Welcome to the MPC First Quarter 2021 Earnings Call. My name is Sheila, and I will be your operator for today’s call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question-and-answer session. Please note that this conference is being recorded..

Mike Hennigan, CEO; Maryann Mannen, CFO; and other members of the Executive Team. We invite you to read the Safe Harbor statements on Slide 2. We will be making forward-looking statements today. Actual results may differ. Factors that could cause actual results to differ are included there as well as in our SEC filings.

With that, I’ll turn the call over to Mike..

Thanks, Kristina, and thank you for joining our call this morning. Before we get into our results for the quarter, we wanted to provide a brief update on the business.

During the first quarter, our industry continued to struggle with reduction in global economic activity and demand for transportation fuels that resulted from the mobility restrictions related to COVID-19 pandemic.

As we started the second quarter, with the rollout of vaccination, we still see industry-wide gasoline demand down around 5% from historical levels and jet demand down around 25% to 30%.

To the extent that a pent-up desire to travel starts to brighten the macro-outlook for our business, our team and our assets are poised to take advantage of these opportunities. But in the meantime, as the challenging backdrop holds, we’ll continue to concentrate on the elements of our business that are within our control.

Our near-term priorities remain the same. Each quarter, we’re focused on strengthening the competitive position of our assets, improving our commercial performance and lowering our cost structure. Slide 4 highlights some of our actions around our strategic priorities this quarter. First, we’re close to completion on the sale of our Speedway business.

Second, we continue to take steps to reposition our portfolio. Our Board of Directors approved our plans to convert our Martinez assets to a 48,000 barrel per day renewable facility. We expect commissioning of Martinez to begin in the second half of 2022 with approximately 17,000 barrels per day of capacity.

Additionally, we expect to reach full capacity of approximately 48,000 barrels a day by the end of 2023. In line with our commitment to lowering the carbon intensity of our operations and products, we’re planning to install wind turbine generators at Dickinson facility.

Sourcing electricity from wind will lower the carbon intensity of the renewable diesel product at that facility. We’ll continue to seek out the right opportunity for investing and partnering on renewables and evolving technologies..

Thanks, Mike. Slide 8 provides a summary of our first quarter financial results. This morning, we reported an adjusted loss per share of $0.20. Adjusted EBITDA was $1,552 million for the quarter. This includes results from both continuing and discontinued operations.

Cash from continuing operations, excluding working capital was $613 million, which is a nearly $500 million increase since the prior quarter. It’s also marked the first time since the start of the pandemic that cash from continuing operations has been above our quarterly dividend payments, which was $379 million.

Slide 9 shows the reconciliation from net income to adjusted EBITDA as well as the sequential change in adjusted EBITDA from fourth quarter 2020 to first quarter 2021. Adjusted EBITDA was nearly $650 million more quarter-over-quarter driven primarily by higher earnings in refining and marketing.

As a reminder, both the fourth and first quarter results reflect Speedway as a discontinued operation. Moving to our segment results, Slide 10 provides an overview of our refining and marketing segment. The business reported positive EBITDA for the first time since the start of the COVID pandemic with first quarter adjusted EBITDA of $23 million.

This was an increase of $725 million when compared to the fourth quarter of 2020. The increase was driven primarily by higher refining margins, which were considerably improved across all regions in the first quarter, as compared to the fourth quarter.

Total utilization for refining was 83%, which was roughly flat with the fourth quarter utilization of 82%..

Thanks, Maryann. As we open the call for your questions, as a courtesy to all participants, we ask that you limit yourself to 1 question and a follow-up. If time permits, we will re-prompt for additional questions. We will now open the call for questions.

Operator?.

Thank you. We will now begin the question-and-answer session. Our first question comes from Doug Leggett with Bank of America. Your line is open..

Thank you. Good morning, everyone. Mike, I wonder if I could ask about the return of cash. I know it’s kind of a routine question that comes up for every quarter. But you talked about the appropriate level of leverage. I’m wondering if that’s – how that’s changed or what the latest thinking in there as to what the outlook is like.

And then, as a as a kind of follow on to that, when you think about buybacks, how big of a consideration is lowering the dividend burden on the ex-Speedway refining and midstream business? So I’m just, well – so, basically, debt level and buybacks, I realize MPLX’s share price has , so that’s probably off the table anyway..

Yeah, thanks, Doug. I’ll start and I’ll let Maryann jump in. So throughout this process, we’ve been getting a question about what those appropriate leverage mean. When we pick a metric, we’ve been saying 1 to 1.5 times mid-cycle.

And then everybody says, well then what do you think about mid-cycle? And my standard answer is, I don’t think about the 50 yard line, I think about the banks of the river. And I try and do scenario planning around what we think could be good times and bad times.

Obviously, everybody is excited about vaccine rollouts and getting recovery here, and certainly the market is moving in that direction. At the same time, Doug, in our prepared remarks, we said, gasoline demand is still 5% lower year-on-year overall. The West Coast is still considerably down compared to the other areas..

