Enterprise Products Partners Q2 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

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Provided by Quartr
July 30, 2024

Key Takeaways

  • Enterprise reported Q2 adjusted EBITDA of $2.4 billion (up from $2.2 billion a year ago) and distributable cash flow of $1.8 billion with 1.6× coverage, while handling near-record volumes of 12.6 MMbpd crude-equivalent and record natural gas processing and NGL pipeline/fractionation throughput.
  • The NGL Pipeline & Service segment saw a 19% increase in gross operating margin driven by four new Permian processing plants and the 12th NGL fractionator at Mont Belvieu, and the Natural Gas Pipelines & Service segment posted a 23% margin gain on higher transportation revenues and wider WAAP-to-hub spreads.
  • After a 100-day turnaround involving over 1.25 million work hours, PDH-1 is exceeding nameplate capacity and PDH-2 is in turnaround with restart expected by mid-August, positioning both plants as full-year tailwinds.
  • Distributions were increased 5% to $0.525 per unit for Q2, the partnership repurchased $176 million of common units in the past 12 months (half of its $1 billion buyback program), and payouts remain at a 55% ratio of adjusted cash flow from operations.
  • With $6.7 billion under construction—including three new Permian processing plants, the Bahia NGL pipeline and multiple export expansions—and backed by long-term contracts, 2024 growth capital spending is now guided to $3.5–3.75 billion (2025: $3.25–3.75 billion).
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Earnings Conference Call
Enterprise Products Partners Q2 2024
00:00 / 00:00

There are 17 speakers on the call.

Operator

Thank you for standing by, and welcome to Enterprise Products Partners, LP's 2nd Quarter 2024 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen only mode. After the speaker presentation, there will be a question and answer session. I would now like to hand the call over to Libby Strait, Senior Director of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Speaker 1

Good morning, and welcome to the Enterprise Products Partners conference call to discuss Q2 2024 Earnings. Our speakers today will be Co Chief Executive Officers of Enterprise's General Partner, Jim Teague and Randy Fowler. Other members of our senior management team are also in attendance for the call today. During this call, we will make forward looking statements within the meaning of Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 based on the beliefs of the company as well as assumptions made by and information currently available to Enterprise's management team. Although management believes that the expectations reflected in such forward looking statements are reasonable, it can give no assurance that those expectations will prove to be correct.

Speaker 1

Please refer to our latest filings with the SEC for a list of factors that may cause actual results to differ materially from those in the forward looking statements made during this call. With that, I'll turn it over to Jim.

Speaker 2

Thank you, Libby. We had another solid quarter. Both in terms of volume and cash flow, We reported adjusted EBITDA of $2,400,000,000 compared to $2,200,000,000 in the same quarter last year. We generated $1,800,000,000 of distributable cash flow. We had 1.6 times coverage for the quarter.

Speaker 2

We retained $661,000,000 of DCF in the 2nd quarter, and we're at $1,500,000,000 year to date. Even though the Q2 can be seasonally our weakest quarter, our company handled a near record 12.6 1,000,000 barrels per day of crude oil equivalent volumes and 2,200,000 barrels a day of marine terminal volumes as well as record natural gas processing and record NGL pipeline and fractionation volumes. Our investments to support growth in the Permian Basin are visible both volumetrically and financially in our NGL pipeline and service segment, which reported a 19% increase in gross operating margin compared to the Q2 of last year, primarily attributable to our 4 new natural gas processing plants in the Permian and our 12th Enbia NGL fractionator at our Mont Belvieu area complex. In addition, we also benefited from improvements in natural gas processing margins compared to last year. Our Natural Gas Pipelines and Service segment also reported a 23% increase in gross operating margin compared to the same quarter in 2023.

Speaker 2

This increase was primarily driven by higher transportation revenues and higher marketing margins associated with the wider spreads between WAAP and higher valued market hubs. We had a very good quarter in spite of the challenges of our PDH plants. They've been somewhat of a headwind throughout the year. We recently completed our turnaround at PDH-one. Planning for the turnaround took over a year and involved a dedicated turnaround team in addition to field engineering and maintenance personnel.

