Good afternoon and thank you for standing by and welcome to the quarterly earnings conference call your lines are in a listen only mode until the question and answer session of today's conference at that time you may press star followed by the number one to ask a question please unmute your phones and state your name when prompted today's conference is being recorded if you have any objections you may dismiss at this time it is now my pleasure to turn the call over to Mr. Rich Kinder executive chairman of Kinder Morgan sir you may begin Thank you, Michelle.

Before we begin, as usual, I'd like to remind you that KMI's earnings released today and this call include forward-looking statements within the meeting of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 and the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as well as certain non-GAAP financial measures. Before making any investment decision, we strongly encourage you to read our full disclosures on forward-looking statements and use of non-GAAP financial measures set forth at the end of our earnings release, as well as review our latest filings with the SEC for important material assumptions, expectations, and risk factors that may cause actual results to differ materially from those anticipated and described in such forward-looking statements. In previous quarterly calls, I've emphasized the positive attributes of the natural gas story, concentrating primarily on the rapidly growing demand in America. But as we all know, the gas market is international in nature, and a great deal of the growth potential for U.S. production is driven by that worldwide increase in demand. So I thought today I would spend a bit of time sharing some thoughts on what's driving that overseas growth. Chief economists of a major oil company recently estimated that global gas demand is expected to increase by 25% over the next 25 years, and I don't believe that that projection is unreasonable, and it affirms my belief that natural gas will inevitably remain a key source of energy for the long term around the globe. The factors underpinning that growth are pretty easy to understand. Demographers project continued substantial growth in worldwide population over that time period in the range of 2 billion additions by 2050. A great bulk of that increase will occur in the emerging markets of Asia and Africa, where the need for energy is particularly acute as large portions of the population move into the middle class, which drives additional energy consumption. Because there is a lack of local production and an inability to access gas by land-based delivery in most of those nations, it will be LNG, which will satisfy the bulk of this additional demand, and I think it will grow faster than the overall demand for natural gas. Now, what's the impact of all this international growth on the U.S. energy segment? I believe that American exports of LNG will play a critical role in supplying this international LNG demand. The U.S. has been the top global producer of natural gas for 15 consecutive years and the world's top exporter of LNG since 2023. I believe the U.S. role becomes even more important in light of recent developments in the Middle East. Customers on the receiving end want security of supply without undue worries about disruptions caused by military actions, and this benefits the position of U.S. supply. This makes us confident that a major portion of the LNG required will move through America's rapidly growing liquefaction terminals. Consistent with this view is the recent estimate of S&P Global Commodity Insights that LNG feed gas demand in America will increase by 3.5 BCF a day this summer compared to the summer of 2024, and that it will more than double by 2030. That should be a real positive for Kendra Morgan, inasmuch as we move about 40% of all the feed gas for those facilities. When you add the international LNG growth to the robust need for gas to satisfy U.S. domestic power and industrial demand, examples of which are reflected in the new expansions that Kim and the team will be discussing on this call, it signals to me that the positive natural gas story has legs and will last for decades to come. With that, I'll turn it over to Kim and the team.

Okay. Thanks, Bruce. Our financial results for the quarter show strong growth over the second quarter of 2024, with adjusted EBITDA increasing by 6% and adjusted EPS increasing by 12%. For the year, we currently expect to exceed our original budget, which already reflected very nice growth, by at least the contribution from the outrigger acquisition. It's an amazing time to be in the natural gas industry. This is certainly the best opportunity set I've seen during my 24 years in this industry. The underlying market fundamentals are strong, with U.S. natural gas demand expected to grow by 20% between now and 2030 by Woodmax estimates. The federal permitting environment has improved. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is issuing permits very quickly. We've seen some recent FERC action, which is helpful, including a 50% increase in the prior notice limit and a one-year waiver of the five-month waiting period between the time before you can start construction, between the time the permit is issued and you can start. The Supreme Court ruling on NEPA should help narrow the scope of the NEPA reviews and make nuisance lawsuits more difficult. The recent budget reconciliation bill delivers nice tax benefit. As a result, we expect significant cash tax benefits in 2026 and 2027 and do not expect KMI to be a material cash taxpayer until 2028. The one fly in the ointment is tariffs. At this point, we still do not believe that the tariffs will have a significant impact on project economics. For our large projects, MSGCX and Bridge, that together comprise almost two-thirds of our backlog, We currently estimate that the impact of tariffs to be roughly 1% of project costs, which has not changed from our estimate last quarter. Our project backlog increased from 8.8 to 9.3 billion during the quarter. We added 1.3 in new projects and placed approximately 750 million of projects in service. The projects we added included Trident Phase II and the Louisiana Line Texas Access Project, which include moving natural gas from Katy, Texas into the Louisiana LNG market. We also added two NGPL projects. We also approved approximately $500 million of CapEx for Kinderhawk, which is supported by Life of Lease contracts to accommodate a significant volume ramp-up by our customers. Currently, approximately 50% of the projects in our backlog will serve power demand. The multiple on the backlog is around 5.6 times, slightly improved from Q1 as the projects we placed in the backlog were at a lower multiple than the projects we placed in service. Overall, despite $6 billion in project additions, we continue to see very nice, future investment opportunities as tom martin said to me the other day we aren't in the first inning anymore but we aren't anywhere near the seventh inning stretch our strategy remains unchanged we own and operate stable fee-based assets which are core to the energy infrastructure we use our significant cash flow generated by these assets to projects and we return money to our shareholders all while maintaining a solid balance sheet with that i'll turn it over to tom

