Pembina Pipeline Corporation (NYSE:PBA) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Cameron Goldade: Just to add to that, Rob, that pump station and the terminal work that Scott was mentioning in Northeast BC, I think that that comes on in the latter half of ’24. That’s coming out at roughly 40,000 barrels of capacity to our system. And then once Phase VIII is up and running, which will be roughly Q2 of ’24, we’re expecting that 40,000 barrels of incremental capacity to be able to flow all the way into the Edmonton-Fort Saskatchewan market.

Robert Catellier: And then just as you look for to advance RFS IV, you have one extension of a contract at Redwater, but what in general do you think is possible in terms of what kind of term you can achieve in your contract?

Scott Burrows: First, maybe I’ll just talk a little bit about the execution of RFS IV. So it’s going extremely well. We still plan on having that on in the first half of 2026. Capital is still trending in the right direction. It’s obviously a little bit different than building a pipeline. It’s different equipment, different vendors. You’re building in a different location. So we’re expecting that to still trend on budget. We’ve done all the earthworks to date. When we had our RFS IV shutdown that Cam mentioned earlier, we got 15 tie-ins executed during that shutdown, which is great work by the team. On the contracting front, we look at this as an entire complex. We don’t really look at each individual frac anymore, but it’s highly contracted.

And people want tenure, right? People are — people need to get their barrels fracked because if you can’t frack your barrel, you can’t produce your gas and/or your condensate and oil. So it’s pretty critical to our customers that they have that certainty to be able to break that NGL mix apart and put it into a saleable product. So with that said, there’s high demand. I’m not worried about the asset being full. I’m really focused on making sure that RFS IV in the team, it’s on when we need it for our customers’ demand. And then the commercial teams are worrying about the next expansion.

Operator: Your next question comes from Robert Kwan from RBC Capital Markets.

Robert Kwan: If I can just talk or ask about how you’re thinking about your cash flow generation, specifically, you pointed out, you’re free cash flow positive. As you go forward and just some of the larger projects like Cedar, do you see being free cash flow positive or at least neutral as a strategy or is this more of just a byproduct of a bit of a lull in the CapEx opportunities?

Scott Burrows: Well, Rob, as you know, last year and this year, we were both free cash flow positive. And so part of the strategy as Cam outlined around capital allocation was always preparing the balance sheet for what could be a slightly heavier capital spend. And so we’ve consciously done that over the last 2 years. I think it spoke to our confidence around the visibility we had to future growth. As we sit here today, we still expect to be free cash flow positive or neutral kind of going into 2024. Now should we sanction a few more projects, that may push us slightly. And when I say slightly, I mean slightly into free cash flow negative. But I think what’s important is to look at that over a couple of year period versus any 1 given year because we have been free cash flow positive for 2 years, preparing ourselves for potentially a heavier capital spend.

Now for that to happen, we obviously have to sanction a few more projects. So we’re not in that position today. We’re still looking to be free cash flow positive or neutral next year, but it could tip slightly if we sanction a few projects.