Operator
Welcome to the Ontario Midstream Corporation second quarter 2026 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. A question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. You will be placed into question queue at any time by pressing star 1 on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. If anyone should require operator assistance, please press star 0. It's not my pleasure. Turn the call over to Dan Katzenberg, Vice President of Investor Relations.
Please go ahead. ...quarter investor conference call. We will spend a few minutes going through the financial and operating highlights, and then we will open it up for Q&A. I would also like to direct you to the homepage of our website, at interiominstream.com, where we have provided a separate earnings call presentation that will be reviewed during today's call. Today's call may contain certain non-GAAP financial measures. Please refer to the earnings press release for important disclosures regarding special measures. Joining me on the call today are Michael Kennedy, CEO and President of Intero Midstream, Justin Agnew, CFO of Intero Midstream, and Lenny Krueger, CFO of Intero Resources.
With that, I will turn the call over to Mike. Thanks, Dan. More on my comments on slide number three. Last year has been an exciting year for growth in Appalachia, and more importantly, Intero Midstream. During the second quarter, we gathered over 4.1 BCF per day of gas, which was almost a 20% increase year over year. This growth was driven by the successful integration of the HG midstream assets, this increased scale, premier footprint, and strong balance sheet positions in Terra midstream to capture the abundant opportunities that are beginning to materialize in the region. To this point, we've seen an acceleration of new gas-fired power generation project announcements and supply deals, including a two-gigawatt combined cycle power plant in Doddridge County, West Virginia, accessed by AM's joint venture pipeline. We expect this trend to continue as final investment decisions and construction startups accelerate, providing increased visibility into the Appalachian demand growth story. Looking ahead, we are positioning our infrastructure to support this significant demand growth over the next several years. This starts with beginning construction on our first intrastate regional pipeline called Eastside Express. This large diameter east-west pipeline will enhance the regional connectivity of our dry gas gathering system with several downstream market outlets. We plan to phase in this project over the next several years as new market opportunities arise with the objective of increasing optionality and supporting low-cost dry gas growth. As the industrial builder in the state of West Virginia that gathers half of the gas produced in the state, we view this project as step one in positioning Intero midstream to capture the incremental production need to fulfill the visible-to-demand growth. In our view, this production growth will have to come from high-quality, investment-grade producers with multi-decade inventories like Intero Resources. In addition to this project, the opportunity to set up ahead of Ontario Midstream is larger than ever. In aggregate, we are evaluating several billion dollars of infrastructure opportunities within the region and will be selective with projects that are near-term, actionable, and accretive to our free cash flow and generate attractive rates of return. Before turning the call over to Justin, I wanted to briefly touch on the early results we are seeing on our first return to the dry gas Marcellus in over a decade. As you can see on slide number four, URs on our revisit were over 60% higher than offset wells completed the last time we were actively developing the area. This highlights the productivity improvements from enhanced completion designs and validates the decades of underlying resource that underpins the growth outlook at Ontario Midstream. With that, I'll turn the call over to Justin.
Thanks, Mike. I'll start with our second quarter highlights on slide. The second quarter represents the first full quarter of contributions successfully integrated. The adjusted EBITDA for the second quarter was a company record $289 million, which was a 2% increase year-over-year, driven by an increase in gathering volumes. Looking ahead to the third quarter, we expect high single-digit sequential EBITDA growth in Q3, driven by increased volumes, which keeps us on track to achieve our full-year EBITDA guidance. Capital invested during the quarter was $47 million, which helped generate $80 million of free cash flow after dividends. This quarter marks the 12th consecutive quarter of generating free cash flow after dividends, highlighting the consistency and durability of cash flows over the last three years. I'll conclude my prepared remarks on slide number six, which highlights our pro forma balance sheet and maturity schedule. In July, we received over $370 million of damages and interest from Veolium. Pro forma for these proceeds, our leverage was 2.8 times, below our three times target, and well ahead of schedule. Access cash on hand and available capacity under our undrawn credit facility positioned us to call our nearest term. As a result, we have no near-term maturities, and we have converted that debt into lower-cost, prepayable debt on our credit facility, while maintaining significant liquidity. This financial flexibility is critical in today's environment as we position Intero midstream to execute on the large opportunity set Mike referenced. This flexibility and project opportunity set, in addition to our organic growth strategy, position us well to continue delivering shareholder value over the long term. With that, operator, we are ready to open up for Q&A.
Operator
Thank you. We'll now be conducting a question and answer session. If you'd like to be placed in the question queue, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. If you'd like to move yourself from the queue, please press star 2. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. Our first question today is coming from John McKay from Goldman Sachs. Your line is now live.
Hey, guys. Thank you for the time. Let's start on Eastside Express. Just wondering if there's a little more you can share with us in terms of CapEx expectations and the contracting side. Is this AR underwriting? Are you looking to get customers on the demand side to underwrite? Maybe just walk us through the spending and the return profile.
Yeah, it's really AR underwriting, but it's $200 million to $300 million over the next two to three years, so I think about kind of $100 million each year.
I think it has seven interconnects with long-haul pipelines, big pipe one and a half to two bcf a day so there will be opportunities but solely underwritten by intero resources and its development plans but with optionality to get third-party business and connect with all those different pipes that's helpful thank you and then um maybe just looking broadly you mentioned the several billion dollars of opportunities maybe just walk us through some So in the general buckets that could include, is there anything in there that could kind of dovesail with some of the top-saving initiatives that AR has been talking about, or should we kind of think about this as pretty separate?