thanks kim primarily due to lng deliveries on tennessee gas pipeline lng deliveries on our turn down one percent are still ramping back up 2024 for the full year we expect 25 bucks and the need for increased production to meet lng demand growth that is ramping up throughout the remainder of the year looking forward we continue to see significant incremental project opportunities across our natural gas pipeline network this pipeline segment refined products volumes were up two percent and crew two percent in the quarter 2024 2025 then in 2024 business segment our liquid at 94 continue to remain support in the new york harbor 25 assuming likely 100 percent lease through 2026 and 97 a significant percentage of the fleet at higher market rates and have extended the average length of our firm cotton contract commitments at eight percent in

the quarter four percent below 2024 and one percent 25 budget 29.2 which is a dollar 17 per share annualized 2024 generated net income attributable to kmi of 715 million dollars EPS of $0.32, up $0.06 from last year. Some of that benefit was due to favorable mark-to-market on unsettled hedges, which we treated certain items. But on an adjusted net income basis, which excludes certain items, we generated $619 million and adjusted EPS of $0.28, up 13 and 12% from last year, respectively. So even excluding the favorable certain items, we still experienced nice double-digit growth from last year. our growth was driven by greater contributions from our natural gas expansion projects the outrigger acquisition and attractive multiple excuse attractive natural gas capacity sales and other services driven by favorable demand on our assets we also received greater contributions from our jones act tankers cheat we ended the quarter with 32.3 billion dollars of net debt and at 4.0 times net debt to adjusted EBITDA ratio. That 4.0 times is down from 4.1 times from the first quarter, the acquisition of Outrigger. We expect to end the year with net debt to adjusted EBITDA that rounds up to 3.9 times. Our net debt has increased by 623 million from the beginning of the year. We generated cash flow from operations of 2.811 billion We paid dividends of 1.3 billion dollars. We've invested total capital of 1.42 billion. The outrigger acquisition was approximately 650 million dollars and all of our other items were a use of cash of about 65 million and that gets you to the 623 million increase for the year. As Kim mentioned, we expect to exceed budget by at least the contribution from the outrigger acquisition. our budgeted 2025 adjusted EBITDA growth from 24 including the outrigger acquisition our EBITDA growth would increase to five percent and our adjusted EPS growth would remain at an attractive 10 percent from 20. most of our 2025 budgeted growth comes from expansion project contributions and we remain on target to place those expansion projects in service on time and on budget with only minor variances. The largest expansion contributions come from Evangeline Pass project and our South Texas to Houston project, our Texas intrastate system. Both of those are now in service. In my final items, in June Moody's placed our credit rating and they joined S&P who put us on positive earlier in the year. Our credit spreads have already improved some as a result. So we're off to a good start for the year tracking to beat our budget. We've sanctioned additional attractive projects that will add to our future growth and expect meaningful cash flow benefits from tax reform. I'll turn it back to Kim for Q&A.

Michelle, if you'll come back on and we will take questions.

Thank you. At this time, if you would like to ask a question, you may press star 1.