Doug, I think Mike covered it quite comprehensively. Just a couple of other additions, as we continue to say it was our objective and continues to be to maintain an investment-grade balance sheet, as you’ve seen and Mike talked about. Fitch has already confirmed that.

So another key variable that we will continue to consider, we want to be sure that the debt repayment is efficient. But other than that, I think Mike has covered the comments quite well. And that, so the only other thing I’d add is, we have committed, we’ve restated it many times that once we get too close, we’ll provide some more details.

We’re getting really close. And hopefully that’s not too far away from now. But we’ve been resistant to doing it ahead of time. So we’re just – soon as we get close, we’ll give a little more color to the market and then continue to communicate the way we have been, I think..

So, Michael, just for clarity, to be clear on my point about dividend, we’re obviously losing substantial cash coverage for dividend.

Should we expect some kind of accelerated buyback to accelerate the reduction in that dividend burden, or how are you thinking about that?.

Yeah, big picture, Doug, we believe in our dividend and we think we have a competitive dividend. Obviously, we’re going to reduce share count as a result of this. How that gets reduced is still to be seen, as far as you know the way this lays itself out and where the share price is over time. But we are committed to a competitive dividend.

That’s something that we’ve had in our mind all throughout this process. We’ll see at the end of the return, where we end up as far as share count, and then kind of evaluate where we are.

But hopefully, the takeaway that you’ve seen from this is we’re committed to our dividend, we do believe in returning capital, we have a nice opportunity here that’s unique as a result of this sale, and that return of capital will be a little bit of a differentiating factor for us for some time here..

Today – well, thanks for that, Mike. My follow up, I want to be respectful to everyone else. I’ll be real quick here. The cost structure, most likely you’re making big holes or big strides in getting your cost down. But you haven’t talked much about the broader portfolio review or restructuring.

One of your competitors suggested the other day that if the RFS doesn’t get resolved one way or the other we could see further rationalization of refining capacity. So I just wonder if you could bring us up to date with the overall portfolio review and stickiness of the cost reductions you’ve achieved so far. Thanks..

Yeah, Doug, on the portfolio, we decided very early on that 2 two facilities that we idled, we did not see being long-term assets for us. We do have an ongoing portfolio assessment. But we did pause a little bit, because we want to kind of get through this pandemic, and see what the other side looks like and what the new normal looks like.

So, we still have ongoing work internally on portfolio, nothing that we’re ready to disclose yet, but a conscious decision on our part to kind of pause, as we went through this pandemic, and start to see the light at the end of the tunnel. And I know everybody’s anxious to get this behind us. And hopefully, we’re getting really close.

The vaccine rollouts have gone very well. We’ll get a little better sense of what a new normal looks like and kind of do a final check on what we think about the portfolio in general. But so, in the near-term nothing to announce right now. We’ll get through this new normal. We’ll see what that looks like.

But I will tell you, Doug, it’s going to be an ongoing effort on our part, to continue to ask ourselves all the time, where is our cost structure, how’s it evolving, what are the assets that we have in the portfolio, because we are believer that over time this energy evolution will continue to play itself out.

And as it does, we’re going to be adapted to the market. And obviously, one of the high priorities that we put on ourselves was to get our cost structure down, so that in our base business, we were in a much more competitive position. And I think we’ve done that to some extent. And that’s not going to be an effort that we give up on.

We’re going to continue to do that. In fact, I often get asked the question, what inning are we in in that regard? And, overall, you know, I think, Ray and his team on the refining side are going to continue to look at it. In fact, I’ll let Ray make a comment as to where we are on cost as well. So hopefully, that answers you on portfolio.

But let me let Ray make a comment on cost..

Yeah, Mike brought up about what inning we’re in. And I’d have to say we’re not in the first inning and we’re not in the ninth inning. So we challenge ourselves every day.

What can we do to take more discretionary cost out of our system? Hey, the biggest thing that we did early on, and you kind of alluded to that is we took some of our high cost facilities out of the system. And on the West Coast, you have seen that quarter-over-quarter as we idled the Martinez refinery as an oil refinery.

And through the subsequent quarters, we completed a majority of the idling costs. And, going forward, Doug, we just continue to look at efficiency cost savings every day, while maintaining our emphasis towards safe and reliable operations for our assets. Those are non-negotiable. Discretionary spending is negotiable..

Thanks, guys..

You’re welcome, Doug..

Thank you. Our next question will come from Neil Mehta with Goldman Sachs. Your line is open..

Good morning, team. I just want to build on some of your comments in the prepared remarks on the Speedway transaction. Mike, it sounds like you’re really close and just want to get some clarity.

What really close means from your perspective? Are we talking days? Are we talking months? Are we talking quarters? And in terms of the gating factors, just maybe you talk about what are the things we should be monitoring from a closure perspective?.

