ONEOK (NYSE:OKE) reported third-quarter financial results on Wednesday. The transcript from the company’s third-quarter earnings call has been provided below.
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Summary
ONEOK reported strong third quarter results, supported by record Permian Basin volumes and increased 2026 financial guidance for the third time this year.
The company completed several strategic milestones, including a $9 billion minority equity investment, extinguishing $5.5 billion of debt and receiving credit rating upgrades.
Net income for Q3 was $1.35 billion, with a 6% increase in adjusted EBITDA compared to Q3 2025. Guidance for 2026 was raised to a midpoint of $8.55 billion in adjusted EBITDA.
Operational highlights include the completion of the Denver-area refined products pipeline expansion and processing expansions in the Delaware Basin.
Management emphasized confidence in achieving mid- to high-single-digit adjusted EBITDA growth over the next 5 to 7 years and discussed the strategic importance of the Brazos Midland acquisition.
The company plans to operate with lower leverage than previously targeted, aiming for a debt-to-EBITDA ratio of approximately 3.25 times or lower.
ONEOK’s future outlook is bolstered by strong demand in natural gas and NGLs, with ongoing projects like the Medford Phase 1 expected to contribute to earnings growth in 2027.
Full Transcript
OPERATOR
Good morning and welcome to ONEOK’s third quarter 2026 earnings call. As a reminder, this call is being recorded. If you would like to participate in the question-and-answer session following the speakers’ opening remarks, simply press star one on your telephone keypad. At this time, I’d like to turn the conference over to Megan Patterson, Vice President, Investor Relations. Megan, please go ahead.
Megan Patterson (Vice President, Investor Relations)
Thank you, and welcome to ONEOK’s third quarter 2026 earnings call. Our earnings release and presentation were issued after market close yesterday and are available on our website. On our call today are Pierce Norton, President and Chief Executive Officer; Walter Hulse, Chief Financial Officer; Randy Lentz, Chief Operating Officer; and Sheridan Swords, Chief Commercial Officer. Following our prepared remarks, management will be available to take your questions.
Statements made during this call that might include ONEOK’s expectations or predictions should be considered forward-looking statements and are covered by the safe harbor provisions of the Securities Acts of 1933 and 1934. Actual results could differ materially from those projected in forward-looking statements. For a discussion of factors that could cause actual results to differ, please refer to our SEC filings. With that, I’ll turn the call over to Pierce Norton.
Pierce Norton (President and Chief Executive Officer)
Thank you, Megan, and good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. Yesterday we reported strong third quarter results, supported by our record Permian Basin volumes and continued growth across our integrated system. And we increased our 2026 financial guidance for the third time this year. We also completed several strategic milestones during the quarter. We closed a $9 billion minority equity investment, extinguished nearly $5.5 billion of debt, and received credit rating upgrades from both S&P and Fitch.
And earlier this month, we closed the acquisition of Brazos Midstream’s Permian Midland Basin assets. Together, these actions give ONEOK greater scale, greater financial flexibility, and clear visibility into future earnings growth. Our confidence in ONEOK’s outlook continues to gain momentum, supported by the assets that we own, the customers that we serve, growth projects already underway, and the innovation of our people. We’re not providing 2027 guidance today, but we expect to do so after our fourth quarter results in February. But the underlying drivers are increasingly clear: constructive producer development plans and continued drilling and completion efficiencies; recently completed projects that will contribute a full year’s earnings in 2027; additional projects nearing completion; and a full year of ownership of Brazos assets. Importantly, that visibility extends across our integrated system and isn’t dependent on a single commodity or project or basin. We see opportunities across natural gas, NGLs, refined products, and crude, supported by domestic and international demand and the connectivity that we’ve built across our value chain. That diversification gives us multiple avenues to grow and capture value as market conditions evolve.
The broader backdrop reinforces the opportunity. Global energy markets remain dynamic, but growing natural gas demand for power generation, industrial loads, and liquefied natural gas exports to feed international demand all point to the same: reliable access to essential energy when and where it is needed. International buyers are increasingly seeking long-term access to U.S. supply for its reliability and resilience, a trend we’re seeing through the strong export demand across our system.
These drivers also reinforce our confidence in our mid- to high-single-digit adjusted EBITDA growth target for the next five to seven years from our 2025 base. Brazos adds substantial contracted growth and value chain opportunities across our system, increasing our momentum toward the higher end of that target. ONEOK has the assets, the financial strength, the discipline, and the people to capture the growing energy demand and to deliver sustainable long-term value for our investors.
With that, I’ll turn the call over to Walt for a financial update.
Walter Hulse (Chief Financial Officer, Treasurer, EVP Corporate Development and Investor Relations)
Thank you, Pierce. Third quarter net income attributable to ONEOK totaled $1.35 billion, or $2.13 per diluted share, and adjusted EBITDA totaled $2.24 billion, a 6% increase compared with the third quarter of 2025. Net income and EPS included a $336 million one-time non-cash income tax benefit related to the corporate reorganization completed in connection with the minority equity transaction. Adjusted EBITDA included a $53 million net benefit from the transactions, primarily related to gains on the extinguishment of debt.
As Pierce mentioned, we increased our 2026 financial guidance again, reflecting strong year-to-date performance, visibility into the remainder of the year, and the addition of the Brazos Midland assets. We now expect a 2026 net income midpoint of $4.18 billion and an adjusted EBITDA midpoint of approximately $8.55 billion. This represents a $200 million increase in our adjusted EBITDA midpoint compared with the guidance we provided last quarter and a $450 million increase compared with our original February guidance.