Speaker 2

This team documented every issue we've had with this plant and developed solutions for each one. The turnaround took 100 days, a few factoids. Turnaround was over 1,250,000 hours worked. At the peak, we had 12.50 people per shift. We had 5.90 work packages executed, £17,000,000 of catalyst handled, 1465 crane lifts, a 100 and 9018 wheeler deliveries, 52,800 bricks hand inspected, over 41,000 replaced.

Speaker 2

Those bricks are the catalyst support and the catalyst reactor. The plant is now up and running and exceeding its nameplate. PDH-two is currently in turnaround. We expect it to be producing PGP sometime around mid August. The PDH2 turnaround is not nearly as involved as PDH1.

Speaker 2

I'd like to thank our Mont Belvieu team and our supporting service providers for their long hours and hard work during these back to back turnarounds. We're confident that these two plants will be a tailwind the rest of the year. We also completed our diluent open season on the TE product system. We closed the open season with 100,000 barrels a day of new and reached contracted commitments, and I think those are 5 year deals. We then accommodate we can accommodate this incremental demand with a suite of debottlenecks and horsepower additions while ensuring we do not impact our existing customers.

Speaker 2

Finally, our company has $6,700,000,000 of projects under construction that provide visibility to future earnings and cash flow growth. These projects include 3 processing plants, 1 in the Midland Basin, 2 in the Delaware and associated gathering, our Bahia NGL pipeline, Frac 14 and export expansions at the Natures River Terminal in the Ship Channel. All of these projects are backed by long term contracts and significantly enhance what is already a very strong NGL value chain. And as has been the case for several years running, we continue to see even more rich gas volumes coming from the Permian than we have previously forecasted. And Tony may have something on this in the Q and A.

Speaker 2

And with that, I'll turn it over to Randy.

Speaker 3

All right. Thank you, Jim. Good morning, everyone. Starting with the income statement, net income attributable to common unitholders was $1,400,000,000 or $0.64 per unit for the Q2 of 2024. This was a 12% increase over the Q2 of 2023.

Speaker 3

Our adjusted cash flow from operations, which is cash flow from operating activities on the cash flow statement before changes in working capital, this number increased 11% to $2,100,000,000 for the Q2 of 2024 compared to $1,900,000,000 for the Q2 of last year. We declared a distribution of $0.525 per common unit for the Q2 of 2024. This is a 5% increase over the distribution declared for the Q2 of last year. The distribution will be paid on August 14 to common unitholders of record as of the close of business tomorrow, July 31. In the Q2, the partnership purchased approximately 1,400,000 common units off the open market for $40,000,000 Total purchases for the 12 months ending June 30, 2024 were $176,000,000 or approximately 6,500,000 enterprise common units.

Speaker 3

And this brings total repurchases under our buyback program to approximately $1,000,000,000 or about 50% of the total program amount. In addition to buybacks, our distribution reinvestment plan and employee unit purchase plan purchased a combined 6,300,000 common units on the open market for $171,000,000 during the last 12 months, including 1,800,000 common units on the open market for $50,000,000 during the Q2 of 2024. For the 12 months ending June 30, 2024, Enterprise paid out $4,400,000,000 in distributions to limited partners, combined with the $176,000,000

Speaker 4

of common unit purchases over

Speaker 3

the same period, Enterprise's payout ratio of adjusted cash flow from operations was 55%. Total capital investments in the Q2 of 2024 were $1,300,000,000 which included $1,000,000,000 for growth capital projects and $245,000,000 for sustaining capital expenditures. While our expected growth capital expenditures for 2024 did not change, as a result of the LPG export announcement we announced this morning, we did refine the bottom of our range. Our current estimate of growth capital expenditures for 2024 is now in a range of $3,500,000,000 to $3,750,000,000 We continue to expect 2025 growth capital investments to be in the range of $3,250,000,000 to $3,750,000,000 2020 4 sustaining capital expenditures are elevated due to planned turnarounds for our PDH-one plant and our IBDH facility and our high purity isobutylene facility. These turnarounds typically occur every 3 to 4 years.

