ONEOK at Barclays Conference: Strategic Growth and Synergy Focus

On Wednesday, 03 September 2025, ONEOK Inc. (NYSE:OKE) presented at the Barclays 39th Annual Energy-Power Conference, outlining a strategic plan centered on asset integration, synergy realization, and expansion across key business segments. While the company highlighted significant progress towards its synergy goals and growth opportunities, it also addressed challenges in a competitive market environment.

Key Takeaways

• ONEOK is on track to achieve $250 million in synergies by 2025, with Magellan synergies exceeding expectations.
• The company is focusing on organic growth, aiming to reach a 3.6x leverage ratio by 2026.
• Expansion projects in Denver and Elk Creek are central to ONEOK’s strategic positioning.
• A potential tax change could provide an additional $1.3 billion in free cash flow by 2027.
• ONEOK is considering stock buybacks as it meets its debt reduction goals.

Financial Results

• ONEOK is prioritizing organic growth opportunities and deleveraging.
• The company expects to achieve a 3.6x leverage ratio by 2026.
• A tax change is anticipated to add $1.3 billion in free cash flow over five years, mainly in 2027.
• Stock buybacks are under consideration as debt goals are achieved.

Operational Updates

• The Magellan acquisition, closed in September 2023, is yielding higher-than-expected synergies.
• The EnLink acquisition, finalized on February 1st, is progressing with new processing plants in the Delaware and Midland basins.
• Denver expansion is set for mid-2026, with initial capacity at 30,000 barrels per day, scalable to 250,000 barrels.
• Projects like Elk Creek and West Texas NGL pipelines are focused on filling available capacity to enhance returns.

Future Outlook

• ONEOK aims to optimize NGL pipeline and fractionation economics, with expectations of tightening rates as volumes increase.
• The JV Export Dock is part of the "wellhead to water" strategy, offering a time advantage over competitors.
• The Eiger Express Pipeline seeks to address growing LNG demand on the Gulf Coast with a low-risk approach.
• The company is targeting industrial growth in Louisiana and exploring data center projects near existing systems.

Q&A Highlights

• ONEOK is working to reduce butane logistics costs from 20 cents to 10 cents per gallon by 2026.
• While volumes are growing in all basins, the Permian Basin is expected to lead in growth.
• The company holds a 60% market share in the Bakken, focusing on extending contracts and maintaining customer service.
• Ethane incentivization is dependent on gas takeaway pipeline specifications.

In conclusion, ONEOK’s strategic initiatives and operational updates from the Barclays conference provide insights into the company’s future direction. Readers are encouraged to refer to the full transcript for a more detailed understanding.

Full transcript - Barclays 39th Annual Energy-Power Conference:

Theresa Chen, Midstream and Refining Analyst, Barclays: My name is Theresa Chen, and I’m the midstream and refining analyst here at Barclays. It is my pleasure to introduce our next company, ONEOK. Joining me from ONEOK are President and CEO, Pierce Norton CFO, Walter Hulse Chief Commercial Officer, Sheridan Swords. Welcome, everyone.

Pierce Norton, President and CEO, ONEOK: Thank you.

Theresa Chen, Midstream and Refining Analyst, Barclays: So as OneOak works to integrate all of its recently acquired assets, Progress on the synergy targets and 2025 guidance remains a key focus amongst investors, so I want to start there. Can you talk more about where OneOak is currently tracking with respect to the goal of the two fifty million dollars in synergies in 2025? And have your expectations relative to the synergies changed at all since initially putting forth this guidance?

Walter Hulse, CFO, ONEOK: K. Well, no. I our expectations haven’t changed. I think if anything, you know, I think you gotta put it into buckets. The one that we’re furthest along on is our Magellan acquisition.

If if you think about it, Magellan, we bought in September ’23. So we had kind of the fourth quarter to get, get things set up, and we hit the ground running and had all of ’24, and now we’re into, ’25. Most of those opportunities were opportunities that were completely within our control. So, at this point in time, I think we’re well ahead of our expectation as it relates to Magellan, and really pleased with the opportunities that have presented themselves that we didn’t know about and we’re pursuing for further synergies. When you look at M Link and Medallion, I’ll break those apart too.