Of this quarter’s $200 million increase, approximately $50 million reflects transaction-related benefits I just described, approximately $75 million reflects the expected 2026 contribution from the Brazos assets, which is then offset by $25 million of transaction costs, and the remaining $100 million reflects stronger performance across our base businesses. This year we’ve been somewhat conservative with guidance due to the geopolitical volatility. If commodity conditions remain consistent with where they are today, we will have a very good tailwind in the fourth quarter and into 2027. That takes me to our hedging program. As the back end of the commodity forward curve has risen throughout the year, we’ve increased our hedging position into 2027 at a greater percentage and at higher prices than 2026.
We continue to programmatically hedge commodity exposures. On capital expenditures, we stated on the second quarter earnings call we expected to approach the high end of our guidance range of over $3.2 billion. We now expect 2026 capital expenditures to total approximately $3.5 billion, due primarily to $200 million of capital associated with the Brazos acquisition along with added growth projects such as the Cutter 2 plant, our Delaware NGL expansion, and compression pulled into ’26 from ’27 due to Bakken and Mid-Continent activity levels.
From a balance sheet perspective, we extinguished nearly $5.5 billion of debt in September following completion of the $9 billion Apollo minority equity investment. Both S&P Global Ratings and Fitch Ratings upgraded our credit ratings to BBB+ with a stable outlook following these transactions. With these actions complete, we are operating with a stronger balance sheet, and I want to spend a moment on our leverage framework because it’s an area we’ve received a number of questions.
Our debt-to-EBITDA target going forward is approximately 3.25 times or lower, and the “or lower” matters. This is not guidance; it reflects a change in philosophy. We intend to operate the company with lower leverage than our previous target of approximately 3.5 times. As modeled today, we would expect to go below three times within the next few years. However, our Commercial team continues to find highly attractive projects, which we expect will increase our capital expenditures over the next few years. We now have the financial flexibility to execute on those capital expenditures and still maintain a strong balance sheet. We now view 3.5 times as the upper end of our targeted leverage range. The gap between where we expect to operate and that ceiling is intentional. It gives us meaningful flexibility through business and commodity cycles and the capacity to act if a compelling opportunity comes along that clearly meets our return thresholds.
That’s optionality, not a plan. Our base case remains disciplined deleveraging while we continue to fund attractive growth and return capital projects and capital return to shareholders. That includes our dividend and the capacity for repurchases. From a cash tax perspective, the Brazos Midland acquisition is expected to extend our runway by another year, deferring meaningful cash tax payments until 2032 from previously 2031. I’ll now turn it over to Randy for an operational and project update.
Randy Lentz (Chief Operating Officer)
Thank you, Walt. Our teams continue to execute safely and reliably during the third quarter while advancing growth projects across the system. During the quarter, we completed our Denver-area refined products pipeline expansion, adding 35,000 barrels per day of capacity. Demand has been encouraging, and we’re beginning to evaluate further expansion opportunities. We also completed 110 million cubic feet per day of processing expansions in the Delaware Basin and are already seeing incremental volume, with a continued ramp-up to capacity in early 2027.
In the fourth quarter, Medford Phase 1, Cutter 1, and Cassidy 1 are all expected to enter service, providing additional fractionation and processing capacity across the Mid-Continent, Powder River, and Permian. Then in 2027, Bighorn adds 400 million cubic feet per day of processing capacity in the Delaware, Cassidy 2 adds another approximately 330 million cubic feet per day of capacity in the Midland, and our Delaware NGL expansion adds 245,000 barrels per day of takeaway capacity.
That expansion, added this year, supports growing Delaware volumes and connectivity with our West Texas NGL pipeline. The acquisition of Brazos Midland assets also expands our opportunity set considerably. We’re already advancing connections between Brazos and our legacy ONEOK system, which we expect will improve capital efficiency and commercial flexibility. As we continue Midland Basin growth beyond what we’ve announced, we continue to see a growing set of opportunities across multiple products and regions, providing several pathways for continued organic growth.
With that, I’ll turn the call over to Sheridan for a commercial update.
Sheridan Swords (Executive Vice President, Chief Commercial Officer)
Thank you, Randy.
Randy Lentz (Chief Operating Officer)
Third quarter commercial activity was strong, driven by customer demand and volume growth across key portions of our system, starting with the natural gas liquids segment. Total raw feed throughput increased 6% year over year to nearly 1.7 million barrels per day. Our largest volume growth was in the Gulf Coast Permian region, where volumes increased 16% year over year and 9% compared with the second quarter, with nearly all of the increase from West Texas.
Volumes continue to benefit from increased producer activity, recently connected third-party plants, and additional natural gas egress out of the basin. Propane-plus volumes increased both year over year and sequentially across all of our operating regions, driven by continued producer activity. Ethane recovery remained attractive across most of our system, supported by strong domestic and international petrochemical demand. We saw modestly higher rejection in the Rockies and Mid-Continent following strong recovery levels in the second quarter, while Permian economics continued to favor full recovery.
Our fractionators are highly utilized as we work toward the completion of Medford Phase 1, which we expect in mid-December. Until then, we’re continuing to build inventory of unfractionated NGLs, which defer the timing of the associated earnings from these NGLs. As Medford comes online, we will begin working through that inventory and recognize the associated earnings primarily in the first quarter of 2027. We expect this to give us a built-in earnings benefit early next year.
Turning to the refined products and crude segment, refined products volumes increased 6% year over year, including 10% growth in gasoline and 2% in distillate, supported by solid demand and high refinery utilization across our footprint. Based on our year-to-date performance, we expect refined products volumes to finish the year near the top end of our original guidance range. Our connectivity and marketing capabilities also let us capture regional opportunities as wide Mid-Continent to Gulf Coast basis differentials and low inventories created price volatility.
