ONEOK, Inc. (NYSE:OKE) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Sheridan Swords: Well, I will take the last one. On the Conway to Belvieu spread, that has – actually, we have had opportunities. If you look at the average through the month, it may be in a little bit. But intra month, we have had some opportunities to lock in some fairly good spreads. And our system is set up that we can lock in by component Conway to Belvieu or Belvieu to Conway. We can lock both of those in as we go forward. We have been happy where the spreads have been at this time. Obviously, we would always like them to be a little bit wider, but we have been able to take advantage of them. They are not going to get as wide as we saw in a long time ago where they were double digits, not going to get there because there is still plenty of capacity to move product in between the two basins. But I think they are going to be at an acceptable range that we are going to be able to meet what our expectations are in our guidance or even exceed it.

Craig Shere: And I am sorry, what did you say about thoughts about ethane into next year?

Sheridan Swords: I think as we go into next year, what you are doing is you – we are continuing to have the ability to recover more ethane as production continues to grow in all basins. You will – we are kind of waiting for the incremental ethane exports coming online that we will see some coming on next year, in ‘25 and the year after that. And so what you come down to is how hard are the petchems gone and what the utilization rate the petchems are running. And right now, with this wide crude-to-gas ratio that you are seeing on a global scale that puts the United States ethane, petrochemical ethane crackers had a huge advantage that we are going to see them continue to try to run as hard as they can. So, I think we will see the strength and that the petchems will be running harder, but you will see a little bit more ethane coming out due to more production.

We still, as we get going to how we set up our system, we still see that the Bakken is going to be an area that we will be able to incentivize ethane out at a nice rate to be able to bring it into the stack wherever that stack even if we have more volume coming out of the Mid-Continent of the Permian, we still think we can fit the Bakken in there at a nice rate.

Craig Shere: Thank you.

Operator: This concludes our question-and-answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Andrew Ziola for any closing remarks.

Andrew Ziola: Alright. Well, thank you everyone. Our quiet period for the second quarter starts when we close our books in July and extends until we release earnings in early August. We will provide details for that conference call at a later date. Thank you again and have a great day.

Operator: The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today’s presentation. You may now disconnect.