Speaker 3

We now estimate 2024 sustaining capital expenditures to be approximately 600,000,000 dollars up from $550,000,000 primarily due to higher capital costs associated with the turnaround at the PDH-one facility, which was completed in June. The turnaround at the PDH-two facility began in late June 2024. And as Jim noted, we anticipate completion in the middle of August. As of June 30, 2024, our total debt principal outstanding was approximately $30,600,000,000 Assuming the final maturity date for our hybrids, the weighted average life of our debt portfolio was approximately 18 years. Our weighted average cost of debt was 4.7% and approximately 95% of our debt was fixed rate.

Speaker 3

Our consolidated liquidity was approximately $3,400,000,000 at the end of the quarter, including availability under our credit facilities and unrestricted cash. Our adjusted EBITDA was $2,400,000,000 for the 2nd quarter and $9,700,000,000 for the 12 months ending June 30, 2024. As of June 2024, our consolidated leverage ratio was 3.0x on a net basis when adjusted for the partial equity treatment of our hybrids and reduced by the partnership's unrestricted cash on hand. Our leverage target remains 3.0 times plus or minus 0.25 times. With that Libby, I think we can open it up for questions.

Speaker 1

Thank you, Randy. And operator, we are ready to open call for questions from our participants.

Operator

Our first question comes from the line of Theresa Chen of Barclays.

Speaker 5

Good morning. Thank you for taking my questions. Maybe starting with the LPG export. So on that front, you've executed and announced multiple expansions with another one just today. Can you just help us think about what inning are we in terms of export expansion build up for the industry?

Speaker 5

And across your system, how much more brownfield capacity expansion do you have left?

Speaker 4

Yes. So the market is obviously calling for additional capacity. We announced that expansion this morning around, call it 85% to 90% contracted of our existing and expansion capacity. But as far as our brownfield capacity, execute that. This product was using existing infrastructure.

Speaker 4

Concerning our term contracts, we're out there at highly competitive rates. And like I said, we have additional brownfield opportunities ahead of us.

Speaker 5

Okay. And Brent, if you can just help us think about like from a commercial perspective, what is the going rate for brownfield expansion across your system maybe on a per gallon or other unit basis? And how does that compare with greenfield expansion for the one want to get into this part of NGL ValleyChain right now?

Speaker 4

Tricia, this is Tug talking, but I won't get into a specific rate, but relative to Greenfield, it's significantly more competitive.

Speaker 5

Okay. Thank you, Todd. And as a follow-up, do you have an update on the commercialization of SPOT at this point?

Speaker 2

Yes, this is Jim. I'll take that. Yes, we've up until now, what we've been marketing is a concept. And since we've gotten our license to construct, we're marketing a real project now. And we've done a heck of a lot of work to determine how competitive we are versus, say, single lightering and multi lightering.

Speaker 2

And if we look at the single lightering, we tracked 560 3 ships that were single lightering. And out of those 563, we put it into quartiles and we were hands down better than 280 of those and competed very effectively with the first two quartiles. And the multi lightering, we looked at over 400 and we beat those hand down across the board. So if you looked at all the ships we tracked, we tracked 969 ships and we beat hands down 686 of those ships over that time frame. So now we're going to see if the market wants it.

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Michael Blum of Wells Fargo.

Speaker 6

Thank you. Good morning, everyone. So just wanted to go back to the LPG export discussion a little bit. I wonder if you can just refresh us on what you're seeing for end market demand as you continue to expand capacity? And I guess I'm particularly interested in if you're seeing a lot of that incremental demand coming from China.

Speaker 6

Thanks.

Speaker 4

Yes, this is Todd. So the demand equation is obviously important to our LPG export expansions. But fundamentally, at the end of the day, the barrel has to clear the U. S. And the barrel will price accordingly to do so.

Speaker 4

With respect to China, right now our exports stand around 43% going to China, but we're also around call it 21% to the Americas and 13% to Europe. So we're seeing robust demand across the board.

Speaker 2

Doug, is that LPG? Okay. That's LPG. What percentage of LPG goes to China?

Speaker 4

Around 43%. Ropam butane. Ropam

Speaker 2

butane. Okay. PDH brands. Okay.