And that’s a good way to frame it. I think the best way to answer it is exactly the way you set it up, is what we believe at this point is that we’re in weeks, not months. We’re not days, it’s not going to be tomorrow, the next day, but we think we are down to weeks.

And, what we’ve tried to do in this process is to be an intermarried communication tool, because it’s really between the FTC and 7-Eleven. Obviously, we’re at the table trying to understand if we can help the process at all. But, I guess, the best way to describe it is the FTC communicated to us that we’re in the final stage of the process.

So with that in mind, we think we’re within weeks. I guess that’s the best way to give you our sense of it. We don’t think we’re months. We don’t think we’re days. But we think we’re very, very close. And that’s why we chose the word close to completion. I hope that helps you.

And I know everybody’s anxious for us to get the next set of disclosures relative to this. We’re also anxious to do that. This has been a process. It’s taken a long time. I’m hoping the market appreciates that we tried to be as transparent as we can. We thought for a long time there, we thought we were going to hit by the end of the quarter.

That kind of came and went a little bit, process takes a little bit longer sometimes when you get into the details at the end. But we are very, very close. And hopefully, we’re talking within weeks..

Yeah, that conviction comes through, so thank you, that’s great, Mike. And the follow-up is on Martinez. Maybe you could just step back and talk about the renewable diesel project.

And if you could level set us sort of how you think about the total capital associated with the project to the extent you can provide it? I think you’ve given the guidance for $350 million of renewable spend this year, but just sort of the total spend associated with the project? And how should we think about the returns associated with this project? And there are a lot of moving pieces, but the biggest fear, I guess, is the soybean prices continue to move higher, so how do you manage the feedstock flexibility to ensure this is a good through-the-cycle investment?.

Yeah, it’s a great question, Neil. And obviously, we’ve communicated that we’ve gotten full Board support for this project. So I’ll let Ray start off, give you some color on how we’re thinking about it. And then, let Brian and Dave jump in as needed on feedstock, et cetera. So go ahead, Ray..

Sure, Mike. From a project standpoint, I’d like to give a little bit of color on where we stand from a timing schedule standpoint. At this point, Phase 1, we’re targeting completion in the second half of next year 2022. And that would be for 17,000 barrels of renewable fuels coming online. And then, that would be followed up by pretreatment in 2023.

And then, finally, the rest of the facility, the back half at 2023 for a total of 48,000 barrels for renewable diesel, renewable fuels production. Now, if I go back to Doug’s comment or question before as far as OpEx, I commented that Martinez was a very high cost oil refinery.

But there are some real gems at Martinez that make it a very good project for us from a renewable fuel standpoint, 300 processing units, 2 hydrogen plants, the infrastructure that provides us the ability to have a very cost competitive Brownfield project. And so, I can’t give a lot more CapEx guidance.

And you’ve already alluded to, but we’re very excited about this project.

And just what we’ve done in the last quarter in Q1, we progressed our engineering work toward the end of definition engineering, and have also made a lot of progress on our permitting efforts with regards to getting the environmental impact report kick-started and out for review in the near-term..

Yeah, Neil, I’ll turn it over to the commercial guys in a second. Just I guess one way to think about it is there are 3 major hurdles the way we think about this project, do we have the right location and logistics. And obviously, Martinez is sitting on the demand. Dickinson on the other hand is very close to supply.

So we like our location and our renewables facilities. Ray just mentioned, the second big hurdle is capital, operating expense, basically, what do you think of the hardware. And Ray just described it, the full asset facility was relatively high cost. But the real gem, as he mentioned, was in the hydroprocessing area.

So, it became obvious to us that the best use of this asset was to put it in the service. And then the last piece of the puzzle is the one that’s ongoing and that’s feedstock optimization. And that’ll continue, so I’ll let the guys comment a little bit on that..

Okay, hi, it’s Brian Davis here. So maybe just picking up the feedstock question, I think the first thing here is that Ray and his team have done a good job in creating sufficient optionality there through onsite pretreatment over time, but also the capability to receive feedstock by rail as well as by water.

So that opens our commercial flexibility quite considerably. We’re evaluating a portfolio of options to give us the right mix of feedstocks, which will deliver value over the life of the project. We have a number of commercial negotiations underway with a wide range of suppliers.

And we’ve been leveraging our existing capabilities and relationships, because we have been buying these feedstocks for a period of time for our existing biodiesel, and now more recently for Dickinson..

Okay, thanks, guys. Appreciate it..

You’re welcome, Neil..

Our next question will come from Phil Gresh with J.P. Morgan. Your line is open..

Yes, hi, good morning. My first question just be on the OpEx results on the West Coast. The OpEx per barrel there was even lower than it was in 2019 despite the fact that utilization is still pretty low here at this point. So maybe you could just, obviously, Martinez, I think is probably out of those numbers now. So maybe that’s the biggest factor.

But any other things that we should think about as to the drivers of lower OpEx and how you think about the potential there as utilization ramps back up?.