And to withdraw your question, please press star 2. one moment please for the first question Teresa Chen with Barclays you may go ahead good afternoon and congratulations on the progress in the commercial backlog under what seems to be fierce competition do you think the commercial landscape has changed with these demand tailwinds on a structural basis and what do you think has allowed kinder to win many of these projects and what kind of learnings can you share that might shape your strategy going forward on the heels of these commercial wins.

Okay. A couple of points on that. One, I think part of what allows us to be competitive is the existing asset footprint that we have. We've got an outstanding footprint where we can build a footprint to deliver volumes to customers. I'd say the other Other things are I think people trust us to be able to build projects and get them delivered. If they've got a significant investment that they need natural gas delivered, they don't want to be waiting on those molecules. When they get that project in service, they want to be able to have the supply there. So I think our track record in building and delivering projects is helpful. And then I think the way we operate, you know, in terms of maintenance or other items that our customers know on that maintenance at times when our customers would be least impacted and trying to find times when, you know, our customers, we can find alternative delivery for them. So, you know, I think that's some of the things that go into the commercial discussions and allow us, you know, allow us to win. You know, you can see from what we've added to the backlog, we've been very successful.

Thank you. And looking forward on additional projects to come potentially in the backlog, as far as the expansion westward from the Permian, what is the progress on building additional natural gas infrastructure on that front? And what would something like Copper State Connector amount to in terms of cost, economics, as well as the potential for subsequent brownfield expansions down the line?

Okay, let's don't get too far ahead of ourselves. On Copper State, there's clearly a need in Arizona. I think the Arizona utilities have need for more natural gas. I think there's the potential for data centers, and we're having conversations on those products. Obviously, that would be a large project, or State would. I mean, there are others looking at. But it is a competitive and challenging on these larger projects. multiple different shippers. And then any project that we do on this front, you know, the project's going to have to meet our return thresholds. And so, we're going to be very disciplined about how we deploy capital on this. You know, but, I mean, a project could be anywhere from $4 to $5 billion-ish.

Very helpful. Thank you.

Thank you. Our next caller is Michael Blum with Wells Fargo. You may go ahead, sir.

Thanks. Good afternoon, everybody. I had a capital allocation question really between gas pipelines and gathering investments. You talked about this big opportunity set on the gas pipeline side. Your average multiple is between five and six times. So how do we think about a $500 million investment in Kinderhawk? Does that mean this angel investment is generating an even higher return than that, given the higher risk profile? Just kind of think through all that.

Okay, sure. So let me start by saying no change investment decisions. The way we've always done it is we look at the risk. You're looking at – on the risk side, you're looking at how stable are the cash flows. Is it a taker, is it a life of lease dedication? Does it have, you know, if it's a 20-year contract, what's the credit on that? And so, you know, when you have a return threshold range, you're going to skew to the lower side, commodity exposure, then you're going to look for a return at the high.

Thanks for that. And then just want to see an update on how you're thinking about behind-the-meter opportunities. I know you've talked about maybe having something in place with partners. I wanted to see where that stands and how meaningful a driver of future CAPEX that could be.

So I think, you know, when we think about where we've seen the most action on the data center front, if you will, is really from regulated utilities. I mean, that's where we're seeing most stuff get done. And so, you know, a regulated utility is able to come out there getting a PPA with the data center provider. We have not seen a lot of IPPs that have announced projects at this point in time. But obviously we are talking to them, and that is, you know, that's a reasonable possibility because I think if IPPs can get contracts, you know, they'll be able to build as well.

But I'm going to turn it over to Sethel and he can talk a little bit more about our strategy So, one of the things, you know, as we look at the landscape on data centers, speed to market is key. And so, as we look at, you know, the opportunity, as Kim said, our focus has thus far been on the utility side and helping them with their power needs. We are looking at, you know, kind of a broader structure such as, you know, where we've got some key partners that specialize in their respective fields. You know, our expertise lies in bringing supply to the point. You know, we let the other folks do what they do best, including hyperscalers that know how to build data centers. and so you know I think the concept is we we are looking at a few key sites in different areas and seeing if we can kind of pull together a project specifically tied to behind the meter thank you our next caller is John McKay with Goldman Sachs you may go ahead sir hey everyone thank you for the time I'm going to pick up on on this project thread of course maybe just talking about the backlog on the gas side, you mentioned about 50% power utilities at this point.