Speaker 6

Great. No, I appreciate that. And then I just wanted to revisit in the capital allocation discussion around buybacks. I think we all understand at this point that enterprise, your definitely preferred method of returning cash is distribution growth over buyback. So I'm wondering if you can just refresh us on the criteria where you decide to allocate capital to buybacks, especially given that it seems like you have a pretty nice slate of organic growth opportunities that had attractive returns?

Speaker 6

Thanks.

Speaker 3

Yes, Michael, this is Randy. Yes, Mike, what we've been been targeting over the last few years and 2024 is not that different is probably coming in and doing buybacks in the $200,000,000 range. And what that's done is we do issue equity as a component of compensation. But when you come in and take a look at what we issue in terms of compensation and what we buy back, you'll see over the last 4 years, there was a decrease in the number of overall units outstanding. So I think that's our focus.

Speaker 3

Once we get back out this year and next year, again, we're talking this year growth capital expenditures in the $3,500,000,000 to $3,750,000,000 range. Growth CapEx next year, we're still estimating at 3.25 to 3.75. That's probably going to keep those buybacks in that $200,000,000 range. Once we get back out to 2026, there we're thinking growth CapEx could be, call it, around $2,500,000,000 Then I think we have more room to return capital. And then I think we really just need to get some visibility on 2026 to see what form that increase in the return of capital would look like as far as distributions and buybacks.

Speaker 6

Great. Thanks, Randy.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Jeremy Tonet of JPMorgan.

Speaker 7

Hi, good morning. Hello, good morning.

Speaker 3

Good morning, Jeremy.

Speaker 7

Just wanted to make sure you could hear me there. Thank you. Just wanted to see, I guess, there's been some of your midstream peers out there have been acquiring assets. There's been some bolt ons. And I just want to get your thoughts about enterprises role within share on that at this point?

Speaker 7

This is the last major wave of consolidation in midstream.

Speaker 3

Okay, Jeremy. I'll take first crack at that. And from a strategic standpoint, I'll let Jim comment. But I think our 1st and foremost, what we're looking at is returns on capital and what gives us the best returns on capital and growing cash flow per unit, because at the end of the day, that's what's going to drive value. And we've taken a look at a number of opportunities, more asset acquisitions than I would say public company M and A.

Speaker 3

But what we've seen thus far is organic growth is providing us good opportunities at good returns on capital, relatively better returns on capital and in growing cash flow per unit. Obviously, the Nabataas deal that we did, that also provided good returns on capital, good cash flow growth. So that's really where our focus is.

Speaker 2

Yes. Strategically, I think we've always said it kind of has to fit what we already have. And we talked about the plants we're building in the Permian. I don't think we're through building plants. So it's got to be the price has got to be right.

Speaker 2

It's got to fit who we are. And when you build a plant, you can put it where it fits who we are. So I like the organic side, but we look at everything that comes along from a we have more investment bankers come in here than you say grace over.

Speaker 7

It. Got it. Makes sense there. Just wanted to also, I guess, get your thoughts as it relates to power in Texas overall. We've seen instability in the ERCOT market and other issues out there.

Speaker 7

And just wondering how you feel about that going forward? Could there be room for your own generation or other measures to kind of ensure, I guess stability?

Speaker 8

This is Graham. I'll take that. Certainly power in Texas can be a challenge and it evolves consistently. We're doing things with our projects to basically do some hedging of that through purchase of power generation and looking at other options. We work very closely with the power providers and their status and evaluate whether grid power will be acceptable or we need to have other either backup power or we need to have other power sources available.

Speaker 8

And each situation is different. Every provider is different, whether you're working out in the West Texas or East Texas. So each situation is individual.

Speaker 7

Got it. Makes sense. I'll leave it there. Thank you.

Speaker 9

Thank you.

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Tristan Richardson of Scotiabank.

Speaker 10

Hi, good morning guys. Just on Bahia, can you give a general update on progress there? Maybe how you see utilization ramping as that project comes on? And then maybe just your updated thoughts on a base case for Seminole based on what you're seeing on the supply growth side?

