Phillips 66 (NYSE:PSX) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Brian Mandell : Yeah, I think we — it’s always an import market for gasoline typically up to 800,000 barrels a day. We do expect that to continue being an import market. The imports may come from different locations in the future, but we would expect that we still need to import gasoline about that level.

Doug Leggate : I guess what I’m asking is, do you see the risk of an outside spike in gasoline the way we saw an outside spike in heating oil in the Northeast?

Brian Mandell : I would say any market that is short needs resupply and the resupply comes from some distance away, has that opportunity for volatility. The same thing that happens on the West Coast, West Coast that we supplied is further away four weeks away. And then in — and just in the Pad 1, but any time resupply is in close, you have that opportunity volatility.

Jeff Dietert : I think the other thing I’d add is you look at gasoline, diesel and jet inventories, they’re all below five-year ranges and it looks to us as though we’ve got an above-average industry refining turnaround period plan for the spring. So it looks tight from our vantage point.

Doug Leggate : That’s kind of what we’re thinking. Thanks so much guys. That was a tricky one to answer. Appreciate your perspective.

Jeff Dietert : Thank you, Doug.

Operator: Our next question today comes from Roger Read with Wells Fargo. Please go ahead, Roger.

Roger Read : Good morning, everybody. I guess I’ll continue with the theme of hammering on capture and expectations of capture. Just curious why this quarter did change the index that you’re using? And then I know you explained the gasoline and the diesel aspect. So configuration, I guess, makes sense. What maybe went on with secondary products? And is that something that we might see carry through to ’23 here?

Kevin Mitchell : So Roger, when you say index you’re referring to the market crack, the adjusted market crack change?

Roger Read : Yeah, your market indicator, yeah.

Kevin Mitchell : Yeah. Really, it’s — we’re setting up for — we’ve talked about this for a while, and we’re setting up for 2023 and the cleanest way to make that change is to do it in the fourth quarter, and that enables us to restate or recast in our supplemental information, the prior 2021 and 2022 all on that same basis. And then the first results we report for 2023 will be on that same basis. And so it’s just the cleanest timing to make a change like that. It’s something we’ve considered for a little while, but we thought it was the appropriate thing to do.

Jeff Dietert : Yeah. And then the secondary products, I’ll kick that off and then turn it over to Brian maybe for some outlook on it. But third quarter to fourth quarter, in refining, we see those relatively flat actually. There are some puts and takes associated with that, asphalts and fuel oils drop off in price and volume, but butane picks up and offsets a lot of that. So the overall impact of our secondary products was relatively flat quarter-over-quarter.

Brian Mandell : I’d say we continue to think that high sulfur fuel oil will remain weak, just with all the Russian cargoes coming on the market, both high-sulfur fuel oil and heavy crude cargoes coming out in the market. So I think we’ll continue to see that in the market.

Operator: Our next question comes from John Royall of JPMorgan. Please go ahead, John.