Medallion, again, almost entirely within our control on the synergies. We are in a position where we can fill our our two long haul pipes. We can actively go out and gather that crude and use the Medallion system in a more aggressive way than it was being able to be used before to to fit in with our long haul crude assets that we bought from Magellan. Then EnLink, we just really been at it since February 1 when we closed that acquisition. And in that one, we’re we’re well on our pace on all of our corporate synergies.

They’re kinda falling right into line. Some of those big ones that come off our insurance, for example, those don’t happen the day you, you know, you close a transaction. They happen throughout the course of the year. In fact, we just we just found four different policies on September 1. So those are types of synergies that we will now pick up from this point going forward in perpetuity.

The low hanging fruit in and around EnLink is all happening right away. But things like contracts rolling off that are synergies, those just happen with time. But we’re on pace, and we’re totally comfortable with the 250,000,000.

Pierce Norton, President and CEO, ONEOK: Well, the only thing that I’d add to that is that there wasn’t a lot of capacity left in the processing side on EnLink. So some processing plants needed to get built. So you don’t do those overnight, so they take sometimes a year or two years to build those. And so that’s gonna be that was another thing that, you know, we knew that the pace of the synergies, in EnLink would be different than in Magellan just because of either the contracts terminating or the fact that we gotta build things.

Sheridan Swords, Chief Commercial Officer, ONEOK: And I think you see us come out right away. We’ve already, you know, sanctioned another plan into the Delaware to get that capacity coming along as quick as we can. And then there we have a plant coming along at the end of this year, the Shadowfax plant in the Midland, that will give us capacity to be able to grow, as Pierce said, and we’ll see those synergies continue to continue to go forward. We did have capacity in the Mid Continent, and we’re now connecting our the legacy OneOak system and the legacy InLink system together that we can now access the most efficient capacity in the Mid Continent. So we can direct the gas to each one of the respective companies’ processing plants to make sure we get the most liquids out of each plant, and all those plants are connected into our NGL system.

Pierce Norton, President and CEO, ONEOK: I don’t wanna beat this this question to death, Theresa. But in the Mid Con, what’s important there is that there was area dedications to the in link plants, and that dedication was far outside where the assets were located. So a lot of times when the producer went to drill a well, then they had the right to go out and get it, but it was too far to economically drill. It just so happens those acreage dedications overlap our assets, the old one oak assets. And so now instead of losing that particular package to somebody else, we are now able to pick it up because of the expansiveness of our footprint between the two systems of BandLink and ONEOK.

Theresa Chen, Midstream and Refining Analyst, Barclays: Perfect. And on this type of optimization opportunities to capture more volumes and market share, but as it relates to the interplay of NGLs and refined products in particular, can you provide any data points to quantify those types of opportunities?

Sheridan Swords, Chief Commercial Officer, ONEOK: Well, if you think about on optimization between the NGL and and the refined products, that’s one of the big things we came out right away and said that that you can move NGLs on a refined product system and you can refine products on an NGL system. And that really came down to being able to reduce the cost of butane getting to the blending location. We blended over 50 locations across our refined products and asset base, and a lot of that is being trucked to those locations with us being able to put in, to be able to use the assets together to be able to move a lot of that volume off a truck onto pipelines and get it into further out into the system where we can blend more. Magellan’s typical cost was 20¢ a gallon to move butane to the blending locations. As we finish the Easton integration, Easton connections, we finish connecting our Conway NGL hub into the Midwest refined pipelines that we have, and we continue some of our other blending projects.

We’ll move that 20¢ per gallon on the logistic cost down to 10¢ per gallon in 2026. So it’s a substantial reduction in cost. And then we’ll continue as we get into ’26 as we bring on the Denver expansion. We’ll be able to use that as well to be able to move butane from the Mid Con and out to Denver to be able to blend there as well. With that, it’s now being trucked today.