That's arguably a larger share than power has in kind of the go forward gas demand growth we're looking at relative to LNG, I suppose. Maybe could you just talk a little bit about how you'd expect that 50% to kind of trend from here?

Would incremental projects on the horizon, maybe putting aside copper state for second start leaning more lng but i mean we need to wait for more fids maybe just frame up like how that mix looks over the next couple quarters or years yeah i mean i'd say it's hard to project exactly what that mix is going to look like obviously the biggest driver of demand growth you know both in woodmax projections and in our you know internal projections as lng and there's a doubling of, you know, expected doubling of LNG, as we've said. Generally, when they get sanctioned, there's an initial project that is mainline from the facility to the nearest liquid point, but then generally find more competitive supply and diversified supply. And so that leads to additional projects, additional projects down the line. You know, one of the things that we've consistently said, and that we consistently see is, and this is especially true in the Woodmack numbers, is, you know, we don't think that the Woodmack numbers accurately reflect the growth that we think we're going to see in power. And, you know, that could be a difference, but long long-term. The demand is, we're seeing power demand in Arkansas, Louisiana, you know, I mean, Texas. And so, I mean, the amount of power demand, I think, and the projects that we're going to see on that front are, you know, when you look at expectations for demand in power, I just think there is an alignment there.

That's helpful. That's interesting. And maybe just for my next question you touched on the new tax rules um should open up some incremental cash flow for you guys i guess just wondering if you can kind of put a bit of a number around the incremental cash kind of looking forward and then on related point does it change how you think about you know your ability to go after projects your kind of implicit cost of capital i know you're kind of it's defending the return profile you want to get but you know does an incremental um tax framework change that at all hey john it's david um for the tax reform uh benefit we're we're not quantifying

it any more specifically than just saying we've got nice benefits from it uh beginning in 2025 it's not material in 2025 to our to our forecast but we'll see some benefits this year because it was retroactive to the beginning of the year. We are seeing substantial benefits in 26 and 27. So as Kim said, we don't expect to be a material federal income taxpayer in either of those years as a result of the tax reform. We see nice benefits thereafter, and it also depends a little bit on when we put new projects into service because the full expensing provision is really the biggest piece of the benefit that we're getting from.

And I would say, you know, having that incremental cash flow doesn't change our investment strategy. So we're not moving our return thresholds. You know, our view is and continues to be that for good return projects, there's unlimited capital, and we will find a way to finance them. So, you know, obviously we've got a lot of cash flow available, more now than we did before. You know, we've got room on our balance sheet. And, you know, I think with the projects that we're doing or needed to, you know, we could.

Thank you. Our next caller is Jeremy Tonette with J.P. Morgan. You may go ahead, sir.

Good afternoon.

Good afternoon, Jeremy.

I want to turn to Arkansas, if I could. We've seen recent reports of hyperscaler activity there. And I want to double-click on your Texas-Arkansas power project. Notice the binding open season there. And, you know, given the 400 already prearranged there, it seems like that could support two gigs, you know, very nice size for the project right there. But do you expect more to come along at that point? Do you see the possibility for more demand beyond that, or really kind of have a fit-for-purpose pipe right here and ready to go? And anything you could provide as far as incremental details there would be helpful.

Yeah, Jeremy, this is Seifel. so uh i'll backspace on on that and tell you that it's uh you know that project is supporting power uh but but broadly when you think about you know the opportunities that we are seeing uh incremental opportunities that it not only in arkansas texas but along the that midwest corridor uh we we do see incremental demand on the power side uh you know where where where the utility ultimately uses it you know that'll be up to the utility um you know as we talked about we're looking at our own behind the meter opportunities uh so i think you know there is a robust pipeline of opportunities that we are trying to pursue specifically in arkansas and really broader

across the network and i'd say we don't always do a data center because that they're using it for so we don't always have clear visibility through typically the power right right understood just the size of it there.

It could support some nice power for the utility, not for kinder, understood there. But I'll leave that there. And just wondering, post the Georgia Power IRP filing here, does this impact, I think, the opportunity set as you see it in the southeast? Could there be upside, I guess, to your current expansion plan scope to make those expansions larger?