Midyear tariff adjustments added a further benefit. Liquids blending also performed well. Increased gasoline throughput and the completion of synergy projects contributed to higher blending volumes. During the quarter we entered the fall season approximately 75% hedged, and unhedged September spot margins provided additional upside. Historically wide spreads have allowed us to lock in favorable blending margins throughout 2027, further out than we typically would.
Export demand has also remained strong, with refined products volumes at Galena Park up approximately 15% year over year. Crude oil exports at Seabrook remain fully contracted, with third quarter throughput approximately doubling the prior year period. In our higher-margin crude gathering business, we expect full-year volumes to increase approximately 7%, supported by Midland producer activity averaging nearly 40 rigs on our dedicated acreage. Moving to the natural gas gathering and processing segment, volumes increased in all three regions compared with the second quarter, led by record volumes in the Permian Basin. Volumes are higher across both the Midland and Delaware basins in the Permian, led by growth in the Delaware. Following completions of our processing expansions across our dedicated Permian acreage, we have approximately 21 rigs, including 17 in the Midland Basin and 15 for the Delaware.
The addition of the Brazos asset substantially expands our Midland opportunity, with a long runway of high-quality drilling inventory and greater connectivity across the combined system. Importantly, what we’ve seen since announcing the transaction continues to support our acquisition assumptions. Based on current producer plans, we expect an average of approximately 14 rigs on the Brazos Midland dedicated acreage during 2027. Producers are also encouraged by early Barnett results, including well performance and drilling and completion efficiencies, which are supporting increased development activity and a higher volume outlook.
As we sit today, the current Brazos Sundan plants are full, and volumes on the Brazos assets are above our expectations for this point in the year. We expect the continued volume ramp will be enough to fill Cassidy 1, which comes online at year end. The larger combined system gives us flexibility to optimize the timing and location of that next expansion. Outside the Permian, Rockies processing volumes increased 3% from the second quarter, and we’re encouraged by activity in the area. Since March, Williston Basin rigs are up approximately 50%, and rigs on our dedicated acreage have doubled to 16, approaching 2024 and early 2025 levels. The higher activity reinforces a stable, durable volume base, and with our infrastructure already in place, incremental volumes translate directly into very attractive cash flow.
In the Powder River Basin, initial well performance around the Cutter plant has exceeded producer expectations, and we expect volume to ramp with planned completions in the fourth quarter and throughout 2027. In the Mid-Continent, growth continues across our Oklahoma system, driven by activity in both the Cherokee and STACK formations, and several gathering expansions are underway to support further growth into 2027. There are currently 17 rigs on our dedicated acreage.
Overall, producers remain disciplined, but current 2027 plans reflect increased activity, and our conversations remain constructive. I’ll close with the natural gas pipelines, where third quarter adjusted EBITDA was 231 million, up from 200 million a year ago, benefiting from higher optimization and marketing activity and higher firm transportation revenue. As expected, the Waha-to-Katy opportunity moderated sequentially as additional Permian egress entered service and price differentials narrowed. We expect a further reduction in the fourth quarter, which is already reflected in our guidance.
Longer term, natural gas demand continues to provide significant opportunities. Last quarter, we announced we had been awarded a supply agreement for a 1 gigawatt power plant demand. This project includes a 10-year firm transportation agreement for 250 million cubic feet per day of natural gas and is expected to be in service in late 2030. Additionally, we’ve been awarded another agreement to supply 110 million cubic feet per day for a 500 megawatt power plant expansion, which will go into effect in May 2028.
These attractive return projects are good examples of the opportunities we are pursuing across our pipeline network, and we expect to announce additional projects as discussions advance. Pierce, that concludes my remarks.
Pierce Norton (President and Chief Executive Officer)
Thank you, Walt and Randy and Sheridan, for those updates. As I look back at the first nine months of this year, the progress that we have made is significant. We’ve increased guidance three times, significantly strengthened the balance sheet, expanded our position and scale in the Permian Basin, completed significant organic projects with additional projects approaching startup, and we’re seeing constructive volume trends and producer activity across our footprint.
Most importantly though, those accomplishments, along with constructive producer plans and our hedging program, give us momentum and visibility as we enter 2027. At the same time, the broader need for reliable U.S. energy infrastructure continues to grow. The energy landscape will remain dynamic. Our goal isn’t to predict every geopolitical event or commodity price movement; it’s to position ONEOK to perform through them. And we believe our scale, asset connectivity, financial flexibility, and customer relationships give us the ability to do just that.
We believe ONEOK will enter 2027 from a position of strength with a clear inventory of growth opportunities and the infrastructure required to help connect essential U.S. energy resources with the growing demand. And as always, none of this happens without our employees. I want to thank them for their continued commitment to safety, reliability, innovation, and to serve customers. Operator, we’re now ready to take questions.
OPERATOR
Thank you. And if you would like to ask a question, please signal by pressing star-1 on your telephone keypad. If you are using a speakerphone, please make sure your mute function is turned off to allow your signal to reach our equipment. We do ask that you limit yourself to one question and a follow-up to fit in as many of you as possible. Again, press star-1 to ask a question. We’ll pause for just a moment to allow everyone an opportunity to signal for questions.
And we’ll now take our first question from Spiro Dounis with Citi.
Spiro Dounis (Analyst)
Good morning, team. I want to start off with new projects. Walt, you mentioned commercial teams working on some new opportunities here. Curious if you can expand and maybe give us a sense of what regions or commodities you’re seeing the most activity and where that capital is likely to get allocated. And just to add on, Pierce, I noticed you had some commentary on the natural gas side. Sheridan seemed to support that with some of these data center projects.
So curious if we can expect gas to maybe get a higher allocation than has historically been the case, and if 3 billion plus is a good run rate to use from here on capex.