So we’ll see a further savings into ’26, into ’27 as well. So we’re seeing a great reduction in our logistics cost, which doesn’t doesn’t depend on a spread to be able to capture. That’s just purely drops to the bottom line.

Theresa Chen, Midstream and Refining Analyst, Barclays: Got it. And how have customers responded to your ownership and operatorship of recently acquired refined products and crude assets over the past few quarters? What has surprised you in your commercial discussion?

Sheridan Swords, Chief Commercial Officer, ONEOK: I don’t know if there’s been a whole lot of surprises. I mean, I ONEOK has always been a very customer centered centered company that wants to make sure we take care of the customers. I think we have brought a little bit different kind of offering to the customers on the refined product side that they they appreciate. We’ve also brought, the willingness to spend capital, more capital than we did before, and we’ve been able to work with our customers, especially like on a Denver expansion where people were wanting that to be able to be done. We tried to see what the opportunity was, how big that could be, what the future could look like, and working with those customers to get an acceptable project out to the Denver and a very attractive project out to the Denver Airport with a lot of expandable op onto that.

So the customers have been been very willing to work with us. Been very see that ONEOK is customer centered, and I think they’ve liked as we’ve seen like what they’ve seen so far because they continue to sign up for more volume.

Theresa Chen, Midstream and Refining Analyst, Barclays: Very good. And I do wanna touch on the Denver refined product infrastructure project in BIT. But with recently completed and soon to be completed projects entering into service, ONEOK is set up with significant amount of operating leverage going forward. Can you speak to the opportunities that this provides you and how you see these assets such as the Elk Creek and the West Texas NGL pipelines contributing to future earnings and commercial opportunities?

Sheridan Swords, Chief Commercial Officer, ONEOK: So to go back, when we did both the West Texas expansion and the Elk Creek expansion, we had contracts behind that that gave us a very acceptable return on those projects. But we didn’t have to fill the complete pipeline up to get to those returns. We’ve oversized to put a little bit optionality in there that we could put more volume on there than what was needed for the project. So, basically, you could think about that as we have free capacity. It’s already been paid for for certain contracts.

So we sit there and go out there in the Permian, which is a very competitive area. When we compete, we can be very effective in competing for new volume coming on there that we can still continue to grow our bottom line. So our objective now is to go and fill that capacity, both that we talked about on the on the West Texas pipeline and out at Elk Creek, but we also have the Medford fractionator coming up in 2026. That it’s another one where it’s a very low cost fractionator. It’s not completely full.

We only needed to get a certain amount of volume into it contracted before for an acceptable return. We’ve FID ed that. When that comes up in, late twenty twenty six, we’ll be able to not only provide, transportation out of the Permian, but also fractionation and be able to compete with anybody out there for that volume.

Pierce Norton, President and CEO, ONEOK: So the only thing I’d add to that, Theresa, is that when you make a decision on a pipeline, let’s say you’re gonna build a 16 inch and you decide to do a 20 or 24, that extra cost to get that extra volume is very, very efficient because your right away is gonna cost the same. Well, then I should put a 16 or a 20 or 24. The ditch size is basically the same, so you’re really digging the same level of ditch, the cost on that. So, really, the only difference is the additional welding that you have on the pipe and then whatever the pipe cost is set between it, but it is very, very efficient to get extra capacity. The reason I’m saying that is because it doesn’t take very much volume to really juice the returns on that extra capacity.

Sheridan Swords, Chief Commercial Officer, ONEOK: We like we like to say it’s a lot easier to put to expand the pipeline by two inches before you put it in the ground than after you put it in the ground.

Theresa Chen, Midstream and Refining Analyst, Barclays: Fair enough. And and I’m seeing this playbook translate to my next question about the Denver expansion as well. There’s some consistency here. So looking at this project coming into service next year. Okay.

So entering initial service mid twenty twenty six at 30,000 barrels per day. Can you offer some more color on the strategic importance of this project? Sheridan, you touched on the butane piece earlier. Can you talk about the potential changes to PADD two and PADD four refined product movements? And how should we think about the time line to potentially scale the project towards its total hydraulic capacity of two fifty thousand barrels per day?

