Pembina Pipeline Corporation (NYSE:PBA) Q1 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Patrick Kenny: Okay. Great. Thanks for that. I’ll leave you there, guys.

Operator: Thank you. The next question comes from Robert Catellier from CIBC Capital. Please go ahead.

Robert Catellier: Yeah, I just want to touch on Cedar LNG again. I’m wondering if how the recent economic weakness is influencing your risk appetite as well as the appetite of customers for offtakes. I know you sounded quite bullish in your opening remarks, and also the same question on the financing stream, how’s the tightening credit market conditions impacting the availability of project financing?

Stuart Taylor: Hey, Rob, it’s Stu. We’re sitting here, obviously it’s a long-term project. We’re looking, it’s a tolling model as described 20-year, a 100% take or pay contracts. We have to FID and obviously we will be in service in the late 2027, early 2028 timeframe. So people are taking a longer term view of what the LNG market will be. It’s gone through, as you’re well aware, some fairly high pricing in the recent times. But people are long term forecast of some steady pricing. We are seeing with I think with our EA announcement, with our first MOU announcement, we’ve seen enhanced interest in people coming out and we’ve got a lot of requests for engagement. We’re progressing a number of conversations for that second, third MOU.

So, the long term economic view, we’re, we’re managing the cost. As Scott mentioned, we’ll have our EPC contract cost in the mid-summer here and, we’re optimistic and anxious to get that and progress the commercial arrangements and everything is lining up for FID execution later this year.

Cameron Goldade: And just on the financing, Rob, a couple thoughts. Obviously the first is I think the partnership with the Haisla First Nation on this, it is just a real key aspect of the project over so many work streams and just strategically and it shows up in the financing side as well because obviously the opportunity to work with a group like that and be a part of this project really excites the financing market. People want to be involved with this and want to support this project. I would say the second thing is that obviously with the scale of the project as it is the area of magnitude of capital costs that we’re talking about and an appropriate capital structure on top of that, to be blunt, we’re not in the same stratosphere as the Gulf Coast mega projects.

And so the aggregate capital need is smaller and obviously more digestible for the core LNG and core lenders to Pembina and to a project like this. So I think, we’re not seeing impact of that so far and quite honestly, people want to be involved with this project.

Robert Catellier: Okay. That’s good color, thank you. And then just on the variance in EBITDA impact from the Northern pipeline system outage, Jaret talked about additional investment integrity work. I just can’t help but wonder just given the volumes, if there wasn’t an investment in customer care as well, in other words, more investment in spending to truck volumes to other facilities, was that at all a factor in the $54 million versus the $30 million guide?

Cameron Goldade: All that’s factored in. Rob, I would say that, the big pieces were obviously, lost revenue and then the integrity work and the remediation work on that, but all of that would’ve been — would’ve been factored in.

Operator: Thank you. Next question comes from Ben Pham at BMO. Please go ahead.