Valero Energy Corporation (NYSE:VLO) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

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Roger Read: Yes, NGLs are definitely help in or hurt depending on which side of the argument you’re on there. Okay. Thanks, guys.

Lane Riggs: Thanks.

Operator: Thank you. The next question is coming from Paul Cheng of Scotiabank. Please go ahead.

Paul Cheng: Hi. Good morning.

Lane Riggs: Good morning, Paul.

Paul Cheng: Congratulations to everyone with new role. May be ask — I apologize because I joined late. So if my question is ready to address, just let me know and we look at the transcript. Two questions. First, with the heavy oil discount and medium sour has also come down like most discount, it doesn’t seems like it’s really that attractive to-date. Is it really problem for you guys to run those barrels? And if it’s not, is there any way that — for you to further minimize and what is the minimum that you have to run? The second question is that in the law of Avantec, is there any reason why the margin capture jobs so severely from in the second quarter. I mean not just comparing to the first quarter, but comparing to the last couple of years that you’ve been running, say, call it 100%, 95% to maybe 120%. And so — is there any particular reason or there is some one-off unit circumstances that we are seeing? Thank you.

Lane Riggs: Hey, Paul, Mr. Bram is going to answer that.

Greg Bram: Hey, Paul, I’ll start with the first one on the different crudes. If I understood your question, we see incentive to run the heavy grades as well as the light track now. The advantage for heavy crudes narrowed quite a bit as we got into the quarter. As Gary mentioned, as those differentials start to move back out that will increase the incentive to move — to continue to process the heavy grades. The medium sours have probably been the one that have been least attractive and we would need to see those be — have a wider discount to the light sweet grade before we would start to make a shift there. On your question, your capture rate question.

Paul Cheng: Actually, before we go into the capture, can I ask that how much that you can maybe further minimize on the medium sour?

Greg Bram: Yes, we can minimize quite a bit. Paul, one thing to keep in mind is there’s different parts of the country, different parts of even the Gulf Coast region, where the medium sours, particular grades will still be attractive to run and we’ll process those in the places where that medium grade is not as attractive. The easiest way to think about it is, in a lot of cases, we can run a combination of heavy and light to essentially kind of mirror what a medium grade looks like, but do that at a lower cost than buying the medium sour crude itself.

Paul Cheng: Okay. Understood.

Greg Bram: Okay. The your capture rate – was around north Atlantic,

Paul Cheng: Around North Atlantic. Yes.

Greg Bram: Yes, Paul, primarily the one thing that was unique about the second quarter was the higher crude cost and again, driven by higher prices for Syncrude out of Canada, both maintenance and wildfire-related. That was probably the thing that caused, kind of, that region to look different this quarter than it would typically for a second quarter period.

Paul Cheng: The Syncrude is probably was 100% — 20% at most or for your entire more than 90 input, right?

Greg Bram: No, it’s much higher than that, Paul.

Paul Cheng:

Syncrude:

Greg Bram: Yes. So our Quebec refinery runs a combination of Canadian crudes and then waterborne crudes that we bring up from the Gulf Coast.

Paul Cheng: Okay. Great. Thanks a lot.

Operator: The next question is coming from Nitin Kumar of Mizuho Securities. Please go ahead.

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