Sheridan Swords, Chief Commercial Officer, ONEOK: So if we’re talking about the strategic side of that is that, you know, our refined product system is a demand full system. So we wanna be connected to growing demand anywhere across our system, and we’re seeing growing demand in in PADD four and in PADD and in parts of PADD five. Not all parts of PADD four, but definitely all parts of PADD five. But definitely PADD four, we’re seeing growing demand in there. And definitely, we’re at the Denver Airport.

They continue to expand that airport. So we wanted to make sure we had capacity into that area that we could service that demand, that we can pull it from our refiners, not just in Pad 2, but also in Pad 3. To be able to pull that, refiners is going to go forward. As we go and look at just the structure out there, what’s happened, we we sized it that we could grow as that area grows. And, also, we sized it if there was a structural change in Pad 4 and refining capacity, we would be able to supply the front range with enough enough refined products to meet your needs, continue to go out.

But even beyond that, we’re receiving deeper into PADD four. We’re seeing premium markets continue to grow as as more population grows out there as well and into PADD five on the on the, Eastern side of PADD five, that this pipeline is set up very nicely. It’s connected to all these other pipelines as as, demand continues to grow, we’ll be able to supply it out of the Mid Continent and out of the Gulf Coast.

Theresa Chen, Midstream and Refining Analyst, Barclays: K.

Pierce Norton, President and CEO, ONEOK: And if there’s ever any reason why the supply, should be short out there in the Denver and the Front Range area, we’re right there ready to add pumps, onto this pipeline and fulfill that entire need.

Sheridan Swords, Chief Commercial Officer, ONEOK: It’s it’s it’s 30,000 barrels a day, but it’s it could easily with pumps, they could go over 200,000 barrels a day.

Theresa Chen, Midstream and Refining Analyst, Barclays: So standing ready to add pumps and with a potential long haul tariff from those far flung refining centers.

Sheridan Swords, Chief Commercial Officer, ONEOK: Right. And you said, could we see it grow? We’ll see how with the market comes to it. It it was as Pierce said, to to make that pipe, to grow it up to 16 inch or what we wanted was very small incremental capital to be able to do that in in in when you look at the whole scope of the project. It gives us tremendous upside as things happen into the future.

Same thing we did. You know, we did the same thing with Elk Creek. We had a very we, at the time, didn’t think we needed a 20 inch pipeline, but we put a bigger pipeline in case we need it. And now we need it, and it’s been very profitable.

Theresa Chen, Midstream and Refining Analyst, Barclays: Got it. So turning from the downstream side of things, let’s go to the wellhead. Okay. Producer activity has been an area of interest given the ebbs and flows of pricing out production and GMP volumes currently trending across your areas of service? And what are you hearing from your producer customers in terms of expectations for the remainder of this year and into next year?

Sheridan Swords, Chief Commercial Officer, ONEOK: Well, we’re we’re having the same dialogue we’ve always had with the producers. We can go on and as we think about ’26, they’re working through their through their budget processes at this time. It’ll be later in the year when we get a little bit more insight of what they see into ’26. We’re across our basins, we’re continuing to grow. All basins are growing.

Our volumes are growing up there. No doubt growth is is that rate of growth has has slowed just a little bit as we kinda look across our system, but we still very much are growing our volumes, and we’d anticipate that to be into 2026 as well. As I said, we haven’t got the official budgets and what they’re gonna do. Our producers are gonna do in 2026, but everything they’re telling us now, they continue to expect it to grow. Obviously, the Permian is gonna be one that’s gonna probably have the highest growth as well.

But we’re seeing good growth out of the, Mid Continent over on the Western side of the state. There’s the Cherokee formation over there. We got a couple of producers continue to be excited about that location. And then the Bakken is gonna be the Bakken. It’s gonna be a steady growth.

It’s gonna be a low single digit growth, especially with, kinda more, we’re calling for more flattish crude oil, and then we’ll see a lot of the growth coming through the GORs.

