Plains All American Pipeline, L.P. (PAA) Q1 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Plains All American Pipeline, L.P. (NASDAQ:PAA) Q1 2023 Earnings Conference Call May 5, 2023 10:00 AM ET

Company Participants

Blake Fernandez - Vice President of Investor Relations

Willie Chiang - Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Al Swanson - Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Jeremy Goebel - Executive Vice President and Chief Commercial Officer

Chris Chandler - Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer

Conference Call Participants

Michael Blum - Wells Fargo Securities, LLC

Spiro Dounis - Citigroup Inc.

Brian Reynolds - UBS

Jean Salisbury - Sanford C. Bernstein & Co.

Neel Mitra - Bank of America Merrill Lynch

Gabriel Moreen - Mizuho Securities USA LLC

Jacob Nivasch - Truist Securities, Inc.

Sunil Sibal - Seaport Global Securities

Operator

Good day, and thank you, for standing by. Welcome to the PAA and PAGP First Quarter 2023 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speakers' presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded.

I would now like to turn the conference over to your speaker today, Blake Fernandez, Vice President, Investor Relations. Please begin.

Blake Fernandez

Thank you, Gavin. Good morning, and welcome to Plains All American's first quarter 2023 earnings call. Thank you for all of you for joining us on our new time today. The new day and time for our earnings call is a result of feedback from many of you and part of our ongoing efforts to continue optimizing our engagement with investors and analysts.

Today's slide presentation is posted on the Investor Relations website under the News and Events section at plains.com, where an audio replay will also be available following today's call.

Important disclosures regarding forward-looking statements and non-GAAP financial measures are provided on Slide 2. Highlights from the quarter are provided on Slide 3. A condensed consolidating balance sheet for PAGP and other reference materials are located in the appendix.

Today's call will be hosted by Willie Chiang, Chairman and CEO; and Al Swanson, Executive Vice President and CFO, as well as other members of our management team.

With that, I would turn the call over to Willie.

Willie Chiang

Thank you, Blake. Happy Friday, everyone, and thank you for joining us. Earlier this morning, we announced strong results, reflecting good progress towards executing on our full-year 2023 targets and providing us with confidence and our ability to deliver on the plan that we laid out in February. As a result, our comments today will be brief.

It's been a volatile few months from a macro perspective with recessionary concerns, headlines in the banking industry and an unexpected OPEC production cut along with the ongoing war in the Ukraine. Through all of this, we remain confident that Plains is well positioned for the long-term as North American supply will continue to be critical to meeting growing long-term global demand.

For 2023 and as illustrated on Slide 4, our focus is on execution. And through the first quarter, we've done just that. Reporting adjusted EBITDA attributable to PAA of $715 million. As a result of our first quarter performance and our outlook for the balance of the year, we are reaffirming our adjusted EBITDA guidance range of $2.45 billion to $2.55 billion for 2023. Additionally, we continue to expect free cash flow generation of approximately $1.6 billion and common distribution coverage of 215%, which includes our recent $0.20 per unit annualized distribution increase.

Looking forward, we expect that our continued focus on free cash flow supports our previously announced capital allocation framework, which targets multi-year annualized distribution increases of $0.15 per unit, and further debt and leverage reduction. Al will share additional detail on our quarterly performance and 2023 outlook in his portion of the call.

Let me shift to the Permian. We continue to capture increasing volumes on our system and we expect production growth of plus or minus 500,000 barrels a day exit-to-exit in 2023 based on an assumed 2022 exit production of approximately 5.65 million barrels a day. While still relatively early in the year, current horizontal rig count is tracking in line with our expected full-year average of 340 horizontal rigs, and we continue to monitor additional data points, including well completion activity and commodity price environment.

Consistent with our February guidance and as shown on Slide 5, we expect year-over-year growth in our Crude Oil segment, underpinned by continued Permian production and tariff growth volumes in our gathering and our long haul systems.