Sheridan Swords (Executive Vice President, Chief Commercial Officer)
Yeah, this is Sheridan. I would say, as we start thinking about where we’re going to see, you know, growth in capex, growth across our system is obviously we’ll start in the Permian, where volumes are strong, growing strong. We already have quite a bit of processing capacity come online. We see the runway that we will be adding more processing capacity in the future. So that’s going to create more opportunity for the NGL business as well. So we think we’ll see a lot in the NGL and the gathering and processing segment in the Permian.
We’re also seeing some opportunities in the Mid-Continent. We continue to see that grow. Volumes are up strong. We could have some allocation of capital into the Mid-Continent area. As you start thinking about refined products, we’ve seen a big pull of export volume. That’s changing the dynamics on our system. We could see some optimization opportunities or being able to increase our capacity between the Gulf Coast and the Mid-Continent being an opportunity.
We’re also looking to expand the Denver pipeline that came up this year completely fully contracted. Commercial teams are working with other people to see about the opportunity to expand that system as we continue to go forward. And then, obviously, the data centers—we continue to be in discussions with a large number of data centers. A lot of them continue to advance. You know, last quarter we announced one, this quarter we’re announcing another one.
The teams are on the edge on a couple other really nice projects as well. So we will see some area from power demand going forward on the natural gas pipe. So really, when we think about capital, the capital we’re looking at across our footprint, it’s in all the segments as we go forward. It’s not really concentrated in one area or the other.
Pierce Norton (President and Chief Executive Officer)
Spiro, this is Pierce. One thing I’d add to that is much of the gas that we move is going to be feeding LNG facilities as well as the electric generation either for utilities or for AI data centers. It comes with liquids. And so the gas demand that we see also will increase the gathering and the processing opportunities that we have, along with moving the liquids associated with those gathering and processing plants and the fractionation facilities.
And it gives us more blending opportunities with those products into our RPC business. So it touches all phases of our business.
Sheridan Swords (Executive Vice President, Chief Commercial Officer)
Yeah, I think you’re exactly right. The little bit of falloff we saw in the Rocky Mountains and Mid-Con on the NGLs was all ethane. As I said in my remarks, the C3+ volume is actually up, so the underlying growth is strong there. Just a little bit more ethane rejection. Some of that is our own choice coming out of the Bakken, where we dialed back our incentivized ethane a little bit due to the market conditions we’re seeing right now. As we continue to move forward on NGLs, we continue to see growth, and a lot of that growth is going to come out of the Permian, where we’ll see a significant amount of that growth going forward as we continue to ramp up our natural gas gathering and processing assets out there in the area.
So we see, going forward, when Medford comes up, the impact of Medford is because we do have raw feed that is in storage today. Obviously we have more raw feed coming to our system than our current fractionators can handle. Medford will come up completely full for a period of time as we work off that raw feed and inventory. So both Phase 1 and Phase 2 will be full for a period of time going forward. But then we’ll be able to leverage that into growth after that, to support that growth coming out of the Permian that we see as we bring on the Brazos plants, continue to fill our legacy ONEOK plants out there going forward.
As Randy said, we are in the process of tying Brazos and the legacy ONEOK Midland systems together, which will let us remove volume that we’re doing on third parties today. We have offloads in the G&P Midland system today to third parties; we’ll be able to bring that into our own plants and create more NGLs, which we’ll be able to fractionate through Medford going forward. When we actually came out with Medford, we had said that we had not subscribed 100% of that capacity because it was a lower-cost fractionator, as it was a brownfield fractionator. We didn’t need to subscribe all the capacity so that we had additional operating leverage that we could continue to contract. The Commercial team has continued to contract as we’ve gone through this build phase. We still have capacity that is uncontracted today, but that is a lot less than we had before, and we think that gives us a lot of leverage to be able to contract even more third-party volumes, as we have done with our Delaware expansion.
OPERATOR
We’ll now take our next question from Jeremy Tennant with JP Morgan.
Jeremy Tennant (Analyst at JP Morgan)
Hi, good morning. Just want to touch on the guide for ’26, if I could, a bit. And if we’re looking at it right, it seems like it implies 4Q doesn’t really move up versus 3Q in any meaningful fashion, and that would even be with the Brazos contribution. So just wondering if you could talk a bit more gives and takes in the fourth quarter. Think of it as maybe seasonally a bit stronger as well. Is that conservatism, or are there other elements at play here?
Walter Hulse (Chief Financial Officer, Treasurer, EVP Corporate Development and Investor Relations)
Jeremy, this is Walt. As I said in our remarks, we have remained cautious throughout the year given the whole geopolitical situation. If everything stays like we are today, we are probably on the conservative side, and you could expect a nice tailwind that will be in the fourth quarter and, with the reactivity that we’re seeing now, really continue into 2027 pretty strong.
Jeremy Tennant (Analyst at JP Morgan)
Got it. Thank you for that. And then maybe just moving over towards the fractionation side. Picking up a bit more on the comments you said, it seems like Medford would bring a lot of optimization opportunities or flexibility to the system. But then even if I look at the NGL raw supply that you guys have versus fractionation capacity, it still seems maybe the system is a little bit short and could need some more fractionation build-out, particularly when you’re thinking about all the processing plant additions and the dock and export coming up here.
Just wondering how you think about that growth opportunity.
Sheridan Swords (Executive Vice President, Chief Commercial Officer)
Yeah, we watch that very closely, Jeremy, to understand where it is now. Remember, not all the volume you see that we report, we fractionate. Some of that we just transport. But what I would say is we do have a little bit of extra capacity in Medford, and we do have MB7 that’s already permitted. And then we’re just trying to understand when the right time is that we have ID’d that to be able to make sure we have fractionation capacity for our growing gas processing plants.