Okay. I’ll go ahead and take this question. This is Ray. You’re right, Martinez is largely out of the OpEx number. There still is some residual OpEx for tank cleaning and work that we’ll carry on to this year. So there is a little bit of Martinez spend.

I will say on the West Coast, Q1, quarter one was a challenging OpEx quarter, primarily because the energy costs put a big demand on us in the last part of February and early March.

I will say, on the West Coast, we were partially able to mitigate the impact of those natural gas price spike, by reducing our natural gas purchase requirements to close to balance by producing more internal fuel from our operations.

I think this was a real key for us, as far as managing the winter storm, not just in Texas, but across all of our operations. And I really got to give a shout out to our commercial group. Close coordination with our commercial group and the refineries really allowed us to pivot quickly.

And on the day one natural gas went up by 100 fold, and adjust our operations, reduce our demand requirement for natural gas, and have as minimal of an impact on our OpEx as possible. So, that was across all of our system. It really was impactful on the West Coast as well.

Aside from that, I’ll just go back to what I said earlier, as far as, every day we challenge ourselves, discretionary spending from got-to-do-stay-in-business type of spending. And that’s starting to show in the numbers..

Okay, great. That’s helpful. Thank you. My follow-up on renewable diesel, I guess, I’ll just try to glue these together very quickly.

If you could just talk about how you feel things are going with the startup, so far Dickinson, what you’ve learned from that startup process? And then, just on the feedstock side of things, would you consider signing up for some kind of joint venture or something like that for soybean crush capacity, like we’ve seen from one of your peers? Is that one of the things you’re considering? Thank you..

Okay, this is Ray again, and I’ll start off with the first thing as far as what we learn from startup. One of the things we learned, we already knew is that startups are hard. You don’t just push a button and everything works perfectly. But I will tell you, in the first quarter, we achieved 90% of our design capacity at Dickinson.

And we also qualified and got a provisional score for our renewable feedstocks, which is soybean oil and corn oil. And, that’s a lower number than the temporary score that we start off with. But as you know, we’re not seeking to get to 90%. We want to get to 100% of capacity and get lower carbon-intensity score. So work has continued in that regard.

We work with our licensor for the process and catalyst on a new catalyst formulation. We just actually did that work and it’s come back up. So we’re working towards getting better, getting toward a 100% yield, and exactly what we want from the project..

Yeah. And, Phil, it’s Brian here. On your question about soybean crush capacity, et cetera. We’re looking at all options here. Clearly, we’re targeting advantage feedstocks as much as possible, but we think we’ll also – the industry will need to use soybean oil and its production as well.

So, there are certainly considerations for putting in the commercial mix as we understand the right balance between gaining access to the right stage at the right price with security of supply..

Yeah, Phil, it’s Mike. The only thing I’ll add kind of segue into what Neil had asked is, we really liked the project, Ray describes it well, we think we got really advantage hardware from CapEx and OpEx. We’re concentrating on the feedstock side of the equation now.

We’re open to a lot of things, as Brian said, but we’re anxious to get this project online, we think it’s going to be a nice addition to our portfolio.

And it really does optimize the assets that were available to us at Martinez, where we’re going to use the really strong ones for hydro processing, and then take out a lot of costs that were part of the facility from a crude processing standpoint..

Great. Thanks..

You’re welcome..

Thank you. Our next question will come from Roger Read with Wells Fargo. Your line is open..

Thank you, and good morning..

Good morning, Roger..

Just come back and take a shot here at the core refining business. So, like Doug mentioned earlier, the RFS, most of your peers have talked about it as being, RINs are general being quite the headwind to capture.

Your capture was actually pretty good, I know, as Speedway is being separated, you’re trying to maintain as much as the owning capacity as possible.

I’ll just curious if you could kind of break out maybe how your exposure to RINs is today, either pre or post the spin, and what impact you believe it had on Q1?.

Yeah, Roger, this is Brian Partee, I can address that question. So consistent with the past, we self-generate about 70% to 75% of our RIN through either generation or biofuel refining asset. So Q1 was pretty similar to that historical average, as it relates to the separation in Speedway, no real impact there.

The RIN is something that’s pretty transparent in the marketplace, it’s a real expense. We all have to deal with it. It’s not something we can control. We think of it like a commodity, we deal with commodity prices that are volatile and move dramatically up and down.

And the one thing I’d leave you with on the RIN and the RIN expense, I know, there’s a lot of hyper focus on it and appropriately right now in the environment that we’re in.

But, there’s also really good opportunity to optimize in that space, so depending on how you’re modeling and what you’re looking at, you have to think about RIN in terms of true obligated volume, obviously, not all gains are obligated. So if you think about stripping off exports, jet as well as some other fuels.

And for us, Alaska also is not an obligated state from an RVO perspective. The other thing that I think played out interestingly in the market in the first quarter was the year-on-year carry-in. So you can meet obligations in the prompt here with up to 20% of carry-ins from prior year.

