Peter Vanacker: The team has done quite a lot of very good work as well in the global supply chain management by building up more flexibility in global supply chain and management on oxyfuels as well as on POs. So that will also help in the future.
Operator: Our next question comes from the line of David Begleiter with Deutsche Bank. Please proceed with your question.
David Begleiter : Thank you. Good morning. Peter, you’re having very good success with the Value Enhancement Program. What’s the potential this program longer term? Can you get to $1 billion high run rate, do you think, in the ’25 and beyond time frame?
Peter Vanacker: Thank you, David, for your question. I’m actually very, very pleased with how the LyondellBasell team has embraced the value enhancement program. I mean I’ve done these programs in the past at other companies, and it took longer. We have about 4,000 or 5,000 people now involved. We just went to Phase E in having smaller sites that have now rolled out the Value Enhancement Program, also with a huge amount of success. As we said, I mean, our original target was first year, 150 million exit run rate EBITDA. We increased it to 200 million. Today, we actually said we’re going to exceed that 200 million. We haven’t changed our 750 million target. But as we have said in the past, I mean, this is not a project. It becomes part of the DNA.
So it doesn’t have a beginning and an end. So we can definitely say that it’s not going to stop at 750 million as a consequence. So we will be able to capture more value. And we see that already happening because the sites that were involved in the first phase, they have already started going again, I mean, through new initiatives, new brainstorming sessions that they have captured. So we already start building up that certain, let’s say, that first-level sites already have a new group of projects, new projects identified, I mean, to continue to increase value and creation.
Operator: Our next question comes from the line of Steve Byrne with Bank of America. Please proceed with your question.
Steve Byrne : Yes. Thank you. What would you put the probability that your refinery is selected as the DOE-funded hydrogen hub for Texas? And if it is, would that influence your choice of where to put the MoReTec process? And would it also potentially lead you to operate the hydro treaters and hydrocrackers longer than that first quarter of 2025 to keep them functional for longer-term utility and renewable fuels?
Peter Vanacker: Thanks, Steve. Good question. I mean, of course, we were very pleased that amongst the seven projects that have been announced to receive funding, that the Houston High Velocity project has been included in that. Our project that we have on HROs, our refinery, is part of that high velocity. So we get very good support. That’s great. Of course, we continue to develop that project. There’s still a lot of steps, I mean, that need to be taken until we are at investment decisions. But it gives, of course, quite a lot of support already to move them into the next step. Having said that, of course, in the transformation of our Houston refinery, we have multiple projects that we are currently looking at. One of those projects is the upgrading of plastic oil that would come out of our MoReTec 2 investment.
Remember, MoReTec 1 is the colon hub. MoReTec 2 will be much larger than MoReTec 1. And here, we are looking at the Houston hub. So MoReTec 2 investment in Houston, leveraging upon our equipment like hydro treaters that we have in Houston to upgrade that plastic oil and then having the interconnection through our pipelines with our channel view steam crackers. That’s the second project. Third project that we are looking at is leveraging upon those hydro treaters, to see if we can produce renewable hydrocarbons in the hydro treaters that again would leverage upon feeding them into the steam cracker. So they have a multitude of projects currently that we have in a very early phase, but we are having very dedicated teams analyzing these projects, and we will then, of course, follow the usual CapEx stage gate.