Speaker 11

Yes. Tristan, this is Justin Kreider. I mean, I think updates on VJARs, we're still on track from a timing perspective. From a commercial perspective, I think go back a couple of quarters from how we sort of talked strategically about it and that is the growth is underpinned by our G and P platform, which Jim just spoke to the fact that we don't think we're done building plants, so Bahia will be there to catch those volumes. And then when you think about NGL pipelines, you have to also understand the totality of the system that feeds them in which we think we have a premier system with all the connectivity to every a majority of the 3rd party plants that have supply that can feed the system as well.

Speaker 11

So you really have to look at plant connectivity to really understand what capacity and utilization could look like. And then 3rd, we always have the sort of optionality that all of our pipelines give us in terms of potential conversions and things like that. So with respect to Seminole, I think it's a prime candidate for repurposing. I think we've been public with that, in which case if that happens, then those NGLs will feed into Bahia.

Speaker 10

Great. Thank you. And then maybe just a clarification question. Sorry if I missed this, but could you talk about the DHT expansion you announced this morning and the 300 a day versus maybe what you had talked about previously in that capital slide for EHT? I think you guys referred to it as facility upgrades versus an outright expansion.

Speaker 10

Can you maybe talk a little bit about the distinction there?

Speaker 4

I mean, it's a so we're adding an additional refrigeration unit there, expanding existing dock infrastructure or to utilize an existing dock infrastructure and pipeline infrastructure that's ultimately get into 300,000 barrels a day?

Speaker 12

This is Zach. The original project that was on there was more of a flexibility project between different commodities, which this new train ends up providing.

Speaker 10

Great. Thank you guys very much. Appreciate it.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Spiro Dounis of Citi.

Speaker 9

Thanks, operator. Thanks, team. First question is just on CapEx, but really kind of want to focus on what's uncommitted at this point. Obviously, spot is a big one and you've mentioned a few times now the potential for more processing plants to get built. But as you think about the rest of the system, you've obviously got plenty of pipeline, plenty of export expansion, obviously some fracs in there.

Speaker 9

Curious if you could give us a sense of what you think is still missing from that system or maybe areas where customers are coming to you like with this export expansion and demanding more?

Speaker 2

Yes. I remember Dan one time, This is Jim. Told me we were looking at something and he said, this might be the last deal, Jim. And they keep coming at us. I think we are doing a pretty good job of expanding our primary petrochemical product system, meaning our ethylene system and our propylene system.

Speaker 2

And I think we'll be surprised in the years to come how good we'll do in that. And I mean, I don't think we have enough export capability based on what I see coming at us in the future. We believe that rich gas out of the Permian is going to be a couple of 3 Bcf a day more than we have forecasted in the past. So we're on that export train.

Speaker 9

Got you. I guess that does tie my second question a bit. But just thinking about producers here, curious maybe this one for Tony on how you're thinking about the outlook or what happens next. But curious if you've seen any change in behavior, obviously seeing gas kind of turn over here a little bit again and crude of course has kind of come off the highs. So, are producers acting differently yet?

Speaker 9

Just curious how you're seeing maybe the next call medium term?

Speaker 13

Yes. Sarah, this is Tony. Jim mentioned in his prepared remarks, I guess, first of all, we don't see significant changes in producers. In other words, there is a lot of money on the tables for producers to continue to produce because of price of oil and how profitable they are. And frankly, they get more profitable every day.

Speaker 13

So while certainly none of them can like very weak prices at Waha, that doesn't keep them from putting barrels on the table. Jim, in his remarks, mentioned that rich gas continues the trend of exceeding both ours and producers' expectations.

Speaker 9

What I'd like to add

Speaker 13

to that is with Natalie's team, we spend a lot of time with commercial people, producers and technical people and in those meetings with producers. We're definitely discussing incremental rich gas over and above frankly the type curves that we have in our forecast.

Speaker 2

I think

Speaker 13

there's a number of reasons for this, but to boil it down, I think it boils down to some of the richer gassier benches now being drilled and planned by producers, especially in the Delaware Basin. Plus some of the GOR increases that we're predicting driven by the multi bench completion methods, whatever you want to call them, that continue to evolve. And when we talked about that in our analyst meeting, Natalie always reminds me that we want to be directionally correct in our forecast. No forecast is correct. But without talking to you all about what we're seeing, again in these commercial and technical meetings, I think from directionally correct, I think we'd be lacking.