Yeah, look, I mean, as we've alluded to on previous calls, I think there is a broader opportunity set you know we're early in our discussions there but the fundamentals look sound and and the opportunity set looks good with the network uh there including you know the latest set of expansions and uh you know as we alluded to on the last the last call i think rich said we're giving you've got ancillary expansion opportunities to layer on top of that we will pursue those as they present themselves thank you manav gupta with ubs you may go ahead sir good afternoon it looks like you have increased the size of trident from 1.5 to 2 bcs and as i

remember you did this with mississippi crossings also the pipe got announced at 1.5 and got scaled up very quickly to 2.1 so i'm trying to understand you know what's driving this incremental demand you come in you announce a project and very quickly you're able to size it up so help us talk through those dynamics a little?

Yeah. I mean, I'm trying to think are mental demands associated with LNG, really easy expansion because there all we needed to do was, I think, when you go to some looping, so that's a little bit bigger nugget to, you know, more volume to do phase three. But, you know, that pipeline is in a great, great location. And, you know, to be able to get, you know, molecules from Louisiana is something people have been trying to do for a long time. And the combination of Trident and KMLA does that.

Yeah, in terms of the timing piece, Manav, I mean, really, it's when we get the executed contracts to get us the returns that are sufficient. We know we have other customers that are interested.

We'll FID the project if it makes sense, and then we continue to try and build upon it. that's that's been the strategy perfect and it looks like the backlog you know also benefit from the ngpl new projects can you talk about a little more about these projects looks like the power plant related projects so if you could help us understand this incremental projects from ngpl that added to the backlog in this quarter thank you yeah they're both power projects uh to serve power demand one's in arkansas and one's in uh wisconsin essentially yeah that's that's probably all we can tell you at this point.

Thank you. Our next caller is Jean Ann Salisbury with Bank of America. You may go ahead.

Hi. I just wanted to follow up to Kim's answer to John's question earlier about when LNG projects sign up for their gas pipeline needs vis-a-vis when they get sanctioned. You've obviously had a ton of LNG contracting activity over the last quarter. I So I guess my question is if you believe that those projects have kind of already signed up for the gas takeaway that they would need, or if that's basically coming as they sanction the projects over the next year.

Generally what we see, and Cecil will jump in here, is that when a project gets, to get a project FID, they need to get their financing and put their financing in place. And so to put that financing in place, usually they've got to have a gas supply. And so that's when the initial project, as I'll call it, from the facility to the nearest liquid point gets sanctioned. And then generally what happens after that is as they continue and they're thinking about really how am I going to supply this on a daily basis, then they start looking at, okay, that liquid point is very competitively priced. I might want to get some cheaper molecules that goes down or something. Maybe I also need some diversification. So that happens between the time the project gets sanctioned and before it gets put in service.

Let me just add to what Kim says. Given the fact that this demand is occurring primarily along the Gulf Coast, where our system is so extensive, this kind of opportunity just lends itself to a structure like we have. I think we cannot overemphasize the benefit that we have from the infrastructure that already exists and the ability to expand it on a reasonable basis.

That's very clear. Thank you. And then as a follow-up, I wanted to ask about some of the dynamics of Permian gas pipelines. We're very tight on egress capacity today, but something like 5 BCFD comes online next year, including your own GCX expansion, and I think there are a few other possible projects out of the Permian that seem to be progressing. So I guess the question is, if there's some concern that this could put pressure on rates for Kinder Morgan later in the decade, if some of those initial pipeline contracts begin to roll off, can you just kind of talk about how you would frame that risk of Permian overbuild?

Sure. So GCX and PHPR II, I think given that those were two things, one, you know, the… so i mean what the the other thing you know as we think about the the the two pipes that we have

if you're talking about kind of re-contracting risk etc lines fit very well in our network and and we have the ability to extract uh probably you know in my view so you know we view that risk as low uh when we think about you know the next project out of the basin we're going to be very prudent as we think about our focus has shifted to demand pull when you think about the projects that we've sanctioned over the last couple of quarters. So if there is another producer push project, it would obviously have to be very well contracted and for a longer term.

So those pipes go into our Texas intrastate system. They feed contracts that we have in the Austin market. So we have in-use demand attached to that, and that's something that we can offer shepherds and customers that other people can't offer. And then the other thing I was going to say is that, you know, when we run our economics in order to be conservative to make sure we get good returns on these projects, we assume generally, we assume a step down in rates whenever contracts roll. Not saying that that's going to happen here, but that's, you know, that's part of how we make sure that we get the returns we're expecting to get.

Thank you. Our next caller is Keith Stanley with Wolf Research. You may go ahead, sir.

