Charles Neivert: I assume that the preference is by end of year or into early year, once the application is over, the tanks are empty and you can start refilling for the spring. I assume that is the objective at this point.
Mark Behrman : Yes.
Charles Neivert: Thanks very much.
Mark Behrman : Thanks, Charlie.
Operator: Thank you. The next question is from the liner for Rob McGuire with Granite Research. Please proceed with your question.
Rob McGuire: Good morning, Mark. Has the UAW strike had an impact on your nitric acid volumes? And if so, can you kind of give us an idea if that’s going to continue into the fourth quarter?
Mark Behrman : We haven’t seen any impact in nitric acid volumes. Some of the UAW strikes have been settled, so they’ve been somewhat short-lived. So, I don’t see that as being an issue.
Rob McGuire: Great. And then shifting over, your green ammonia offtake agreements, do you think — there’s a lot of projects out there, both in the U.S. and around the world. Do you anticipate a number of those other projects being put on hold as well, just due to lack of offtake agreements? And in other words, do you think there’s a bigger shift towards blue ammonia versus green ammonia in terms of worldwide demand going forward for low carbon ammonia? Thank you. Thank you.
Mark Behrman: Yes, so, you know, the U.S. government has put out really good incentives in their IRA, but unfortunately what they haven’t done is they haven’t given details. So, if you’re basing a project today on, receiving the full $3 per kilogram hydrogen credit, the 45V credit, I know we’re concerned because they’ve now kicked the can down the road several times, and now I hear possibly in January, but really early in 2024, is when they’ll finalize that. I think the problem is you just don’t know what you really need to do to qualify to get that. And so I think it makes moving forward on projects really difficult until there’s a lot of clarity there, right, and that’s really clear. On the blue ammonia side, or blue hydrogen, I think while it’s not been finalized, it’s clearly a lot clearer because tax credits for carbon capture have been in place for many years, just at lower levels.
So at least there’s some framework there and understanding of it. So I can’t comment on other people’s projects and what they’re thinking. I would note, and I think I said this earlier, if we can’t get take-or-pay offtake, then we won’t move forward on a project, but we believe that we can. So we’re encouraged based on our, ours and our partner impacts as conversations with potential offtakers, that we will have a really good opportunity to secure take-or-pay contracts.
Rob McGuire: Thank you. And then, shifting topics again, would you briefly bring us up to date on the margin enhancement projects that you’re working on? You discussed them at the analyst meeting earlier this year. Just give us an idea of what they are and just kind of estimate of when they’ll be producing and then kind of aggregate amount of people to be best from all together of the type of the topic of generate
Mark Behrman: Sure. Cheryl, you want to go through that?
Cheryl Maguire : Yes, that’s no problem. Hey, Rob, so we have the urea expansion project at Pryor that’s to upgrade ammonia to an additional 75,000 tons of UAN. We expect that to go into full operation during the turnaround at Pryor next year. So that’s one of the key projects from a margin enhancement perspective. So that’s clearly, as you know, the upgraded margin from ammonia to UAN, which is impactful. We also have additional nitric acid storage that we’re putting in at El Dorado. Also planned for the first half of next year. So that’s an additional 5,000 tons of storage. It allows us to keep those asset plants running at full rate all the time. And that allows us to maximize upgraded product at El Dorado. So that’s another important one.