Before I hand it over to Al, I wanted to reinforce that capital discipline remains front and center as we continue to advance capital efficient NGL opportunities around our Fort Saskatchewan facility, which we expect to share additional detail on later this year.

With that, I'll turn the call over to Al.

Al Swanson

Thanks, Willie. We reported first quarter adjusted EBITDA attributable to PAA of $715 million. This includes Crude Oil segment benefits from market-based opportunity and increased volumes across our systems, primarily within the Permian. The NGL segment benefited from seasonally higher sales volumes due to winter demand and favorable margins.

Slides 9 and 10 in today's appendix contains walks which provide more detail on our first quarter performance. A detailed overview of our 2023 guidance and key assumptions which remain consistent with our February guidance are located on Slide 12 within today's appendix. We continue to expect year-over-year growth in our Crude Oil segment, driven by anticipated volume increases in our Permian business.

For the NGL segment, we remain highly hedged and continue to expect segment adjusted EBITDA midpoint of $420 million. I would note this reflects a more pronounced winter to summer [saddle] versus 2022, which reflects lower volumes due to a planned third-party turnaround in the second quarter, the February sale of our non-op interest in the Keyera Fort Sask facility and an NGL market structure that supports increased sales volumes in the peak winter demand months relative to the summer months.

Regarding capital allocation as illustrated on Slide 6 and consistent with our February outlook, we remain committed to significant returns of capital to our equity holders, continued capital discipline and reducing debt, and maintaining financial flexibility. For 2023, we expect to generate $2.3 billion in cash flow from operations, $1.6 billion of free cash flow with $600 million of free cash flow after distributions available for net debt reduction resulting in year-end leverage of approximately 3.5x. We will continue to self fund $325 million and $195 million of investment and maintenance capital net to PAA, which is consistent with our February guidance and does not include amounts related to the potential Fort Sask opportunity.

With that, I will turn the call back to Willie.

Willie Chiang

Thanks, Al. Today's results reflect another quarter of strong execution and we remain confident in our outlook for the year, despite the near-term volatility. We continue to believe that the world needs North American energy supply long-term, and that our business is well situated to meet this need in a low cost, reliable and responsible manner. We also believe we are well positioned to meaningfully increase returns of capital to unitholders through our targeted multi-year distribution growth and 8.5% current yield, significant free cash flow generation, balance sheet strength as illustrated on Slide 7. We appreciate your continued interest and support, and we look forward to providing further updates on our earnings conference call in August.

With that, I'll turn the call over to Blake to lead us into Q&A.

Blake Fernandez

Thanks, Willie. As we enter the Q&A session, please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up. For those with additional questions, please feel free to return to the queue. This will allow us to address questions from as many participants as practical in our available time this morning. Additionally, the IR team will be available to address any additional questions you may have.

Kevin, we are now ready to open the call for questions.

Question-and-Answer Session

Operator

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Michael Blum with Wells Fargo. Your line is open.

Michael Blum

Hey. Thanks. Good morning, everyone. I want to talk about Permian growth. Curious if you're seeing any change in producer activity or messaging as [commodity prices] pullback and any updated outlook for Permian growth rate in 2023?

Willie Chiang

Jeremy?

Jeremy Goebel

Hey, Michael. Good morning. What I would say is combination of activity as Willie alluded to 340 rigs still working. That's in line with our plan and activity, number of completion crews, number of connections in the first half of this year and second half. Current volumes on the system that growth implies roughly to 40,000 to 50,000 barrels a day per month of growth necessary to achieve the 500,000 barrel a day growth range and then discussions with producers.

We're in this band of inelasticity somewhere between, I don't know if it's 65 to 85, but it doesn't seem like producers move rigs one way or the other on the crude side. Gas has kind of gotten out of that and you've seen some gas rigs move off. But by and large, we don't see any material change to our forecast.

Willie Chiang

Michael, this is Willie. You've probably seen the Permian numbers. We ended at 5.65 at the beginning of the year. We think we're right around 5.9 now, and our exit is kind of 6.15, so we're kind of on track with what we had outlined in February.