Speaker 13

Jim, I think you mentioned 2 to 3 incremental Bs. I would say that's over and above the approximately 30 Bs of which rich gas at 2,030 that we had in our forecast. When you look at a basin producing that much gas, you think, well, that's not really a big number. But when you consider the fact that it's liquid rich and as rich as it is, it gets to be a pretty big number pretty quick. So that's the reality of what we're dealing with.

Speaker 13

Anybody else want to add anything? Natalie, you agree?

Speaker 1

Yes. The only thing I'd add is, when you think about that much incremental rich gas and more efficient plants in the basin that are capable of extracting higher ethane than before, it becomes a very quick NGL growth number also. So one thing that I think has surprised people to the upside is the NGL production out of the basin prices said to do it. So the capability of the plants and the portfolio of processing plants now there in the Permian just is much greater than past.

Speaker 9

Got it. I'll leave it there. Thanks as always.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Keith Stanley of Wolfe Research.

Speaker 14

Hi, good morning. Following up on the Houston LPG export project, is this a sign that you're perhaps seeing more demand for Phase 2 at the Neches River project to be all ethane instead of a mix of ethane and propane. And so you have to do the Houston project to accommodate the propane side. Then can you just give an update on how much of the Natchez River capacity is contracted at this point on both phases?

Operator

Sure. This is Tug.

Speaker 4

So you're exactly right. We will maintain the flexibility at the Natchez River facility to do LPG. However, as the VLEC order book continues to get delivered out between now and call it end of 2026 that facility will be in ethane service long term. As far as the contract level we have on that facility, it is 100% contracted. I will tell you we have additional debottlenecking projects that we can execute fairly capital efficient to get additional capacity there if the market asked for it.

Speaker 4

We're in good discussions around that capacity right now and we'll evaluate if we proceed with that. So yes, I could see it being ethane long term

Operator

was the second question.

Speaker 14

Great. Thank you. And second question, any technical one, but just any ability for the company to benefit from the wide isobutane to butane spreads that we've seen? Or is the focus really still just MTB to butane?

Speaker 2

We benefit from that spread.

Speaker 14

From isobutane to butane?

Speaker 2

Yes.

Speaker 14

Got it. Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of John McKay of Goldman Sachs.

Speaker 15

Hey, everyone. Good morning. Thanks for the time. I want to go back to, I think maybe it was Michael's question on China. We're seeing at least oil demand kind of trending decently below expectations right now.

Speaker 15

I guess I'd just be curious to hear from your perspective kind of where demand is trending overall versus your forecast, your expectations on maybe when that could start to pick up? And maybe just how sensitive your outlook could be to that global demand picture acknowledging the high contracting levels? Thanks.

Speaker 4

This is Tug. I'll pass it over to Tony. But as far as enterprise, enterprises exports to China is around 43%, the U. S. Is around 52%.

Speaker 4

So we're a little bit lower than the U. S. Average. I will add that while our product does go to China, it's all indirect. So we don't have any direct contract exposure per se on the LPG side, but we are seeing it ramp up quarter over quarter.

Speaker 4

And then Tony, I'll

Speaker 13

Ed, talk about other liquids demand. Tug is referencing that barrels going to China. That's we all know we've been watching the build out of PDHs in China for the last 3 years and it's nothing short of eye popping. They dominate the olefins market in Asia at this point, especially relative to the PDH activity. So it's really important in the equation.

Speaker 13

If you're also referring to oil demand, I will tell you from our view, there's nothing wrong with oil demand globally. Probably on track to be growth somewhere between 1.200000000 to 1 point 4000000 barrels a day year on year. That's not a bad number, especially with China demand, somewhat weak economies. So I think other forecasters will tell you the same that that's about the trajectory we're on.

Speaker 2

And this is Jim. I don't think we can undersell the benefits that LPG has with places like Africa and India as a transition fuel from wood and coal. And what we're seeing is that's a lot stickier demand and it doesn't go away.

Speaker 13

In that regard, for those of you who want to search the Internet for Total Energy's recent commercial that they have been running specifically on LPG in Africa. It's a pretty moving commercial.

