Enbridge Inc. (NYSE:ENB) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Colin Gruending: Ben, it’s Collin, I could take that. Yes, so that’s disappointing. And I think as Capital Power noted, the project is technically viable, but just economically unviable for a number of reasons, including governmental support for it. Notwithstanding, we’ve got a kind of a sister project at the Wabamun Hub with Heidelberg Materials for their cement plant in Northwest Edmonton. So that project, has garnered some more financial support, and we’ll be working with them to consider FID later this year. So Wabamun open access hub will generally, continue. We’ve incurred some very modest capital costs in preparing for Capital Power, but we have a reimbursement agreement with them. So it’s not be recovered. So that’s our update on that hub.

But more broadly, we remain keenly interested in growing a carbon capture and transportation and sequestered business, across North America. And we’ve got a couple of other projects under development as you know in the states, namely Texas. So that’s a broad update.

Greg Ebel: Ben, it’s an interesting one because I think it’s a good example of even in some of these new technologies where there appears to be lots of government support, they’re going to be highly competitive, right. As Colin said, the Heidelberg project looks quite good. And then you’re going to compare jurisdictions, we sure do. And I think Capital Power sounds like they are too. And thus the NPV of tax benefits in the Canada versus the U.S. for CCS, it’s just more attractive down south. So we’re real careful how we deal with this. As Colin said, we’ve got reimbursement agreement there, but we’re going to keep pursuing these. And I think that’s like a lot of other things, there’ll probably be fewer of these than more than obviously the proposals there, right. We’re going to do this really discipline and it sounds like there as well.

Benjamin Pham : And maybe on Ingleside, just going back to that and the strong volumes, the windows that you’re talking about, what do you think your expectation is in terms of capital deployment each year going forward? And maybe just an update on specific developments like solar generation, ammonia export, anything that’s been notable in the last quarter or two?

Colin Gruending: Sure, Ben. So yes, we considered it, Ingleside is kind of a Swiss Army Knife multi product ambition. Currently it’s just crude, but over time all the advantages that or crude’s advantage of that dock are portable to other products, purity products, blue ammonia, which we’re developing. So we’ve announced a couple of expansions at Ingleside now, right, is for storage, and we’ve got headroom there with both permitting for storage and docs. As you know, we acquired — or announced, we have to close that yet later this year with the docks next door, which are going to basically double the windows, and we can immediately optimize the loading of smaller vessels at the neighboring docks and reserve our legacy docs for the VLCCs. And by the way, we’ve deepened our dock to 54 feet now.

So we can’t — not fully loaded, but 1.6 million barrels a day of a 2 million-barrel at VLCC. So that’s pretty efficient capital deployment. To your question over time, we’d like to copy paste that model, if you like, to other products. We’re still looking at the blue ammonia project with Yara. And the FID on that would be over a year away yet, but that would be a chunkier capital deployment. But the commercial models we’re looking at would be utility-like and strong margins over a hurdle rate. So hopefully, that gets to your question.

Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Theresa Chen from Barclays.

Theresa Barclays: First, on the gas transmission side. Related to the Whistler JV acquisition, just curious on how you think about optimizing or how this optimizes your portfolio over time? And related to the mention of organic growth opportunities on this. Clearly, we’re seeing very tight Permian egress right now and the need for additional capacity out of [raha]. Do you view additional expansion opportunities on Whistler likely? Or would you be willing to take part of another greenfield egress solution?

Cynthia Hansen: Yes. Teresa, it’s Cynthia. Thanks for that question. We’re really excited about this opportunity with this joint venture. It is, as you mentioned, very strategic Permian has an opportunity to grow to support all the activity in the U.S. Gulf Coast, including the LNG expansion in terminals there. We see right now, obviously, Rio Bravo with our contribution there will be a new build-out to support that LNG, so that will eventually have an opportunity to take incremental gas out of the Permian. Now there will be opportunities, both brownfield and greenfield. And so we’ll continue to look at that. And we’ll look at — we think we’ll be able to get attractive returns and help extend that footprint even more. But again, it will have to meet our threshold, and that’s further out.

But yes, it’s a great opportunity for us to continue to build out and enhance what we believe is our super system already by having that incremental connectivity. And now, of course, with the Whistler JV will be tied to all of the existing LNG facilities because we get the connection to Cheniere’s Corpus Christi LNG facility.

Greg Ebel: Yes. I guess we also look at opportunities outside the JV as well as they come along right areas like Port Arthur and stuff like that. So I think we’re open to any but I think it actually creates good optionality down into the Corpus area, et cetera, with the JV. And then we’re continuing to look at other opportunities because frankly, we haven’t been as deep into the Permian or some other players.

Cynthia Hansen: Yes. And we do have, as Greg noted, an open season right now from Permian to Port Arthur provider that’s going to close on May 20, and we have a lot of interest. So it’s a great opportunity to support the development there.

Theresa Barclays: Got it. And then maybe turning back to the liquids segment. I wanted to follow-up on the line of questioning related to TMX ramping up and how everything is tracking within your internal budget. As we look to second quarter, right, so you have the line fill happening right now and then you have a seasonal producer maintenance upstream. Just quarter-over-quarter, given the strong earnings, not just on your mainline system in the first quarter, but also Express Plus systems south of mainline. Would we expect to see some alleviation or a decrease in volumes from those systems, even as mainline remains a portion just at a lower level. How should we think about the evolution of that for the year?

Colin Gruending: Theresa, it’s Colin. Yes, I guess, we normally reserve to late June to update you on volumes for Q2, but maybe a quick sneak a peak here. So Linefill’s complete, I think, on TMX, it’s flowing. And from what we can tell, it looks like that was all line filled from inventory, elevated inventories anticipated going into it. So we’ve not really seen a blip on our system here through April or May. And likewise, our downstream pipes remain pretty robust. So I think the thesis we’ve been offering here is unfolding like we thought it would. So I’ll stop short of giving you a volume numbers, but that’s a general trend.