And, we think there’s far less carry-in from 2020 to 2021, largely due to the uncertainty around the election last fall. So, and then the last part about the commercialization in the RIN space is how you buy and when you buy, I would presume, maybe from a modeling perspective, assume kind of a ratable purchase for RIN. And that could be a strategy.

And we try to be very commercial on this space and try to optimize, and obviously, the higher the RIN value gets the more opportunity there is to outperform in conversely underperforming that space..

Okay. Thanks. Another question I had, again, kind of sticking with the refining side of things. We’re hearing that some of the maintenance in Canada may not happen on quite the same pace, because of the COVID issues up there, which I guess might imply it’s a little more drawn out. But if you think about light, heavy, whether it’s in when U.S.

or coastal U.S., what sort of updates can you offer there in terms of crude availability? What you’re seeing expectations on crude differentials?.

Yeah. Hi, Roger. This is Rick Hessling. So the intel you’re getting in Canada or from Canada is spot on, we’re hearing the same thing. They’ve experienced some startup issues at a couple – with a couple of their maintenance projects, as well as we’re hearing 1 of the producers specifically is having some COVID issues.

So that’s certainly not good for production in Canada. So we’ll continue to watch that specifically to Canada. In terms of differentials in Canada, I would point you towards, I still think, probably, your general rule of thumb is the forward market there, which is plus or minus $12.

And the incremental barrel in Canada is moving out via rail, the pipes are full, so we expect that to continue. When you look worldwide and more so on the Gulf Coast, a lot of – there’s a lot of conversation around OPEC and the barrels that they’re releasing into the market.

I’m a little more measured on OPEC, and what we might expect on the Gulf Coast than others. Quite frankly, when you look at what OPEC has done in the last several months, they’ve been very measured on how they’re managing their production with demand. And currently today, as you know, we’ve got a tug of war.

There’s a little bit of slight optimism coming out of the West. And then there’s a lot of the fear of the unknown, which is well publicized in India, so we’ll just have to see how that plays out..

Great. Thank you..

You’re welcome..

Our next question will come from the Manav Gupta with Credit Suisse. Your line is open..

Hi, in your prepared remarks, you did indicate that while the demand is recovering, it’s the recovery – the pace of recovery is lower on the West Coast. I think, California is going for a full reopen around mid-June.

So I’m just trying to understand going forward, do you see an improved demand recovery based on a full reopen in California?.

Yeah, Manav, this is Brian Partee, I can take that one. So, what I would say, it’s kind of reiterate Mike’s points that he made in his opening remarks. We have seen gasoline demand really grind back across the entire portfolio certainly the West Coast has lagged. In the East, we’ve been running over the last several weeks 2% to 5% off of 2019 comps.

In the West, it’s been more in the 18, call it, high teens to low 20s. But we have seen a gradual grind back from the early part of this year, and you’re spot on, yes, California is prepared to reopen here mid-June.

And just looking at some of the vaccination data and just anecdotal discussions in the market, we do expect meaningful recoveries through the summer months to what extent is very difficult to estimate. COVID has been a very dynamic environment for us, California has been very aggressive.

So I’m really hesitant to make a call on where we expected to go. But we’ve seen favorable trends in other markets, as we’ve gotten back off and opened up the economies, we’d expect to see a degree of the same out in the West Coast..

Manav, it’s Mike. The other thing that I would add is kind of what I said earlier is, once we get through this, and a lot of these states open up, I mean, California, as Brian just mentioned, a major indicator as to where you know that that market is going to be.

But, Florida, New Jersey, New York, some other big gasoline consuming states are also in the process of reopening.

The question becomes, where do we end up after that point? One of the things that I think we still need to see is there potential pent-up demand, is that one of the things that we’re going to see coming out of this, is there going to be a new normal with the way people operate as far as working remote operations, et cetera, et cetera.

So, we’re excited that it continues to get better. But we’re also cautious as to what it’s going to mean, once we get to the other side of this.

If anything, I would say, the way we try to think about it is, at the end of the day, vaccines are rolling out well, states are opening up, things are heading in the right direction to what absolute number is Brian just mentioned, where that ends up is still to be played out.

And to your point, June, like you said, it’s going to occur in June, it’s essentially the second quarter will be over, we’ll be talking about results here, where we still don’t really have as much insight yet.

So I think, it’s still going to play out a little bit more time, understand that pent-up demand, how much of it is robust to stay long-term, and how much of it is just short-term for people trying to get out from under the lockdown condition.

So still a lot to learn, like I said, we concentrate on what we control, we’ll keep an eye on what we don’t control, and try and learn as much as we can as to what the new normal looks like..

Mike, 1 quick follow-up here, we saw you’re putting in some wind turbines on the Dickinson refinery to lower the carbon intensity. Clearly, you guys are focusing a lot on carbon intensity, and one on some of what your peers and others are doing is carbon capture and sequestration.

