CVR Energy, Inc. (NYSE:CVI) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Dave Lamp: Sure. Well, I think seasonally WCS usually softens in the winter a bit. You get more diluent injected into it. But a lot of it was just built — inventory that built in hardesty and backed up the system to some degree. What’s interesting is Trans Mountain has been delayed, but the cost of that thing and what the tariff’s going to be, it looks like to me that the tariff to go to the Gulf Coast is going to be the same as going to the West Coast and — or something very close to that. So I don’t know that it’ll have a huge impact other than it does increase the takeaway capacity and does open the spigot for some more projects up there if somebody would invest in them. The second part of your question was?

Matthew Blair: Oh! I think you touched on it. My follow-up is on the product crack hedges. If I caught that right, I think it was a 6 percentage point headwind to capture in Q3. Should we expect, just kind of based on where the future scriptures are now, should we expect that that impact would probably be less in the fourth quarter just with lower gasoline cracks rolling through?

Dane Neumann: Yeah. So our open positions are around 15% for the fourth quarter and then about 15% throughout 2024. But it would be a fair assumption if the market holds where it has, that the bulk of the impact is behind us.

Matthew Blair: Sounds good. Thanks so much.

Dave Lamp: You’re welcome.

Operator: Thank you. Our next question comes on the line of John Royall with JPMorgan. Please proceed with your question.

John Royall: Hi. Good afternoon. Thanks for taking my questions. So, Dave, you gave an update on the court situation for the Wynnewood SREs, which was very helpful. Do you have a timeline in mind for when you think you could have a final answer there and if you get to the point where you feel like it’s — you can’t really fight it anymore, do you then start to close out your RIN short?

Dave Lamp: Well, it’s difficult to always predict what a court will do and this case is no exemption from that. There’s two parts to the case. First is the venue that the court has to decide, which whether it stay in the Fifth Circuit or go to the D.C. Circuit. We think we’re optimistic that they’ll keep it, but you never can be sure. The second part of the case is the merits of the EPA’s argument on denying all small refinery waivers and we feel very good about that piece. The question is how long will it take them to rule and then how will they rule? A lot of times in these cases, they just rule to remand it back to EPA to fix. We really are going to fight to try to get more definition on that, should we win, that limits what EPA can do, because if you look at history, they just kind of invent something new to deny it again and we’re back in court.

So it’s very difficult to predict timing, but hopefully before the end of the second quarter next year, we should have a ruling one way or the other at the latest. So then the second part of your question was, would we liquidate? Whatever we do here is going to be a structured settlement, because none of those RINs from the past years are available anymore or will be by that time and somehow it will have to be negotiated what it would be, should we lose. I’m pretty optimistic that we won’t. So that case may never come to be.

John Royall: Understood. That’s very helpful. Thanks, Dave. And then you got a question on WCS diffs. I just had another differential question. This one’s on Brent WTI, which I think you addressed a little bit last quarter. Specifically, cushioning inventories are meaningfully lower today and I think below five-year ranges. But we haven’t really seen a significant narrowing of Brent WTI. So any color on why you think Brent WTI is where it is and how you think about that going forward would be helpful.