Jeremy Tennant (Analyst at JP Morgan)
Got it. Understood. I’ll leave it there. Thank you.
OPERATOR
Our next question will come from Manav Gupta with UBS.
Manav Gupta (Analyst at UBS)
Good morning. I actually just wanted to go back to Brazos and ask you about, now that you have had some look at these assets, are they actually meeting your expectations? Where are the areas where you think there could be some upside here? If you could give us an update on how you’re thinking about the synergies now that you have had a chance to look at these assets at a closer look. That’s my first question.
Randy Lentz (Chief Operating Officer)
Yeah. What I would say is that we are very, very satisfied with what we’ve seen with Brazos. I mean, as I made mention in my remarks, volumes are above our expectations at this time in the process, and nothing tells us that they’re not going to continue to be above our expectations as we move into 2027. The assets in general—we have found them—we’ve been very pleased with the assets in general. They put some very big pipelines in their area. They didn’t just build enough for what they had. They do a lot of things like we did: they upsize their pipelines, and that’s given us a lot of capital synergies immediately. We actually were going to have to expand one of our main lines on our system, on our legacy gathering and processing system, but because Brazos overbuilt this system, we’re immediately able to access that capacity and save that capital.
And that continues to happen going forward. As we get a look at it, as we get these plants up, we’re very pleased at how well they built the plants, the redundancy they put in there. They built them like we would. They built them to last. As we continue—as I talked about in the volumes—we continue to talk to producers. Producers get more and more excited about the Barnett and what it means, the efficiencies, and as they get better at it, the volumes exceeding their expectations per well.
So right now Brazos is probably hitting on all cylinders of what we expected. We’re very pleased with what we’ve seen so far.
Pierce Norton (President and Chief Executive Officer)
And this is Pierce. I can’t emphasize enough Sheridan’s last comments about the quality of the way these assets have been built. Randy and I, as both backgrounds in the construction of these kinds of things, I can walk around that plant and tell that they addressed a lot of the things that I’ve seen as problems in the past with other companies and other assets. And I think they built them for reliability, resiliency. So I’m very, very pleased with the quality of the assets that we picked up.
Manav Gupta (Analyst at UBS)
Perfect. My very quick follow-up here: as we noticed in the slide deck, that Delaware NGL expansion of 245, and we also know you have the processing plant at Big Horn coming around like 400,000 somewhere in 2Q and this new expansion is 3Q. So can you talk a little bit—are these two projects in some form complementary to each other? Thank you.
Sheridan Swords (Executive Vice President, Chief Commercial Officer)
They are a little bit. But really, this expansion that we’re doing, we’re laying a pipeline from our Texas Delaware up to the northern Delaware and New Mexico. So we’re up in a new area. We did upsize this expansion more than we needed, like we’ve done other ones. We have a lot of growth there. It’s backed by third-party processors and producers that have contracted for this space. And with that extra capacity, we really are excited about being able to access a different part of the Delaware Basin—that northern New Mexico Delaware—where there’s a lot of opportunity for us to compete for third-party processing plants and that third-party NGL volume.
Manav Gupta (Analyst at UBS)
Thank you so much.
OPERATOR
We’ll now take our next question from Jeannie Pillsbury with Bank of America.
Jeannie Pillsbury (Analyst at Bank of America)
Hi, good morning. Bakken rigs have gone up markedly in the last month or two. Have you heard from producers that they’re adding activity in the Bakken at these oil prices?
Sheridan Swords (Executive Vice President, Chief Commercial Officer)
Yeah, we have. They are—obviously they’re adding activity. We have more rigs coming online, and what’s interesting about that is we’re seeing more rigs come in, or rigs come back, from producers that are multibasin producers that have other opportunities across North America, and they are bringing rigs back. So we are excited about what we’re seeing. And in some of these areas, they’re drilling in the core of the core, which is great for us. And that volume is all coming to us as well.
So yeah, we are seeing more activity in the Bakken with this rig count, and from a different type of producer that we haven’t seen before, which is very encouraging.
Jeannie Pillsbury (Analyst at Bank of America)
Thank you. And there’s obviously been a lot of Permian M&A in recent months, specifically of G&P M&A. What do you attribute this uptick in activity to? A lot of these G&Ps had kind of been out there for a long time. And then, relatedly, what are the key criteria when ONEOK assesses these for fit within your portfolio? Is the ability to direct NGLs a must-have component when you’re screening these things?
Walter Hulse (Chief Financial Officer, Treasurer, EVP Corporate Development and Investor Relations)
This is Walt. You know, I think that—why there are so many of these transactions—clearly with commodity prices where they are, the private equity backers are looking at this as a window and opportunity to sell when the market’s as strong as it has been. So they’re all testing the market. Many of these assets have tested the market before, but at these levels you’re seeing some activity. And the other thing is that there are fewer and fewer of those opportunities out there.
So, as people look at trying to round out, they’ve decided to act. And many of them have de-risked quite a bit. In previous years when they’ve tried to come to market, they had a lot of space but maybe not a lot of volume; many of them have been able to do a good job filling those up. So I think it’s just the maturity of the basin with the backdrop of a great commodity price that’s bringing people to the market.
Jeannie Pillsbury (Analyst at Bank of America)
Thanks. And I guess what are the key criteria for ONEOK when you’re screening them?
Walter Hulse (Chief Financial Officer, Treasurer, EVP Corporate Development and Investor Relations)
Oh, I mean NGL—I apologize, I forgot that part of the question. NGL is clearly something that would be important to us and something that we look at. It’s one piece to the overall picture. But to the extent that we can use our integrated system and continue to touch that molecule throughout the chain, that is what our strategy is. So if we can capture those NGLs, that definitely would screen better on our radar, for sure.