Is it something which the MPC could look at potentially to further lower the carbon intensity of both gasoline and diesel that is producing in its refineries?.

Yeah, Manav, I think, I’ll let Brian and Dave jump in there. But, we are obviously cognizant of the value of lowering the carbon intensity of the operations of the product, et cetera. The wind situation is their concern, right, if you want to give a little more color there, or Dave if you want to give a total color on lowering carbon..

Yeah, just to give you a little bit more detail on Dickinson and what we’re doing with the carbon intensity.

The first thing that you mentioned is wind turbine, so that’s a project that we’re planning to go ahead with in 2022, to put enough wind turbines in there to provide about 50% of our electricity demand via renewable electricity, and that lowers the carbon intensity.

The other thing that that we’re doing is we’ve got feed pretreatments now down at Beatrice, and that plant has started up that material has made its way to Dickinson. And so we now have pretreated corn oil that’s significant from a carbon intensity standpoint, that one it’s pretty treated, so it processes better.

Secondly, it’s significantly lower carbon intensity than soybean oil..

Yes, this is David Heppner, just another comment would be, whether it be wind turbines or carbon capture and sequestration, those are all additional complimentary technologies to increase the value of the Dickinson project by lowering in CI.

There’s other technologies such as renewable natural gas, solar and other technologies, we’re continuing to evaluate and will implement those if and when they make sense for us..

Thank you. Thank you..

Thank you. Our next question comes from Paul Cheng with Scotiabank. Your line is open..

Hi. Thank you. Good morning, guys..

Good morning, Paul..

I have 2 questions. If we’re looking at your cost structure, what are you put refining OpEx, the distribution costs and the corporate costs together or individually? They work really well in the first quarter. And you have done a great job there.

I just curious that when I looking at your total throughput guidance is higher? Natural gas cost is lower in the second quarter, is there any reason, you said just being conservative or does a someone of reason why the second quarter unit cost upon in your refining actually going to be higher, and your OpEx costs and the distribution cost is also going to be higher? So that’s the first question.

The second question is that going back into the ESG with the energy transition, what’s the longer term plan or objective? Are you going to take the initiative, essentially just trying to lower your own emission in CI, or that you’re looking at it as an opportunity for you to expand and perhaps that even create a new line of business, and also on the renewable on the pit stop, and your – one of your largest competitor, put all their renewable diesel into a joint venture and partner with someone expertise in the feedstock supply? Why that’s not a good idea for you guys? Thank you..

It’s Maryann, let me try to address your first question around the second quarter guidance and certainly as compared to the first quarter.

Just maybe as a bit of a reminder, we are expecting volumes to be up slightly from the first quarter about 2.7 million barrels per day, as you spoke about the distribution costs 1.25 is the expectation for the second quarter again up slightly, we are expecting some higher product demand and therefore obviously some higher costs to transport product, but overall, fairly flattish if we look at the increase in the expectation for throughput.

And then, similarly, when you look at total operating costs really on a per barrel basis, when you consider that there are about flattish Q1 to Q2. So, hope that helps to address your questions there around the nature of the second quarter guidance.

Mike has cleared for you sort of how we’re thinking about the second quarter, obviously, things can play out just depending on how the demand and recovery happens. But hopefully that addresses your question, Paul..

Maryann, I’m sorry, but that your unique cost is actually higher in your guidance in the second quarter. That’s even on the distribution side on the distribution costs comparing to the first quarter.

And that’s why I’m not sure you said we have some one-off issue that’s why that you expect the unit cost on a per barrel throughput going higher, because one would imagine that with their higher throughput volume and lower energy costs that per unit cost should be going lower, not going higher..

Yeah, Paul, it’s Maryann again. So you’re right, when we talk about total operating costs based on that demand, it’s about $5.20 versus the quarter, which was about $5.16. I was saying about flat, but you’re right, that there is a slight kick-up as we think about those total operating costs.

And then distribution costs, hopefully, I tried to address the key elements there that were drivers to the higher cost..

Paul, it’s Mike. On your second point, I think, it’s a combination of cost and portfolio. As Ray mentioned earlier, one of the things that we accomplished to kind of got, 2 birds with 1 stone is, Martinez was 1 of our highest cost facilities, Gallup was 1 of our highest cost facilities.

So we want to have when we’re processing fossil fuels, a very competitive low cost system, because it’s going to be around for a long time. And we want to make sure that we create value in that regard. At the same time, the energy evolution is going to kick into renewables and other technologies as they develop. So we found a nice opportunity.

We’re very pleased with the effort that’s going on at Dickinson. And as Dave just mentioned, once we’re in that both, we’re going to try and do everything we can to increase the profitability, whether it’s lowering the carbon intensity, the operation, the product of feedstocks, it was Brian mentioned.

And I’ll let Brian comment, as like I said earlier is, location is in a good spot for us, CapEx is in a good spot for us, OpEx is in a good spot for us. Ray’s going through some learnings on the startup on the 1 facility, which will help us on the next facility. And then the last piece to your fossil was feedstock.