Michael Blum

Okay. Great. Thanks for that. And then realize you're not giving 2024 guidance yet. But just wanted to ask in general, directionally how we should think about 2024 CapEx? Is there anything on the horizon that would point to that really being materially higher than 2023? Or do you think that could trend higher or lower? Thanks.

Willie Chiang

Michael, we've kind of stated our expectations of between $300 million to $400 million of expansion CapEx. And we'll likely get the question as we think about our NGL assets up in Canada and what we are trying to do there. Even if we move forward with that, I think, we'll still be in that range on an annual average basis over maybe a couple number of years. But most importantly, I don't think that we would be taken on any expansion CapEx that would jeopardize our free cash flow story and our desire to return capital back to unitholders.

Michael Blum

Thanks, Willie.

Willie Chiang

You bet. Thank you.

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from Spiro Dounis with Citi. Your line is open.

Spiro Dounis

Thanks, operator. Good morning, everybody. First question, just hoping you guys could update us on [corporates bound] pipeline utilization. It seems like that's been getting kind of close to full. And just wondering if the economics there at some point maybe start supporting the use of DRA again, or if maybe you start to see these flows kind of turn back to Houston from here?

Willie Chiang

Well, I'll start with this Spiro. The volumes on the long haul lines down at Corpus are running very full. And we constantly optimize power in DRA to have the most economic way of delivering it. But Jeremy, you want to comment a little bit on outlook?

Jeremy Goebel

Sure. As we discussed, volumes are growing every month and longer haul lines are getting more full. The Wink-to-Webster ramped up in February as everyone is aware. A lot of that volume came off of inbound Houston pipes might have had some marginal impact to the Corpus pipes, but notably had an impact on spreads between Midland and the Gulf Coast. And we expect volume growth to get us out of that and get it to more reasonable ranges and longer term ranges where we've been contracting. And so what I would say is that we continue to expect that to continue to happen.

Corpus is the most logistically sound place. It's the shortest distance. It's nothing, but Permian crude leaving the docks. It's an area that just we'll draw the incremental demand. Our basin pipeline as summer driving season pulled up, we'll pull additional demand. So we're seeing more and more activity on the long haul pipe as production has grown. As Willie mentioned, you get to 6.15 million barrels a day towards the end of the year, and they will be full, but you'll have balancing across the pipelines because all of the markets are needed. But Corpus will remain full since the marginal demand is an export barrel.

Willie Chiang

And Spiro, you probably already realized this. But we've contracted the majority of our long haul space down to Corpus Christi for 2023 into 2024. And so back to our thesis of tightening capacity and margins in the out years, this is very supportive for that as we go forward for the next number of years.

Spiro Dounis

Got it. That's helpful color. Thank you both. The second one, just going back to NGL in Canada. You guys have just kind of talked about this debottlenecking and optimization for a bit now. Just curious, what are some of the gating items to kind of moving forward there? When do you think we can get closer to an announcement?

Willie Chiang

We expect to be able to give you an update in August on our August call. As you can imagine, putting these things together is a complicated situation, especially when you're trying to evaluate opportunities around debottlenecking and expansions and trying to link up commercial contracts to anchor it. So there's quite a bit of work that's been going on and I think we'll be able to give you a good update in August.

Spiro Dounis

Great. Good to know. That's all I have today. Thank you, guys.

Willie Chiang

Thank you.

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from Brian Reynolds with UBS. Your line is open.

Brian Reynolds

Hi. Good morning, everyone. Maybe just to follow-up on the NGL segment. Your updated views from the guidance was expectations for being down roughly a $100 million year-over-year just given a strong Q and really strong frac spreads to start the year and continuing throughout 2Q. Just wondering if there's any updated view there? Or if there's any maintenance in 2Q or beyond that we should be thinking about? Thanks.