Theresa Chen, Midstream and Refining Analyst, Barclays: Perfect. And speaking of GORs and following that Y grade molecule downstream, so can you shed some light on your outlook for NGL pipeline and fractionation economics as contract turnover and incremental capacity is set to enter the market?

Sheridan Swords, Chief Commercial Officer, ONEOK: I think that you have to look at it by region and what regions you’re talking about. You can’t just say look at at every not all regions are the same. A lot of that incremental you’re talking about is definitely coming out of the Permian. As we said, Permian’s a very competitive area out there. We we are now on both pipeline and fractionation.

We are at rates that are below new build economics, So we don’t think there’ll be any of these rates anymore additional being brought on at this time. So I think with the assets we have out there, we will be able to beat at this level. And but we see that kinda tightening up as more volume comes on. So we think we’re more more at a low spot right now coming out of the Permian as well. The Mid Continent is I think it’s gonna be steady as well.

And, obviously, out of the the Bakken, there’s been a lot of talk about a new entrant into the NGL space out of part of it. Never yeah. I thought you hadn’t. And and when I talk about the Bakken and the competitiveness in the Bakken, I I first start off with and say that one oak on the G and P side. We talk about competitiveness on the NGL side.

On the G and P side, we own 60 or have market share of 60% of the market in the Bakken. That volume’s not going away. So first thing we talk about competitiveness, you can take 60% away. So now we’re talking about 40% left that’s up for competition. Of that, most of that, we have long term contracts that go into well into 2030 on that volume.

So now we’re really talking about a very small amount of volume that’s really up for competition into in the near term into the Bakken. So we like the position that we are in today as we can be able to compete in that area. We’ve known that this possibly could happen, and we’ve been preparing for it by extending contracts and keeping our contacts way out in front of us, be able to provide our our producer with a very good service. They like what we provide up there. We’ve actually put extra capacity up there to be able to meet their needs and to be able to as some of our plants go down, we can move that volume to other plants.

So they’ll we’ve had plants go down. Our producers don’t even know they go down, you know, doing it. So through great customer service, moving our contracts out, and and our market share on the GNP side there, we think we’re in a very good position in the bucket as always. Sure. That’s complexity.

Pierce Norton, President and CEO, ONEOK: Yeah. Just as important as, you know, you’re being able to take the gathering and the processing, you know, the, the NGLs, the gas takeaway, all that’s bundled into one service, and it gets you all the way from the where the supply is, all the way to where the demand is, all the way down to the Gulf Coast. Nobody else has that kinda connectivity unless they go through multiple pipes. So it’s just easier to do business with us, and it’s it’s an area where we can be way more competitive. Yeah.

You don’t have the

Sheridan Swords, Chief Commercial Officer, ONEOK: rate stacking as you go through different companies.

Theresa Chen, Midstream and Refining Analyst, Barclays: Fair enough. The integration, the connectivity, and the redundancy and complexity of the system keeps that producer on. So also on the Bakken, in terms of the ethane incentivization prospects, so in light of ongoing commercial efforts to construct another residue egress pipe in Bakken, how do you think the addition of incremental residue capacity could impact one of incentivized ethane extraction business in the region?

Pierce Norton, President and CEO, ONEOK: Let me try this one. You bet. I like this question, Theresa, because I have a long history with Northern Border through other companies. And so everything on the gas pipeline takeaway side is kinda hinging, not necessarily on volume, but what is the BTU spec that that pipe can take. So the only way that that actually any sort of things change up there in that area as far as gas takeaway, the egress of the gas, is if the if the BTU spec on that pipe were to be different.

So what I’m saying is is that if that spec were, say, 1,200 BTU Mhmm. You know, instead of, say, a 50, then that would make a difference and start to do some things, you know, with your ethane rejection because you could leave more ethane in the pipe and then put it in there. But it’s always gonna compete with what are the gas prices up there in that area, in the Ventura area and the Eyco area. So that’s what really toggles the ethane rejection or recovery up there. But in the event that there’s a pipeline built, it it just happens to go to a location that the BTU spec can be up to 1,200, which is pretty rare.

