The Williams Companies, Inc. (NYSE:WMB) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Michael Dunn: Hi, good morning, Praneeth. This is Michael. Yes, the open season results were a pleasant surprise and we’re currently working through the scenarios with the various customers that requested capacity there. It definitely can be upsized from the 800,000 to be published in the open season notice and we’re just working through that today. So hopefully, we’ll have some more information on that in the very near future in regard to the outcome of those negotiations. But it’s really just a combination of looping and compression additions alongside our brownfield Transco pipeline corridor. And it’s just getting the hydraulic modeling done and developing the proper scenarios and then ultimately giving the rates to the customers that would be identified by the looping and compression on those scenarios.

So it’s a little bit of an iterative process, which we’re going through right now, but it can definitely be upside from the 800,000 a day. I’d say the schedule, right now, a lot of that’s driven by the customer’s desired in service date. And so a lot of this capacity is for new gas-fired power generation and anticipating when those new power plants come online is the expectation that the customer’s laying out there for us. I do think there may be an opportunity to accelerate the project at some point, but obviously we have to have customer agreements in place before we can start designing the desired schedule for the customers as well as our capital cash flow. So that’s really what we’re looking at right now. I think 2027 is probably the outside date that we’d be looking at and we’ll try to pull that in where we can.

Praneeth Satish: Okay. That makes sense. And then I guess, just looking at the futures curve for natural gas, it’s in Contango, it’s pretty wide winter, summer spread right now. Just wondering if you could kind of talk through your ability to capture that at Sequent. I guess how much storage capacity does it have right now and how much of that is open and able to take advantage of these wider spreads?

Michael Dunn: Yes, absolutely. The Sequent has a very large storage portfolio. I don’t know that we’ve actually disclosed the aggregate size of it is, but it is a very large storage portfolio and we would expect them to be able to lock in the intrinsic value of that storage. And they also have a lot of deliverability capabilities out of that storage and can optimize around that storage position as well. I don’t think we’ve given a lot of the specifics about the aggregate size of that storage position, but it is a strong storage position that we would expect them to be able to lock in a lot of value around.

Alan Armstrong: Yes, I would just add to that, the way we would book those earnings, we actually would not book those earnings until we delivered. And so that’s really why our fourth – sorry, our first quarter is usually pretty sizable for us is that’s when you see the pricing and the most value for that storage is usually offered in that period. And so that’s a great example of why our first quarter tends to be so large. Some of that, like we said, make them in the fourth quarter depending on what pricing looks like and if we can cycle that storage twice, but we do have to cycle it to be able to take the earnings on that.

Praneeth Satish: Got it. Thank you.

Operator: We’ll go next now to Colton Bean at TPH and Company.

Colton Bean: Good morning. I was just following up on the question on the Northeast saw it’s pretty significant sequential increase in G&P revenue. I know you mentioned the $14 million benefit from a catch up payment there. But even after adjusting for that, it seems like the year-on-year increase is still well above what we would’ve expected from inflation escalators alone. So I guess, are there any other contractual provisions that are pushing unit rates higher across the basin there?

John Porter: No, I think really – as was asked earlier, the question of rich versus lean, obviously when there’s more rich gas drilling, there’s a lot more services that we offer around that. And so that does – that shift to richer gas does tend to drive our margin – our unit margin up across the basin.

Colton Bean: Okay. And that’s primarily showing up in gathering I think on a processing basis volumes looked pretty consistent.

Alan Armstrong: Yes. Right.

Colton Bean: Got it. Okay. And then two related questions on cost control. I think if we look at the transmission segment, it looks like OpEx is roughly flat to your pre-acquisition levels after adjusting for the transaction expenses there. So you seeing MountainWest synergies materialize earlier than expected, or should we expect some degree of cost increase moving forward? And then just more broadly, it looks like pretty impressive cost control across all segments expenses flat to down on a year-over-year basis. So if you could just comment more broadly on your cost control initiatives and expectations through the balance of the year.