Al Swanson

Yes. This is Al. I'll take a shot. We came into the year fairly hedged. As we commented, a little over 80% hedged. We had a strong 1Q, but our view is it really doesn't change the year. We're still guiding to $420 million for the full-year, which again, in our prepared comments, we talked about probably a bigger saddle in the summer month. But what you're seeing there a bit too is we do anticipate a turnaround in the second quarter, impacting some volumes as well as a market structure that instance us to store and sell next winter, some of which would push into the first quarter of 2024. So summary, we didn't change our guidance for the NGL segment.

Jeremy Goebel

Just a couple things to add Brian. We had an asset sale in February, so the full-year impact of that would reflect both. But a larger component is commodity exposed barrels will be lower this year. There is a turnaround at a third-party facility that we received commodity exposed barrels from. And there was a storm in the Williston last spring that led to additional volume and additional at the highest commodity exposure period. So I think the combination of those is probably a bigger driver for the year-over-year reduction involved in EBITDA.

Brian Reynolds

Great. Really appreciate the incremental color. Next question is just on capital allocation. Plains is trending towards that 3.5 leverage target or below by year-end. And while distribution growth seems to be on the table for 2024, kind of was curious if Plains could provide updated thoughts and views around potential prep reduction. Just S&P has recently kind of updated its views that it may not necessarily penalize equity credit for companies that have dramatically reduced leverage and looked to reduce their cost of capital? Thanks.

Al Swanson

Yes. This is Al. I'll take a shot. The S&P kind of clarification of how they look at it is very favorable for potential reduction, when and if, it makes sense for us to. We value our financial flexibility in bringing our leverage down at least in the near-term more than trying to take out any of the preps. So no change in our view, call it in the near-term or for the balance of this year. Expect us to kind of revisit that maybe in the future. We do not view that the cost of the preps are so high that we should immediately sacrifice the balance sheet or financial flexibility to take them out.

The weighted cost of the prep securities are below what we think our cost of capital is on a weighted basis. And this isn't the best debt market to go refinance in as well. So no really change in our thinking there. We are pleased because we do think we would meet the kind of the S&P exception of significantly lower leverage than when we last issued. The prep security, so we do think we got incremental flexibility in the future, but definitely not this year.

Brian Reynolds

Great. Appreciate your updated thoughts. Have a good rest of your morning.

Willie Chiang

Thanks, Brian.

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from Jean Salisbury with Bernstein. Your line is open.

Jean Salisbury

Hi, good morning.

Willie Chiang

Good morning.

Jean Salisbury

Hi. I just wanted to follow-up on an earlier question. Your Corpus pipelines I think are at full capacity now with no real expansion capacity with DRAs. Is that accurate? I know some of the other pipelines have been talking about potential expansions that I didn't actually think were possible. But wanted to see for Plains if that was a possibility?

Jeremy Goebel

Jean, this is Jeremy. We don't have to foresee any expansions of our facilities at this time, the Cactus I, Cactus II assets.

Jean Salisbury

Great. Thank you. And then I wanted to also ask about your expectations of what duration is expected in recontracting if you were to kind of start blending and extending on your crude pipes in the next year or two. We've heard from others that [E&Ps] are kind of really on the market for three to five years for recontracting, as those contractors are coming up. But your high Corpus utilization might better position Plains than others. So wanted to get your thoughts there.

Jeremy Goebel

Jean, we're in the middle of those discussions and have been for a while. And it all depends on rates. At lower rates, we'd rather not have longer duration. We push for longer duration at higher rates. I think that's something between us and our customers. But what I can tell you is we haven't seen any issues getting five-year terms on that for contracts that we like and customers like. So I'd say, we pushed towards the high end of that range.

Willie Chiang

Jean, this is Willie. One other comment I would make is, remember our assets are an integrated asset base. So when we look at – when Jeremy's team look at recontract extensions, it's really not just a long haul. It's the desire to integrate the gathering through the intra-basin through long haul. So we think we offer a more fulsome opportunity set for folks that want to move barrels out.

Jean Salisbury

That's helpful. And if I can sneak in one more really quick one, if that's okay. Do you anticipate that the recent energy transfer acquisition of Lotus will have any material impact on Plains' businesses?