Jeannie Pillsbury (Analyst at Bank of America)
Great. Thank you, Walt.
Randy Lentz (Chief Operating Officer)
Walt mentioned that this was a part of the criteria, but the areas of dedication, the locations of those areas of dedication in and around the existing assets—both from a legacy standpoint and new assets that you’d pick up—the quality of the producer that’s drilling those areas, there’s a multitude of things that we look at, all to basically de-risk what it is that we’re looking at and where we spend our capital.
Jeannie Pillsbury (Analyst at Bank of America)
Great. I’ll leave it there. Thank you for the answers.
OPERATOR
We’ll now take a question from John McKay with Goldman Sachs.
John McKay (Analyst at Goldman Sachs)
Hey team, thank you for the time. You touched on this a couple times, I think in the context of the incremental balance sheet capacity. But just as you guys are out there looking to add new organic growth projects, could you touch a little bit about where you think kind of run rate, annual growth, capex could get to and maybe any sort of range you want to put around that, keeping the leverage target in mind. Thank you.
Walter Hulse (Chief Financial Officer, Treasurer, EVP Corporate Development and Investor Relations)
Well, you know, as we’ve said, ’27 will look somewhat like ’26. We expect a lower level than ’26, but we still have some reasonably big projects finishing up with Medford, wrapping up in 2027. You know, large processing plant, several plants actually, and then the dock. So, you know, you should think around that 3.3 billion-ish, give or take, for ’27. And then we would expect it to range between that 2.5 to 3 billion going forward, which will still leave us with quite a bit of free cash flow to return capital to shareholders.
John McKay (Analyst at Goldman Sachs)
I appreciate that. Thank you. And just second one for me on the Northern Delaware NGL expansion, anything you can comment in terms of mix of third party counterparties there, either producers or is it all midstream and then is that a would you expect that to be kind of like full chain margin including frac all the way to Bellevue from the Northern Delaware or is it just a portion?
Sheridan Swords (Executive Vice President, Chief Commercial Officer)
Thanks. Yeah. So the first thing, it is both. We have multiple third-party processors that have signed up for this capacity and producers on that. So it’s a very nice mix. It is a full value chain — transportation and fractionation. There is a little bit that will be just transport-only, but it is highly all transportation down to Mont Belvieu, the fractionation into Mont Belvieu, and we think that ramping will be what we — the volume that underwrote this will be coming up fairly quickly once it’s put into service, and that will be into 3Q27 when it comes into service.
John McKay (Analyst at Goldman Sachs)
Interesting. Thanks for the color. Appreciate it.
OPERATOR
We’ll now take our next question from Theresa Chen with Barclays.
Theresa Chen (Analyst at Barclays)
Morning, Walt. Would you further elucidate the shift in your leverage philosophy? Operating with lower leverage on a run rate basis? Is this rating agency led? Is it that you’re seeing more commodity volatility across your base business versus previously or is it more driven towards shoring up dry powder in the event of attractive inorganic opportunities complementing your organic ones?
Walter Hulse (Chief Financial Officer, Treasurer, EVP Corporate Development and Investor Relations)
Trisha? I would say that it’s no one particular thing. You know, as we’ve gone through these transactions and lived through commodity cycles, you know, we think maintaining the flexibility to look at opportunities and not stress the balance sheet is important. We have seen a lot of interest from large shareholders and seen a lower leverage in the business. So we’re in the view that we did not do it just to get a triple A plus, that’s for sure. But we’re very pleased that the rating agencies have recognized that we intend to operate the business with a lower level of leverage.
So it’s a little bit more conservative. We’ve seen some pretty significant commodity cycles over the last 10 years and there will be another one at some point.
Theresa Chen (Analyst at Barclays)
Thank you. And as you evaluate further expansion of your Denver pipeline, how could the next phase differ from the initial project? Now that that’s online, both in terms of scale and product capabilities, would it be fair to assume that the next phase would handle products beyond jet fuel? What would you need to see to move forward towards an FID? And what are you seeing in terms of demand in that market as well?
Sheridan Swords (Executive Vice President, Chief Commercial Officer)
Yeah, I mean really we set this up very nicely that the next expansion of Denver is not going to be a huge capital expansion. And so really what we’re looking for is talking to the customers, of them wanting to sign up for that capacity. And they’re looking at not only what’s going on in the Front Range, but overall what’s going on in PADD 4, what they’re looking at, and how they continue to move that out or other inner movements within PADD 4, how that would affect the Front Range.
So really, to FID that project, we just need to get to the customers and have them ready to sign up for the space; that’s really where we’re at. And we’re having those conversations today. But obviously that pipeline just came online. We’re moving more volume. People want to see how the market’s reacting to this additional volume. We are seeing increased jet fuel demand across our whole system, and Denver’s no exception. But obviously this new capacity is meeting that demand today. But I will say we are having quite a few conversations with customers about the next expansion of Denver.
And the thing that’s unique about it is if they come in and want a little bit, we can give it, or they want a lot, we can scale our expansion to what the customers want to sign up for. That’s the beauty of us putting this operating leverage in the pipeline the first time.
Theresa Chen (Analyst at Barclays)
Thank you.
OPERATOR
We’ll now take our next question for Praneet Satish with Wells Fargo.
Praneet Satish (Analyst at Wells Fargo)
Thanks. Good morning. Just on Brazos, I was wondering if you could help bridge the — so in Q4 looking at the contribution, I think if you annualize it, it’s about 350 million of EBITDA. The 2027 target that you provided when you made the acquisition was 590. I know you have Cassidy 1 and 2, so that’s probably part of it. But maybe like what are the other key drivers and then how much visibility is there into filling those two plants and getting to that 590 target for ’27?