Hi, good afternoon. I wanted to start on the 500 million Hainesville gathering project. When would the expansion capacity be in service and what's the projected timeline for the volume ramp to get to returns?

And then relatedly, how do you think, if at all, about potential Hainesville takeaway pipelines, given all the Louisiana LNG projects we're seeing and your expanded gathering presence so you're on your first question um you know we we we get we we plan on getting all of our facilities in by the end of the uh fourth quarter uh next year and so we do see volume ramping up along the way really you know we're adding you know we're adding treating capacity and we're adding uh incremental pipe loops just to get unlock some of the hydraulics there uh look as we think about the outlook in the haynesville you know you've got a you've got a very productive basin that's very close to the the demand centers that we've been talking about and so you know there's a definite need to get incremental molecules to those consuming basins consuming customers the consumers right we got to get the physical molecule there as far as the the build out the existing build out that's there given the growth that we see on the gulf coast I think all All that does is create incremental opportunities for us in both our interstate and intrastate networks to be able to connect the dots. You know, you've got a lot of convergence at Gillis right now. We're exploring opportunities downstream of Gillis to connect the market to that supply that's aggregating at Gillis. And if there's an opportunity, you know, we could even consider tying in some of that kinderhawk production on another takeaway project out of the basin. But once again, all of that's got to be contracted for and it's got to make economic sense.

Great. Thanks for that. Second one, I wanted to follow up on some of your opening comments, Kim, on the permitting improvement and the order 871 and no longer having to wait the five-month waiting period before starting construction. When you think in aggregate about those improvements that you're seeing, could this meaningfully accelerate the timeline on some of your larger projects versus original expectations?

So the answer is it depends. So this is a one on 871. It's one year, but they've got it out for notice and comment. And I think, you know, our expectation is that they likely make this permanent, but we'll just have to wait and see. You know, not a lot of benefit if they permanent then yes there depends on the procurement schedule and so when we get the pipe and when we get the compression so there are certain projects that we will be able to move up by that five months and take advantage of and there are others that we won't the other thing I'd say is on is on the prior notice by 50% so now it's 61 million that means you don't have to file for a 7c for projects that are less than us is much quicker and so we will definitely benefit from the other thing i'd say um so we're not waiting on uh the notice and comment to be complete i think we uh view the likely outcome of that favorably at this point thank you our

next caller is zach van evan with tph you may go ahead sir hi guys thanks for taking my question And just going back to the Haynesville expansion real quick, can you guys speak to the volume or capacity that you're adding there? And then is this mainly from your larger customers, or are you seeing demand from some of the privates that feed your system as well?

It's both. So it's from the larger customers and it's from the privates. You know, somebody may be able to speak to the capacity. But, I mean, they are ramping up significantly. You know, if you look at our supply numbers, and Tom, help me with this because you talked to the board about this today, but we are expecting, Wood Mac is expecting a doubling in the production coming out of the Haynesville. So, I mean, it's increasing by, I don't know, from 13 to 26. 26, yeah. To 26 by 2034. So, I mean, that gives you a sense of the type of volumes that we are talking about.

That makes sense. and then maybe one on the lng side i know tennessee gas feeds the plaque of mines facility and you know vg continues to talk about potential further expansion at that site if they were to do that does tennessee gas have the ability to expand more to feed lng in that area they were to do that i think it further creates opportunities for us you know with these projects that we're bringing across I think ultimately it would you know Tennessee is already full in multiple directions

but we've got you know the bottleneck the bottleneck and capability as we bring this incremental supply from west to east that I've been talking about on the last few calls you know we talk about Texas Access Project which is kind of you know continuing on the theme we talked about Trident then we talked about the header and now we're actually extending into Texas to take volumes across to Louisiana that helps the bottleneck and so if Plaquemines were to you know further expand we would look at opportunities to bring incremental gas to the basin to the to that area from not only MSX but some of the other from some of the other pipes in the area including potentially looking at accessing the Haynesville in a different direction right and so you know When we talk about Gillis and kind of the directions that these pipes may head, one of those may be going that further eastward direction to kind of help fill that incremental need.

Thank you. Our next caller is Jason Gableman with TD Cowan. You may go ahead, sir.