Willie Chiang

We don't. We've got a great system that you've heard a lot about. And we think it gives us all the flexibility we need.

Jean Salisbury

Great. Thanks. That's all for me.

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from [indiscernible] with Bank of America. Your line is open.

Neel Mitra

Hi. This is actually Neel Mitra. Thanks for taking the question. First, just wanted to ask regarding the NGL business. I know frac spreads have been really strong for the last kind of year and a half. But have you considered moving more to a fixed fee business just to create a little bit more stability longer term?

Al Swanson

No. These assets that we're talking about are straddles. We have not looked to do that and don't anticipate that.

Neel Mitra

Got it. And maybe the second question for Jeremy, as you look at recontracting in 2025 and 2026, Corpus is getting a premium, but are some of your producers looking at possibly having spot in place in Houston and that impacting the flows that would go to Corpus and the premium that you'd get?

Jeremy Goebel

Neil, it's hard to speculate what would happen. The enterprise noticed that demand for that probably isn't until 2027. So we're not sure what those markets look like. But what I can say is if that were to happen in 2027, that's because there's another 1.5 million or 2 million barrels a day of production and Corpus flows wouldn't be materially impacted and you'd need the same amount of barrels to clear because incremental demand is there. So the reason for it being pushed is largely because Jean Ann mentioned lower contract duration. You need a long-term contracts to get. Docks are 40% to 50% utilized. Everything is moving and quality is maintained. And so we struggled to see it in the near-term. We do agree with enterprise, if there's a longer term need in higher production, that means our gathering pipes are full, our long haul pipes are full, and Corpus flows won't be materially impacted because that incremental volume will likely come from the inland docks and growth.

Neel Mitra

Great. And if I could just clarify one question on the gathering in intra-basin side. If the Permian continues to grow, like you expect, at what point would you have to see kind of major expansions on your gathering in intra-basin system? And would that put you kind of outside of the $300 million to $400 million range at some point?

Jeremy Goebel

What was that range Neil, I'm sorry. I just want to make sure I answered the question properly.

Neel Mitra

Just the CapEx range that you're in right now?

Jeremy Goebel

I don't foresee anything that would push us out of that range. I think the way I would look at it, Neil, is we're constantly debottlenecking and creating capacity. We announced earlier this year that there's probably a 100 million of our capital program as to creating more capacity through stations and pipes. We can always ship on other pipelines if it's a temporal need for additional capacity. The Wink-to-Webster segment between Wink and Midland will come on towards the end of this year. But large segments of pipe, we’re in the neighborhood of a 100 million to debottleneck this system. It's not hundreds of millions and we'll have lots of gathering capacity in and out. So the shorter answer is we don't see much that would push us out of that potential acquisitions and other things that we might look at from time-to-time. But as far as building organic projects, we don't see a ton of need for multi hundreds of millions of dollar projects.

Willie Chiang

Yes. This is Willie. If you look at Slide 5, there's a good illustration of our operating leverage in the Permian. And as Jeremy said, we're constantly trying to optimize the system to be able to get more out of it. So I think it'll be a number of years before we hit constraints – meaningful constraints.

Neel Mitra

Okay. Perfect. Thank you for all the color.

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from Jeremy Tonet with JPMorgan. Your line is open.

Unidentified Analyst

Hey, guys. This is [Robin] on for Jeremy. Just curious, looking past 2023, how you guys think about risk to long haul versus intra-basin risk gathering volumes and when you guys might see capacity becoming tighter? Thanks.

Jeremy Goebel

Great. That's it. So we're always – on the gathering side, we're always constantly moving with volume in producers. So I'd say that is one where we're just trying to stay ahead of the producers and we'll have an active program to move constraints as Willie mentioned. Intra-basin is one, depending on where volume flows go, you can see constraints. But we work with our partners and try to resolve that. That's where you might see the investment Neel was talking about with intra-basin. If more needs to go to Houston or Corpus, do we need to expand capacity in one place or direction? But I would say that that's transient and there's a big piece coming online towards the end of this year that we could ship on if we needed an incremental capacity. So there might be some intra-basin constraints, but we have ways to resolve them and those investments are being made.