But if that if that were the case, then that would start to have some some effect on that. But we think any way possible is a positive for us because we’re the ones that toggle that.

Theresa Chen, Midstream and Refining Analyst, Barclays: Great. And looking ahead, I’d I’d like to now turn to, your JV export dock with MPLX. So as other industry participant point to challenge margins, how how does this impact your expectation for the export dock, if at all?

Sheridan Swords, Chief Commercial Officer, ONEOK: Well, first thing we’ve always said, the you know, we have the volume behind that export dock going through our system today. So we have the supply for that dock. It’s not like we need to go out or contract with supply. That’s our that’s already already been done. Obviously, this competitive market, the export docks have never been that, you know, as good as some of the other projects that we’ve had in terms of return.

That’s why it’s taken us ten years to get to this point as we continue to go forward. We see that export dock really as a as a further integration of our value chain. It’s the completion of the wellhead to water strategy that we had and that a lot of our customers have been talking to us about is getting that making sure our product moves through the system. So, there’s been a little bit of compression of rates with that, but our expectations are still, as we look three years out from now, a lot of contracts now are short term, you know, three year term. Three year terms are fairly standard.

We are still excited about what we see in the future about this stock and what it will do for us. It’s still in a superior location. It’s well, right next to open water. It’s probably twenty hours worth of travel time out and back from other locations. And remember on the on the, shipping business, they have forty eight hours from the time that ship’s ready to load to move it up the ship channel, load it, and move it back out of the ship channel.

And when you’re taking up almost half of that to on the move and not the loading, it can be a great disadvantage, especially if you get fog or something else in there. So we we think our and our customers are talking to us. They love the spot that we’re in. We think it they think it’s actually worth the premium on that side.

Pierce Norton, President and CEO, ONEOK: So the only thing I’d add to that, Theresa, is that if you you usually are in a position where you’re looking for supply or you’re looking for demand, and we feel like that our position of having the supply is is easier than going out and trying to find the supply to match to the demand or have the supply and then go fund the demand because it’s you know, the the amount that you’ve gotta put into it and the capital you gotta put into getting that supply, it far outweighs trying to find the demand side of this business.

Theresa Chen, Midstream and Refining Analyst, Barclays: And if I can just ask a a question of clarification on this, the supply, aspect of it, I imagine that is rolling off of one of your competitors’ facilities given that it it exists. And the question is, is it all at once matching the in service date of your facility, or is it ramping over time?

Sheridan Swords, Chief Commercial Officer, ONEOK: So right now, you know, we own over 70% or we market over 70% of the volume that’s on our system. So we we buy it at the wellhead, and we are selling that into the market. Some of it’s on short term deals. Some of it’s on long term deals, maybe three or four years terms, and some of it is spot. But, obviously, we know when our LPG dock’s gonna come up.

So, obviously, all our terms match up that we will have the amount of volume coming off contract that we need to be able to supply that dock.

Theresa Chen, Midstream and Refining Analyst, Barclays: Thank you for clarifying. Okay. So turning to the natural gas side of things, can you discuss the strategic rationale behind the recently announced Eiger Express Pipeline JV out of the Permian? And more broadly, ONEOK’s strategy for growth in the natural gas pipeline segment as underlying demand for gas infrastructure assets remain on an upward trajectory? And similarly, within this vein, what has explained the significant outperformance in this segment over recent periods?

Sheridan Swords, Chief Commercial Officer, ONEOK: So on the Eiger pipeline project, obviously, that’s another pipeline coming out of the Permian. We saw a need as we look at our growth out of our G and P and the growth we’re seeing on other G and P players coming to our system as well as growth across the whole Permian Basin that more natural gas egress needed to come out of the basin. And you look at the increased demand from LNG that’s gonna happen along the Gulf Coast, that was the location we thought was the best to go. We already have a relationship with Whitewater who is building pipeline. We own 15% of the Matterhorn pipeline system with our we got that through our EnLink acquisition.

