, when the North Sea was prolific and when European refiners had a $2 to $3 edge, particularly those located in the North Sea area over U.S. refiners, because it cost that much to bring that sweet crude to the United States. Well, that was an economic benefit to Europe. Low oil prices in the United States are an economic benefit to the United States, both to its consumers and to its industrial base. That's a strong opinion we have, but we recognize that others can argue on the opposite side of the coin.

Operator

Operator

And our final question will come from Paul Cheng with Barclays. Please go ahead.

Paul Cheng

Analyst

Tom, in the quarter do you have any hedging or trading gain on loss?

Tom O'Malley

Analyst

In which quarter?

Paul Cheng

Analyst

In the first quarter.

Tom O'Malley

Analyst

When we take a cumulative between Brent TIs that we put on, some cracks that we put on, some ASCI spreads that we put on, et cetera, I believe the cumulative number of - was about $10 million to the negative; but from our point of view, that's de minimus. It's not - we're constantly trying to bring our crude oils back to a Brent base. We buy crude oils on a WTI base at times and really, the market place is Brent, so we have to put on spreads to deal with that. We do some crack spreads when we see them to be in a very attractive range. But again, when you take everything and package it together, it's no huge differential in the company. Erik, I don't know if you want to comment on that?

Erik Young

Analyst

Tom, that's the right number. It was about $10 million to negative. Paul, that's a pre-tax number.

Paul Cheng

Analyst

Erik, when you guys buy crude is 100% subject to the CMA to the rule benefit or what that is, only the portion that you buy in domestic?

Erik Young

Analyst

It really depends on the type of crude we're buying, Paul. We would have to get into a lot of details that we don't tend to get into on these calls. There's a lot more on the domestic side versus the water-borne side.

Paul Cheng

Analyst

Okay. Can you tell what is in the first quarter that you may be subject to the rule?

Tom O'Malley

Analyst

Erik, you want to take that?

Erik Young

Analyst

Sure. I don't have that information right at my fingertips, Paul. We'll circle back with you on that.

Operator

Operator

It appears we have no further questions. At this time I'll turn the floor back over to Tom O'Malley for any closing remarks.

Tom O'Malley

Analyst

My only closing remark is thank you for attending the call and taking an interest in the company. We hope to do better quarter to quarter every quarter. Thanks and have a great day.

Operator

Operator

This does conclude today's teleconference. Please disconnect your lines at this time and have a wonderful day.