The last one is on the long haul side. It depends on by market, right. As I mentioned, all markets are needed. You're 90 plus percent utilized in Corpus, but there's plenty of places for the barrels to flow. They can flow to Houston, they can flow to [indiscernible], they can flow to fishing. So over time, the differentials today are inside of where they would support incremental investment and expansion. So you'd probably need to see rates move first before you saw incremental event expansion. But that's probably a couple of years away before you would need incremental expansion from here on the long haul side.

Willie Chiang

Maybe just as a reminder, as you think about long haul, there's about 8 million barrels a day at total capacity, take away capacity out of the basin. If you look at economic capacity, it's roughly a little bit over seven. Our forecast for year end, as we talked about was just a bit over six. So you can see the capacity there and as you start filling that up and you use drag reducer to try to get into the higher end of the volumes. The costs go up. And so that's part of the reason that we think that margins ultimately have to get stronger as we go forward.

Unidentified Analyst

Great. Thanks for all the color there. And then on the energy transition front, kind of switching gears, just wondering what kind of capital I guess would be deployed by this group? What are the types of projects that teams focusing on or any incremental updates there?

Chris Chandler

Sure. This is Chris Chandler. We continue to evaluate a number of projects in this area. The one we've announced is a battery energy storage project at our Sarnia, Ontario facility, that's actually in construction and it'll begin operation this summer. It's a modest investment, less than $10 million. We're looking at a number of different areas, whether that's renewable power generation behind – metered our existing facilities, converting existing assets or pipelines, even things like hydrogen storage underground. In particular, our Canada storage position, lends itself to opportunities to store hydrogen. So we're looking across the partnership. But at the end of the day, these projects have to compete for capital and have to meet our investment hurdles.

Unidentified Analyst

Got it. I'll leave it there.

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from Gabriel Moreen with Mizuho. Your line is open.

Gabriel Moreen

Hey. Good morning, guys. Maybe if I can ask kind of a two pronged Canadian crude oil question. One is just can you just characterize for us where we are sort of in the ramp on Capline volumes and how that asset is going? And then maybe a little premature to ask this, but assuming TransMountain – starts up early next year, can you just talk about how well insulated your pipes are, your crude oil pipes are coming out of Canada from that start up?

Willie Chiang

Sure. So on the Capline front, we've seen quite a bit of demand from the existing shippers and the St. James refiners. So based on incentive volumes and committed volumes, that's been outperforming year-to-date. And we expect that to continue, a mix of light and heavy barrels. And then on the TMX startup, the way to think about that is you've got heavy crude that will leave and head west when it does start up. That could impact some heavy crudes going to the east and into the United States. But they need barrels to run, right? That's largely not getting exported out of the Gulf Coast. So that could bring either additional imports or it could bring additional barrels to the mid-con refining complex that soaks a lot of that up. So that could support our basin pipeline and our Mid-Continent. So it could draw additional barrels into the Cushing area. That could be a positive. Capline, I think will continue to move because those movements are for specific refiners who are looking for them.

They could have some imports, but largely we would expect quite a bit of those barrels to move. Our Canadian assets are largely insulated. Those are largely gathering assets into the main line. So if the differentials would tighten, that would increase the realized price and incent more production and volume to come. So we think it would just be a matter of time before things normalized because with additional takeaway and lower differentials, we might see lower market-based opportunities, but we could see some more fee-based opportunities and volume growth along the systems.

Gabriel Moreen

Thank you. And then maybe if I just get an update sort of on the Line 901 receivable, if there's any update there?

Al Swanson

No update. We've submitted the claim. Parts of the claim has been denied. And we are proceeding with arbitration. We feel strongly with the merits of our position and expect to collect in fall. Although it'll take some time and we've modeled it into early 2024.