And I’ll let Brian reiterate, but I will tell you, we’d like our base plan, we feel very comfortable that we have a really good project in front of us.

But we are continuing to challenge ourselves, is there a way to increase value there?.

Sure. Thanks, Mike. Yes, as we build out the feedstock procurement strategy and create more options, we’re certainly looking at partners along the entire value chain, all the way from the procurement of feedstock onwards. And we are considering where we can do more with partners than just only commercial arrangement.

But I think, we still want to let those discussions play out. And whatever we do needs to make sense for them, and obviously makes sense for us as well from a value perspective..

And, Mike, you also address that on the longer term, do you see the energy transition.

We create a new line of business for you? Or that you’re looking at all the initiative is just to reducing your emission in CI for your own existing operation?.

Yeah, I don’t think of it as either, Paul, I think of it is somewhat both, we’re going to have an opportunity as this transition, I like to call it evolution evolves. There’s going to be some technologies that we can implement in our existing fossil fuel facilities that will be helpful.

There’s going to be some technologies didn’t get implemented in truly renewable facilities. So I think in time, you’re going to see us grow both, and at the end – what’s the end game is what you’re asking, and I don’t know how long you’re thinking out in time.

But, the end game is, for us to have a very competitive refining offering of fossil fuels in a very competitive offering on renewable fuels, and continue to look for ways to grow our earnings.

Dave mentioned it, we’re looking at a lot of different things right at the moment, we’re going to act on them, and once we believe that they will give a good return for us, some things I think are a little ahead of their time right at the moment, the technology still needs to develop a little bit.

At the same time, there’s some things like Ray just mentioned, we’re going to implement some – wind support to our Dickinson facility as early as next year. So some things are on the immediate side, some things are on the watch side and evaluate, we’re going to have a very robust look at through all this.

One of the things that everybody keeps asking me, and hopefully, you’ll get to see it through results is what are we doing commercially? It’s one of my goals is to improve our commercial performance.

And it’s not something that we’re going to talk about in the forecasting of it, but hopefully, we’ll point out things, as we go along, and Ray mentioned a couple today, that happened in the first quarter that helped us minimize our impact around the winter storm.

So I think you’re going to see the answer to your question is really both, there’s going to be some opportunities on both sides of the business as we change the portfolio over time, and that was asked earlier today, you’re going to see some more changes in the portfolio as time goes by.

And as we get to evaluate that will give disclosures as quickly as we can survey knows, which way we’re pointing the company..

Thank you..

You’re welcome..

Thank you. Our next question comes from Prashant Rao with Citigroup. Your line is open..

Hi, thanks for taking the question. My questions are both on R&M, and specifically on CapEx. First on Martinez, I know, you can’t disclose an overall cost. But Mike, I was wondering, in terms of cadence at $350 million this year. And it sounds like you do the first diesel hydrotreater next year.

And then the 3 other hydros in the pretreat come on in 2023. So, is it right to think about it as sort of a stair step that the CapEx for that, and therefore the R&M growth CapEx kind of steps up in terms of renewables next year, and in 2023 years, it’s sort of more evenly spread out.

And sort of related to that, just wanted to check that, would that be funded purely from internally generated cash or would you be looking to, I think, what are your financing sort of options if you – how you fund the project? And then I have a follow-up..

Yeah, Prashant, I think you’re thinking about it, right. It is a phased approach to the activity out there, but it kind of dovetails to what Paul just asked. So when you step back and think about it, roughly some-40% let me around half of the growth capital that we have in this year is directed towards renewables.

But then also half of it is directed towards our fossil fuel business. So we still think there’s going to be continuing moneys that we can spend in that business. So like what Paul was asking, I was trying to say, we’re going to do a little bit of both.

But I think you’re also seeing the way we’re approaching this project, which is in a phased approach. So as Ray mentioned, we’ll get it online early next year, pretreatment comes on full capacity comes on. So there will be some stair stepping and capital in that area.

At the same time, we’re still looking forward to the $450 million that we’re investing in the base business. We still got some activity going on down on the Gulf Coast, with our STAR project that we want to get to the finish line as well.

So, kind of dovetail to your question, the same as Paul’s, is that – we’re going to have activity occurring in both areas, we’re committed to both sides of the business, because it’s going to be a long evolution, it’s not something that’s going to happen very quickly.

But it’s something that we’re going to be very attentive to, as to where we deploy capital, I’m hoping everybody’s getting a feel for us that we’re going to have a strict capital discipline, that’s a mantra that we’re going to continue to push and challenge ourselves through all this scenario planning that we do is to what’s the best use of that capital, whether it’s in our existing facilities and fossil fuels or in renewable facilities or, as Paul mentioned, if we come up with something that we think is a little bit more of a step out.

So we’ll try and give everybody as much disclosure as we can, as time goes by. We’re looking forward to the opportunity, as the evolution continues, and we think it’ll provide us some value opportunities to increase value for the shareholders..