Yeah, no, I think you've heard about all the different power plant construction data center construction in West Virginia. You know, that's capturing that from a midstream perspective, building these type of regional pipelines or laterals off of existing pipelines to those type of projects. I referenced it on the AAR call, but a decade ago, you know, a good go-by was the Stonewall Pipeline. We had to farm that out. We didn't have the ability to build that internally, whether from capital or expertise. Now that's not the case. We are the builder in this area of the world. We have a million acres dedicated to us from AR. We have all these demand projects and power plants within that acreage or close to it. So we will be building those pipelines and laterals to those type of projects within the state of West Virginia.
Appreciate that. Maybe just a clarification. Is there a kind of time frame on that that you can throw out there?
No, this is our first one, the Eastside Express. So that's over the next two to three years. That's a 28, 29 time frame. We're hopeful to announce more in the near term.
Operator
Thank you. Thank you. Next question is coming from Jeremy Tott from J.P. Morgan. Your line is now live.
Good morning. Just wanted to peel back that several billion of CapEx opportunities, as you said there. And it sounds like some of this could be servicing third parties, you know, beyond AR here. And just wondering that part of the business, how much opportunity do you see to grow, you know, as far as servicing other producers or just, you know, in general moving beyond what, you know, AR provides?
Yeah, I'm looking at a project backlog right now. There's 15 projects that generally make that up, all within the state of West Virginia. So that's what we're looking at. And Terrell Midstream could be involved solely or more comfortable with ARs. We know exactly when they drill wells and where the gas goes. and very likely associated with AR, but there are 15 projects on this list I'm looking at right now, and AR is probably happening.
Okay, got it. Thank you for that. And then just pivoting towards water here, just wondering what opportunities on the water beneficial reuse side you might see there. You know, given disposal costs much higher in the Northeast versus Texas, does that create more incentive, you know, economic benefit to recycle here? Just wondering, you know, what that – you know, any updates there?
Yeah, for AR, it's terrific. You know, to have a closed-loop water system that, you know, is in a kind of cost plus 13 versus the kind of disposal cost that you referenced. That's great for AR. Also great for AM because that closed-loop system is the freshwater distribution where it gets nice returns both from a produced water disposal reuse. It's really a benefit to both parties. It also allows AR to complete in that 14, 15, 16 stages range and not have water be a logistics issue, so very beneficial to both. We'll connect the HG system. We're connecting it as we speak. That will be what's responsible, and it could be more than this, but what we've talked about on the high single-digit EBITDA growth for 27, That's just connecting the water systems to get the water down to the HG area. So that will benefit us going forward into 27 with the EBITDA growth on top of what we have.
That's very helpful there. And apologies if I missed the details on the AR call. But with regards to, you know, power generation investment, the governor has a 50 by 50 goal. So clearly a lot of appetite in state to develop new generation there. And just wondering, I guess, Intero's appetite to, you know, more fully, I guess, embrace that build-out, you know, going further downstream, what have you. Just any thoughts on that side?
Yeah, we fully embrace that. We're the only investment-grade rib producer in West Virginia that's focused solely on West Virginia. We are the midstream builder. We've built everything up here over the last decade. So you combine those two, and we produce about half. So, we would be a logical person to benefit or entities to benefit from that initiative Governor asked.
Operator
Thank you. Next question is coming from Samil Sabal from Keyport Global. Your line is now live.
Thanks for the time this morning. Most of my questions have been hit, but I just had one clarification with regard to the opportunity to contract for the gas to ultimate consumer. So I was curious, you know, when you're talking for those contracts, are you contracting with the power producers in the region, or you're more focused on contracting with the data center entities per se?
It's all of the above, both. So we're building the Eastside Express just knowing the Antara's development and where that's going and where the interconnects are and just the opportunity set in front of us. We want to get in front of that and be positioned well so when these opportunities present themselves, we are positioned to deliver gas to them.
Operator
Thank you. Next question today is coming from Ned Baramoff from Wells Fargo. Your line is now live.
Yeah, hi. Thanks for taking the question. Just wanted to go back to the timeline for additional infrastructure or intrastate projects you're currently working on. I think you noted you plan to announce potentially other projects soon. We're just wondering if construction of these projects would potentially overlap with that of the Eastside Express project?
Yeah, not in 26, but 27 and beyond. That's probably a good assumption.
Understood. And then I guess you mentioned the AR contracts or AR will underwrite the project. I was just wondering if the contracts would be in a take or pay type of format or will there be volumetric exposure from AM's perspective?
I should say credit stations from AR, but because we know where AR drills and the plants are drilling, there's no need for those MVCs because we know the volumes will be there.
Understood. And then maybe one more, if I could. It seems that curtailments will be used a little bit more to better align the timing of production at AR with gas prices. Can you talk about the impact to AM's results, and does this imply that volumes going forward will have a little bit more pronounced seasonality?
Yeah, no, I mean, we're talking $50 million a day. I think AM gathered 4.1 BCF, so that's about 1% for maybe one quarter of the year. So maybe you're looking at 0.25. That doesn't move the needle for AM.
Operator
Thank you. We've reached the end of our question and answer session. I'd like to turn the floor back over for any further closing comments.
Thanks, everyone, for joining the second quarter conference call today. If you have any follow-up questions.
Operator
Thank you. That does conclude today's teleconference. Let me disconnect your line at this time and have a wonderful day. We thank you for your participation today.