Sheridan Swords (Executive Vice President, Chief Commercial Officer)
Well, this is Sheridan. What I would say is, you know, obviously Cassidy 1, as I said, is coming up here at the end of this year. It will fill relatively quickly on that. So you’re going to get another 330 million a day of processing capacity. We’re processing, you know, right now we have 550 million. So we’re increasing by over 50%. Then also, as we tie that system into our system, we’ll be able to access our processing capacity as well. And then you get the downstream effect of the NGLs that are coming off this increased processing capacity to us as well.
So it’s kind of a twofold that we’re getting on as continue to go forward. And then Cassidy 2, when it comes up, we will have to have used our legacy system when Cassidy 2 comes up. So everything is pointing to that. Cassidy 2 will ramp up fairly quickly. As I said in my remarks, that we are actually ahead. Volume is ahead of where we thought we would be at this time. And projections are showing that that’s going to continue well into 2027, especially with our conversations with the producers out there that are getting excited about this Barnett and what they’re seeing.
They’re seeing better results than they had anticipated from a volume standpoint on the gas. So we think it will. That’s how we’re going to get to that higher number.
Walter Hulse (Chief Financial Officer, Treasurer, EVP Corporate Development and Investor Relations)
And Praneet, this is Walt. You know, I think the important part today is that the 550 million that is there is full and we’re doing offloads at this point. So if we had the capacity, we would be at a higher number. But until we bring in that Cassidy 1 plant, we will take a stair step up as we go into 2027.
Praneet Satish (Analyst at Wells Fargo)
Got it. That’s helpful. And maybe just staying on Brazos. So Sheridan, I think you noted that you expect 14 rigs on the Brazos acreage in 2027. I guess with commodity prices moving higher and some of these results here that the producers are seeing from the Barnett, is there any interest from producers on the Brazos system to add rigs? Do you think there’s a possibility that that rig count moves above 14 rigs in 2027 based on the discussions you’re having with your customers?
Sheridan Swords (Executive Vice President, Chief Commercial Officer)
Yeah, I do think there’s an opportunity for it to move up. We do have some customers that are continuing to look at that, continue to see where they want to deploy those rigs. As they get more and more comfortable with the Barnett, what’s going on, they’re probably going to be moving more into that area. So, yeah, we think it could definitely move up. We’re just saying our discussions right now, as they’re saying, this is where it is right now. They know they’re going to have this many rigs on there, and there could be more coming.
We just need to see how we get into a little bit more to ’27.
Praneet Satish (Analyst at Wells Fargo)
Got it. Thank you.
OPERATOR
Our next question will come from Brandon Brigham with—I’m sorry. Brandon Bingham with Scotiabank.
Brandon Bingham (Analyst at Scotiabank)
Hey, good morning. Thanks for taking the questions. Wanted to maybe get a little more clarity around the crude volumes during the quarter. Looked a little bit light. Just what can you say about some of the dynamics around the crude piece and then maybe how should we think about the forward trajectory of Permian crude, especially in light of all of the gas that is forecasted to come online through the end of the decade.
Sheridan Swords (Executive Vice President, Chief Commercial Officer)
So this is Sheridan. What I would tell you is that the crude number we give you is a total system number that includes both the gathering volumes, volumes that travel down our long-haul pipelines, and also volumes that we move through our Houston distribution system. Each one of those have very different rates on there, and the Houston distribution system, which is where a lot of the volume moves, is at the lowest rate. That’s why in our remarks we talked about the high-margin volumes are our gathering system out there in the Permian, and that is up 7%.
And that’s why we’re trying to give you that number, because we know there’s other pieces that move around in there, because we’re only giving you one number. And there’s another effect of how we kind of account for numbers depending on where they go and what systems they go through, how many times they get counted. So overall we like where our volumes are. They’re growing — they’re growing where they need to grow. That means they’re growing in the gathering system. We continue to see that grow as we have 40 rigs on our acreage right now drilling. We continue to expand our acreage dedication, continue to grow that volume, continue to make connectivity between our systems, continue to make connectivity between our gathering systems and our long-haul pipelines.
Our long-haul pipelines are predominantly full right now at this time. They’re moving at rates. So I know it’s a little bit hard because we show a little bit of drop in volumes. That is around our Houston distribution system, which is by far the lowest margin. But our gathering volumes are up nicely at 7%.
Pierce Norton (President and Chief Executive Officer)
And Brandon, if you’re going to continue to see the LNG growth in the Gulf Coast there — another 12 Bcf a day — you know, it’s our belief that a lot of that gas is going to come out of the Permian Basin. So there’s two things that’s got to move there. Either the volume of crude has to go up, therefore lifting the gas, or the GOR has to go up. If the volume of crude stays flat — our opinion is they probably both will move up. So there’s going to be more crude, I think, to move out there in the future.
Brandon Bingham (Analyst at Scotiabank)
I agree, very helpful. And then maybe one quick follow up. I know you said you were going to wait for 4Q to kind of get into specifics, but is there anything maybe more qualitative or high level you could discuss maybe for the non-Brazos piece of the business, as Brazos feels kind of pretty well understood at this point?
Walter Hulse (Chief Financial Officer, Treasurer, EVP Corporate Development and Investor Relations)
I think you’re getting at what’s the guidance for ’27. I do want to reemphasize that we’re not going to give guidance today for 2027. But I can tell you, from where I sit, I really like where 2027 is setting up for us.
OPERATOR
Our next question will come from Julian Mullion Smith with Jefferies.
Patrick (Analyst at Jefferies)
Yeah, you’ve actually got Patrick this morning, but thank you for taking our questions. On the first one I was wondering if you could add a bit more color around the hedging. I know you said you don’t want to do 27 guidance but how does this fit into your mid to high single digits long-term growth trajectory? I mean I think you said 75% hedged into 2027 at these prices. Can you just add some color about how that relates to your longer-term earnings guidance, if you expect that to be kind of sustained, or if that would drop off pretty sharply assuming geopolitical normalization.