Great. And then, sort of related to, I guess, the second part of my question there was on, how you expect to fund projects, because it sounds like this is going to be a very large facility at Martinez.

But you also have a ramp here in terms of cash flow generation, potentially internally generated, so I just wanted to get a sense of this, broadly speaking, expect to fund Martinez out of operating cash that you generate, or if they’re – if you were to finance it, would you look at project financing, or what would be some of the options in terms of how you fund the build on the project?.

Yeah, Prashant, so our base plan, obviously, assuming the market cooperates, as we want to fund it out of operating cash. We don’t want to get discolored with Speedway, earnings, and we’ll get more color on that, that return to capital is kind of separate. And hopefully, as everybody is anticipating as the market kind of comes back to a normal.

We’ll be generating operating cash that will fund our capital program, funds our dividend, hopefully have access beyond that, that will have optionality beyond that as well..

Okay, great. And, just one last follow-up real quick, on the maintenance side, I think you guided to about $250 million this year in R&M.

A little early I know to answer this, Mike, but any color on how you think about that maintenance number in R&M on a sort of a through-cycle basis? When we get volumes back up, and as we look at MPC being – the years coming ahead, is that $250 million not that far off from how you’re looking at maintenance costs, now that you’ve rationalized cost across the structure, and you will continue to do so? Or is it so you were thinking that this is sort of a low year and there should be a little bit more that we need to layer in as we think about next year and maybe beyond?.

Yeah, let me take a shot at that. This is Ray. When I talked earlier about looking at the needs versus want. So, certainly the maintenance CapEx is along that line. So we challenge ourselves every day to the point of where we are, whether it’s OpEx or CapEx, as far as really scrutinizing the spend.

So, our goal is not to go grossly up on maintenance CapEx..

Perfect. Thank you very much for the time. Appreciate it..

You’re welcome..

Thank you. Our last question will come from Ryan Todd with Simmons Energy. Your line is open..

Great, thanks. Maybe just one quick one on the refining side. Your utilization guidance for the second quarter is probably a little more conservative in terms of sequential improvement relative to some of your peers. I mean, your commentary’s maybe been a little more cautious.

Is that – how do you think about ramping utilization over the next couple of months? And is there a potential upside of your 2Q guidance there?.

Yeah. I think Brian alluded to it early on is, we have these states that have a lot of impact to gasoline, the West Coast being one of them. They’re all talking about going into the next phase of opening up. We just don’t know how to totally gauge what that means. Manav mentioned June for the West Coast. We’ll see if it turns out to be June or not.

I mean, we got to get through the rest of May. So, I mean, we’re doing our best to try and forecast that. But I try and remind everybody that, we don’t have control of that. We’re just like everybody else monitoring the situation, and given our best assessment, but there’s a lot of key states that are saying they’re going to be opening up.

I mentioned a few in New York, New Jersey, Florida, on the East Coast. Obviously, the West Coast, has been under the most restrictions. Brian mentioned 20% down year-on-year, when overall, you’re about 5%, down on gasoline. So it’s a pretty bifurcated situation right now. And we’ll just have to see how it plays out.

And, obviously, we try and give you the best guidance we can. And then, as the results come in, we’ll give you kind of a post-audit of what things look like..

Thanks. Maybe a quick follow-up on Dickinson. I guess, as you think about the – I know, you have the pretreatment up and going for some of the corn oil.

Do you have, I mean, is there a SOP for what you think to kind of an average mix might look like in terms of vegetable oil versus corn oil, that facility, and an estimate, and maybe what you think the average CI value of the product will be once the wind facilities are up and running?.

Sure, this is Ray. The design basis for the project is 10,000 barrels a day of soybean oil, and 2000 barrels of corn oil, treated corn oil. So that’s the goal. That’s where we’re headed to get as we get into the second quarter. Just a little bit about the CI value, the target CI value for soybean oil is going to be in the mid-50s.

And take about 30 numbers off that for corn oil. So that’s the range you need to be thinking about from a carbon intensity standpoint..

And how much do you think you can – how meaningful is the wind energy in terms of – is that assuming the wind energy or can you knock a few more points off with that project?.

Brian, I would tell you, let us get that up and running, and we’ll be happy to give you some feedback after that. But we don’t want to get ahead of ourselves. We’re excited about the opportunity. But we don’t want to predetermine how effective we’re going to be there. We’re excited about it.

But let us get it up and running and we’ll give you more color..

Awesome. Thanks, guys..

You’re welcome..

Operator, are there any other question today?.

We are showing no further questions at this time..

Perfect. Well, thank you all for your interest in Marathon Petroleum Corporation. Should you have additional questions or would you like clarification on topics discussed this morning, please reach out to our team and we’ll be available to take your calls. Thank you so much for joining us this afternoon..

Thank you. That does conclude today’s conference. Thank you for participating. You may disconnect at this time..