Speaker 15

I appreciate all of that. Thanks. I might push for just one more. I mean looking ahead to November, tariffs are obviously front of mind. Are those coming up in your commercialization discussions either around kind of incremental NGL sales or maybe on spot?

Speaker 2

Say the question again, I'm sorry. Tariffs. Export tariffs. So I guess if

Speaker 15

we're talking about the risk of incremental tariffs, starting next year, if that's something that impacts our commercialization?

Speaker 4

It gets brought up occasionally, but I'll tell you the truth. If you were to ask me that question 2 or 3 years ago, 4 years ago, especially is at the later days of when Trump was in office, it was brought up quite often. We've been over to Asia a couple of times this year. Those questions and those conversations don't happen near the frequency that they once did.

Speaker 2

What does happen, Brent, after the LNG policies, can I depend on the U? S, once you're getting some of that? Yes.

Speaker 4

I mean, I think people question in terms of what projects are real and if we're going to continue to expand the export capabilities of this country. So, I think obviously the people that have contracts in place at the incumbent assets, I think benefit. But in terms of trying to expand anything that they have, especially over in Asia, I think that makes some pause if they can continue to grow and depend on the U. S. But the tariff side, again, I'll just I'm going to expand on that.

Speaker 4

On the tariff side, I think we fundamentally believe that if the U. S. Product has to price to export, then ultimately the U. S. Price has to overcome that tariff based on just pure geography and the transit that they have to incur.

Speaker 4

So I mean that's probably more of a reflection of what the U. S. What happens to the U. S. Price.

Speaker 15

That's very clear. I appreciate all the thoughts today. Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Neal Dingmann of Truist.

Speaker 12

Good morning, all. Thanks for the time. My first question, I just always appreciate that capital project slide. I'm just wondering, something you've mentioned earlier kind of got my attention. Just wondered, is it fair to say you won't spend future CapEx until it's largely contracted?

Speaker 12

Or maybe say in another way, wondering if you have an amount that needs to be contracted or percent of volumes that need to be contracted before FID or CapEx is spent?

Speaker 2

It kind of depends on the project, if you want to know the truth. On PDH, we wanted to make sure we had every bit of that contracted and turned into an annuity. If we see a lot of upside, we'll probably take less of a contract needs because we see upside on the assets. So it really depends on the asset. For example, on spot, I'm not going to tell you what it is, but we know what we have to have contracted in order to build it.

Speaker 12

That makes a lot of sense. Thanks, Jim. And then just one follow-up. Quarter date, the marketing margin continue to look quite strong. And I'm just wondering with about a third of the Q3 now in the books and Waha prices remaining still quite volatile, I think, where anything from $1.50 to negative 2, Just any update you would give on that marketing margins?

Speaker 12

Thank you.

Speaker 4

Yes, this is Brent. So from Enterprise's perspective, our number is still the same. We have about 380,000,000 a day of exposure. We've hedged a small amount for the balance of this year. But by and large, we still have a lot of exposure to all gas markets that originate from Waha.

Speaker 12

Perfect. Thanks, Brian.

Speaker 4

Yes, sir.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Manav Gupta of UBS.

Speaker 16

Hi, this is Manav from UBS. My first question is, can we talk a little bit about the CapEx creep that happened in 2024? What were the drivers of this? And could this repeat in 2025? Do you have confidence that this will not happen in 2025?

Speaker 3

I think we would come in and say we really didn't see CapEx creep in 2024. We did modify the range. That's why we gave you gave the market an upper range. So the lower part of the range changed, but the upper part of the range is still 3,750,000,000 dollars And where we sit currently, we're still 2025, we still feel good about a range of 3.25 to 3.75.

Speaker 16

Okay. And in terms of PDH-two, you get it up in August. So should we assume it runs like that full rates by September? Do you think it's more of like you get to the full rate in the Q4?

Speaker 2

I'm looking at Graham and I'm expecting to run up at full rates in September. We should be at full rates in September.

Speaker 1

Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. As there are no further questions in queue, I would now like to turn the conference back to Libby Strait for closing remarks. Madam?

Speaker 1

Thank you to our participants for joining us today. That concludes our remarks. Have a good day.

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