Sheridan Swords (Executive Vice President, Chief Commercial Officer)
Yeah, this is Sheridan. First thing is, yeah, we did not say we’re 75% through 2027. We were 75% coming into the third quarter of 2026, and that other 25% gave us quite a bit of uplift. But as we talked about, as hedging going into 2027 with these wide margins, we are seeing opportunity to hedge more than we typically do. We have a very programmatic hedge that—we are on a cadence when we hedge. We’re not really trying to call the market. When we see times like this, we do have the ability to accelerate that hedging, and we’ve done that into 2027, more so in the first part of the year because of the backwardation in the market.
And obviously that backwardation is a sign of strength, so we really think the market will kind of come up as we get out in ’27. But we are more hedged now than we typically are at this time of the year with these wide margins. Obviously that has just come up late. When I really think about this, you know, mid to high single-digit growth rate, that’s really going off the base business and more what we typically see in our margins going forward. So commodity price could be a nice little tailwind.
Patrick (Analyst at Jefferies)
Okay, thanks for that. And I think a second bit, maybe a minor question, was do you tell us how much inventory is building for NGLs that Medford would need to process? Could you set physical volume? Do you tell us how much inventory is building up for Medford to process?
Sheridan Swords (Executive Vice President, Chief Commercial Officer)
Sorry, apologize. We haven’t come out and said exactly how much inventory we have, but we have quite a bit of inventory right now that we’ve been building since the second quarter anticipating Medford coming on, as we’ve been successful in being able to contract more volume and growth across our system. So Medford’s going to run full for definitely the first quarter and probably into part of the second quarter when it comes up.
Patrick (Analyst at Jefferies)
And that will earn the product prices at that point in time, or you’ve hedged the prices that it will get as it processes all that inventory back.
Sheridan Swords (Executive Vice President, Chief Commercial Officer)
So there’s two things that happen, is because the way of accounting we can account for our fee-based earnings that we receive from that volume that we put into the well. So when we fractionate that volume, we will get the fee-based earnings associated with those volumes in the well. Our marketing team has already hedged those out into the future to take out the commodity price on it. So the earnings you’ll see next year coming from this will be from the fee-based portion.
That is, we cannot record until we fractionate the barrel.
OPERATOR
We’ll now take a question from Keith Stanley with Wolfe Research.
Keith Stanley (Analyst at Wolfe Research)
Hi, good morning. Wanted to follow up on the Delaware NGL extension pipe. Should we think of the 245,000 barrels a day as mostly spoken for with new long-term contracts, or is this creating a lot of white space for you in New Mexico? And then related to that, any update on how full you are now on the—I think it’s 750,000 barrels a day—of West Texas LPG capacity all the way to the Gulf Coast?
Sheridan Swords (Executive Vice President, Chief Commercial Officer)
Yeah. So on the Delaware expansion, we think it’s a very strategic pipeline. We think it goes to an area that there’s a lot of opportunity to pick up third-party NGL volume, and so we did go in there and upsize that pipeline for that. So there is quite a bit of white space that we have there to be able to leverage and to be able to increase the volume on that system. And then overall we still have around, you know, a little over between 200 and 300 thousand barrels a day on the West Texas NGL pipeline.
Going forward, obviously with Brazos—Brazos is going to fill up quite a bit of that—and then growth across our other base business will help us give a substantial amount that forward.
Keith Stanley (Analyst at Wolfe Research)
Great, thanks for that. Quick one second question on the refined products optimization. So you were up Q over Q in the third quarter on higher blending results. You know the slides often talk about Q2 and Q4 as the big blending quarters. Should we assume some of the blending sales were pulled forward from Q4 into Q3, or is there anything else you’d point to on Q3 being very strong?
Sheridan Swords (Executive Vice President, Chief Commercial Officer)
Yeah, Q3 was strong. Obviously we had some very wide margins in there that made it really good. Volumes were good, which was kind of a culmination of a lot of our synergy projects that we’ve been able to put into place. We actually—we talked about this. Magellan, when we bought it, they were spending around about 20 cents per gallon for their normal butane to get to the right place and to be able to blend because they were moving a good portion on trucks. The synergy projects that we’ve been able to put together have moved almost all that onto pipeline, and we’ve been able to cut, you know, 10 cents a gallon out of that. So what we’re blending now, even though we had wide margins, we then had lower logistics costs to get there, and those logistics costs will be there every year.
I mean that’s permanent, continue to go forward. So that, and then a little—you know we had some—there was a little bit of waiver help. You know they, in September, they moved the, from the 1st, September 15th to the 1st of 15 that you can—the RVP change—that gave us some more volume to be able to blend into, and frankly we’re just getting better and better at it. Yeah, and you’re right, the other thing was good is we are seeing increased gasoline volume across our system. So the more gasoline volume across our systems, the more opportunity we have to blend.
So there’s three or four things that have really attributed to that. And as we go into the fourth quarter, you know, we’re still seeing good margins, obviously logistics costs are still there, and volumes across our system are strong compared to where they are in store.
OPERATOR
Thank you. That concludes our question and answer session for today. I would now like to turn the call back over to Megan Patterson for closing remarks.
Megan Patterson (Vice President, Investor Relations)
Thanks, Anna. Our quiet period for the fourth period begins when we close our books early next year and extends until we release earnings in late February. Our IR team is available throughout the day for any follow ups. Thank you for joining us and have a great day.
OPERATOR
Thank you. That concludes today’s call. You may now disconnect your lines at this time and have a wonderful day.
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