Gabriel Moreen

Thanks, Al.

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from Neal Dingmann with Truist. Your line is open.

Jacob Nivasch

Hi. This is Jake Nivasch on for Neil. Thanks for the question. Just wanted to go back to the customer contracts. I know you mentioned, the duration that – the color that you provided there, but I just wanted to get a sense. Could you remind us, I guess what time of year, typically do these customer contracts get reevaluated and I guess could you provide if possible a quantification of I guess what percent of those contracts are up for renewal?

Willie Chiang

Neal, thanks for your time. Candidly it's fluid because each contract has notification periods, whether it's cancellation or options. So we really can't, and a lot of that's driven by when the time of year the pipeline is in service. There's not a contracting season like there is for NGL sales or purchases. But we've re-contracted a lot of those producers for long periods of time, substantially longer than their long haul contracts on our gathering systems with the intent, it’s just a matter of price when we get to the long haul peaks. So we have open lines of communication and dialogue and we'll update. It's a function of price when it gets to where we're willing to do something and they feel it's appropriate to do it. But we feel very good about the volume on the pipelines and that we will continue to recontract the pipes and the utilization support that. I don't know if there's anything to add there, but that's all I can give you at this time.

Jacob Nivasch

Sure. Thank you. And just a quick follow-up here. I know you guys mentioned hedged in 2023, I guess about 80%. But do you have any update on 2024 hedges? Have you guys added anything recently there?

Willie Chiang

I assume you're talking about natural gas liquids. The answer is, we haven't given any new guidance on 2024.

Jacob Nivasch

Got it. Okay. Thank you very much.

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from Sunil Sibal with Seaport Global. Your line is open.

Sunil Sibal

Yes. Hi. Good morning, everybody. So thanks for the clarity on the call. So I was curious, seems like upstream M&A especially in Permian has picked up pace. I was curious, how does that impact Plains especially with regard to your negotiations on recontracting? And more broadly the integrated model that Plains has had so much success with in Permian.

Willie Chiang

Jeremy?

Jeremy Goebel

Sure, Sunil. Take it a couple of steps, M&A has been happening for a long time in the Permian. And the bigger the customer, the large – the more they're largely driven to us and the integrated nature and more options. So that's a positive. As they get bigger, they do push more on rates, but we try to add services and balance a lot of that off. We have some unique attributes to the system, which gives us a premium relative to other services and we lean into that. But by and large, everyone's happy in the end, I put it that way.

The other thing about M&A is the way it's been run lately is producers are buying inventory and largely financing with selling lower-tier inventory. The benefit of that is that lower-tier inventory that wasn't going to get drilled, that could be dedicated to our system, private equity comes in, buys it, and immediately starts to drill it, which has been supporting the growth numbers we've seen. So while it is on the surface reducing rigs, their private equity's adding rigs, that's why you see stability in the rig count. So some of it's a positive for us as we see incremental production in places where we weren't seeing it before.

Sunil Sibal

Got it. Thanks for that. And then when I look at your commodity price assumptions seems to me that the Canadian AECO price exemption of C$350 per gigajoule is probably one of the biggest kind of variables. Is that thinking correct? And if so, any sensitivity on that price to your NGL segment?

Willie Chiang

Sunil, we've got a pretty good sensitivity on – that we disclosed on one of the slides. What I would tell you got AECO, there's a lot of pieces that fit into that. You got AECO, you've got the price of the NGL barrels. And then you've got some basis differential between Mont Belvieu and the markets we serve. So I would just go back to the kind of the rule of thumb that we have, which is on an annual basis, a penny's worth about $7 million frac spread on a clean year, right.

Sunil Sibal

Okay. Thanks.

Operator

And I'm not showing any further questions at this time. I'd like to turn the call back over to the company for any closing remarks.

Willie Chiang

Well listen, thanks all of you for joining us today. Hopefully, the new time works a little bit better for folks. We look forward to seeing you soon. Have a great day.

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes today's presentation. You may now disconnect and have a wonderful day.