That gave us the opportunity to participate in this Agro project. You couple that with we have growing we’re as we already talked about, we’re putting more GNP plants into the Permian that they we need gas takeaway for those plants, and we need we need the cheapest gas takeaway we can get for those plants to keep our the netbacks for our producers. So it’s just natural that we signed up for or participated in the Eiger project through our Matterhorn and through adding some commitments onto that pipeline systems going forward. We’re we’re excited about that. It’s a low multiple project.

It can grow up to two and a half BCF. It’s been well received by the industry, so we’re we’re very excited about the opportunity to be in that project and what it does for our integrated value chain as we connect in our our processing plants there into that pipeline. And as we think about the whole natural gas business, we are very excited about the natural gas business, especially if you look into Louisiana with the natural gas business that we bought from EnLink. It’s kind of the last mile into the river corridor. We see a lot of industrial demand growing there, ammonia plants coming online, hydrogen plants coming online.

But we also have the opportunity and are working with some of the LNG Louisiana LNG players to be able to supply gas through our system into their in into their plants as they can continue to come online as well. So we see good growth in Louisiana. But you get back into our legacy, Oklahoma and West Texas, we are seeing demand growth from AI. We have some data centers that we’re very close to getting some things done with them as well that are very close to our system that are are good return projects. I mean, they’re in in the size of the company, they’re not huge needle movers, and we don’t see a lot of them that are huge needle movers on the AI because you’re only laying maybe a couple miles of pipe to 20 miles of pipe, and you’re gonna re get a re nice return on that as you can do a fourth.

So we we are excited about about the natural gas business. We’ll continue to grow with that. That’s growing. You got growing supply, growing demand, and that’s what midstream does best, put those two together.

Theresa Chen, Midstream and Refining Analyst, Barclays: Excellent. I’m glad that you said the words data centers Yeah. Sheridan. I would be remiss not to bring that up in a infrastructure fireside chat. But as you pursue these opportunities, from a commercial perspective, what do you think differentiates winners and losers within the competitive landscape of who is going to get these projects?

Is it naturally just a result of where the existing infrastructure lays and who has to build the shortest lateral? Or how should I

Sheridan Swords, Chief Commercial Officer, ONEOK: think about that? I I think that’s a lot of it. I mean, the ones that we’re looking at right now is definitely that we are the closest pipeline there, and that means we can be the most competitive, and we can get there the fastest. And and and speed to market is really probably the biggest thing and then comes comes straight, but that doesn’t think you can just go in there and charge anything as you go at there. So you have to it has to be still competitive, but speed to market’s probably the the quickest thing to be we think that’s the differentiator is the speed to market.

Theresa Chen, Midstream and Refining Analyst, Barclays: K. And finally, after significant large scale m and a activity over the past couple of years, how should we think about ONEOK’s capital allocation priorities from here?

Walter Hulse, CFO, ONEOK: Well, you know, I think our capital allocation is pretty clear. It hasn’t changed. We continue to look at opportunities for organic growth as our number one objective. We clearly are in a position right now where we’re delevering from the last acquisition. That progress is right on track.

We’re very pleased with the where we’re gonna get. And we’re our expectation is we’ll get to that three six run rate in ’26. So I think we’re on track to go there. If you run the models through, you’re gonna quickly realize that we don’t stop at three six. We keep going keep going down.

You know, the recent tax change was very advantageous to one o. I think we were in a unique position because we still weren’t in the AMT. So it allowed us to extend another year before we had to go into the AMT. And then when we go into the AMT, we won’t get to the full rate for the extended period of time. So that’s an enormous amount of additional free cash flow, $1,300,000,000 over that five year period, mostly concentrated in ’27.

So that’s a a a major infusion of cash flow. Clearly, it as we sit today, we don’t have projects to do all of to take all of that, and the debt production will be in in where it should be. So we’ll clearly have the opportunity to look at stock buybacks as we get closer to our our debt goals.

Theresa Chen, Midstream and Refining Analyst, Barclays: Great. Well, thank you all so much for the insight and the color as always.

Pierce Norton, President and CEO, ONEOK: Thank you. Thank

Sheridan Swords, Chief Commercial Officer, ONEOK: you.

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