Aaron Milford: At the end of the day, I think on the margin, it’s the structure of the curve itself. I mean the reality is right now, when we go talk to the market about wanting to take storage, the forward curve is really difficult for those that are looking at future prices in order to justify taking stores. So I think the futures and the shape of the curve will have to move more back into a contango before we see what I would consider a market difference. Now there are some operational things. Exports wanting to lead the Gulf Coast, the continued growth in our HOU contract. There are some things that can create demand for our storage that could help us. But I think those are going to be overshadowed by just the overall forward market structure in terms of for things to really turn and look a lot, lot better for the storage market, we think that’s what has to happen.
With that said, we’ve had some left renewing some contracts at some rates that we think were pretty attractive. But those are being done for what I’m going to say, more operational and logistical purposes, more so than just an idea of I’m going to take storage out and the price is going to be higher tomorrow. We do have a set of customers that are less sensitive to that forward curve. But again, to change the real direction of the storage business, we’ll need to see the forward curve improve, but it doesn’t mean we’re lacking some opportunities to do a little better. And to your point is it the same now as it was last year? It feels about the same. Some days feel a little better, some days don’t. but it feels generally about the same.
Operator: The next question comes from Keith Stanley, Wolfe Research.
Keith Stanley: First, just thank you for all the disclosure. And Aaron, when you lay these things out, the transparency really is top notch versus your peers and actually remove some of the questions we all have. So first, I wanted to start on — just a follow-up on distribution growth. So I get the logic of the buybacks and growing DCF per unit. What’s a little interesting is your peers are doing the opposite, so they’re growing distributions faster, especially the peers doing less on buybacks, especially as the stocks have moved higher. So I’m curious if what the peers are doing weighs at all into your thinking on capital allocation over time as you’re competing for investor dollars, or are you more focused just on what makes sense for Magellan economically?
Aaron Milford: Well, first of all, thanks for the compliment on the transparency. We try, and I think we’re successful most of the time. So I do appreciate that being recognized. Now to your question about distribution growth, just to be brutally frank, we don’t think a lot about what our peers are doing in terms of their distribution growth and their buybacks because we’re not running their company, we’re not responsible for their company, they are, and they need to make their decisions based on what they see about their company. So we focus on what we’re trying to accomplish and what we see happening with our company. And we think it’s going to be really powerful to have a really healthy distribution. I mean it’s an almost 8% yield.
We’ve never cut it and we’ve always grown it for 21 years, and that’s important. And then when you compare that to our ability to drive what we think could be significant capital appreciation, if we grow our DCF per unit, you put that together, and we think we’ve got a really powerful value proposition for our company. Other people may view their value proposition and what they’re trying to accomplish differently. So we’re certainly aware of what others are doing but it doesn’t influence how we’re trying to run our company.