Good afternoon. Thanks for taking my questions. The first one I wanted to ask was on the Bakken, given the outrigger deal's been closed for quite some time, I think, or at least six months. and double h is is close to ramping up here on the conversion so just wondering what the strategy is on the gaining volumes there and and kind of securing uh potentially higher rates that um that region has to offer versus other basins so so uh on the the integration as we talked about has gone well we're looking at you know incremental networking you know networking bottlenecks to be to gain further efficiencies out in the basin but as far as it goes as far as highland express goes uh you know we just continue to work with our customers there i don't have anything to report on that we're making progress but but nothing for this call okay um and then just a maybe longer term question you've you've talked a lot about the lng growth on the on the u.s gulf coast and the boon it's been for your business um there is some concern that after this wave of capacity there's going to be a potential oversupply in the market. And I wonder if in your conversations with LNG customers, hearing anything around a potential slowdown in contracting or need for additional piping into future plants after this wave of capacity comes online, or if your LNG customers really expect new builds to continue at pace through the decade and into the 2030s?

I mean, from my perspective, and you can see this from what, you know, the LNG builders are announcing, which is they continue to announce and projects get expanded. And I think part of the reason that you see that is it is in the U.S., number one. Number two, I think that, you know, from a trade negotiation standpoint, it helps on the balance of payments and the whole tariff discussion to take gas from the U.S. So, I mean, to date, we have not seen that with these customers.

Tom, you might share your model that you showed the board today in terms of overall growth and worldwide demand and and the u.s portion of it sure i mean it's rich between now and 2050 and the u.s have done an extremely good job of being getting timely and tremendous supply resource here in the u.s that behind these 20-year contracts that they signed with u.s developers and with customer midstream companies like us so i think the u.s is in a great deal so think that means more to come beyond what we see in the media thank you our next caller is

brandon bigham with scotiabank you may go ahead sir all right thanks for taking the questions uh just continuing on the lng theme here could you maybe discuss some of the incremental opportunities you see maybe outside the haynesville and concurrently which basin or basins do you expect to be sort of next on deck to meet all of that growth that you guys have been talking about yeah sure so uh outside of the haynesville you know we've we've talked about this before uh the lean eagleford is going to be important you know one of the key themes that's kind of coming to surface is uh low nitrogen you know the nitrogen quality of the gas and and you know

as you think about lng plant deficiencies you know lower nitrogen equates to better production so we think the lean eagleford is going to come into play especially as it pertains to some of the texas lng facilities you've obviously got the permian uh we you know when we think about the uh the utica and the marcellus uh you know given the the the constrained nature of the the basin it's going to be hard to get extra capacity out of there that being said we are evaluating some opportunities to move incremental gas out of the Utica down south using our Tennessee network. And so, you know, that's in its early phases. You know, it's going to take an all of the above approach because it's not just the LNG folks that are looking for molecules. It's the power demand that we just talked about. And it's also the existing organic LDC and the basic power that we've been talking about, you know, since January of 2024. All of that's going to be growing and needing access to molecules, so it's an all-of-the-above basin approach. You know, we've even talked about our Bakken egress project on the residue side, moving gas out west. I mean, that's another example of something that's going to come into play as this demand kind of matures.

Okay, great. And then maybe just on the budget, full-year budget commentary regarding the EBITDA, you know, reiterating the commentary there about exceeding by at least the outrigger contribution could you discuss some of the areas you see outperforming expectations in 2-h that sort of offsets some of the lighter performance we've seen through 1-h to kind of meet that expectation the outperformance in the second half of the year consistent with what we've seen in the first half of the year really.

Natural gas capacity acquisition contributions, gas business, the Jones Act tanker contributions contributing to the second half outperformance, and those are consistent with what we've seen in the first half. Between the first quarter and the second quarter, we didn't see some of that show up in the first quarter, but particularly in some of the PALs.

Thank you. Harry Matura with Barclays. You may go ahead, sir.

Good afternoon. David, earlier you made the point that most of the expected reconciliation bill benefits come from the treatment on depreciation, which I think makes sense because it doesn't look like the 30% of EBIT deductibility for interest was a material constraint for KMI. But having said that, does the expanded interest deductibility cause you to rethink anything on the financing or balance sheet side moving forward to take greater advantage of those tax benefits on interest expense down the road?

No, it really does. It's a good question, but no, it really doesn't. I think our our financing strategy is pretty straightforward and simple. It's pretty plain vanilla and, you know, we don't have a ton of external capital needs to fund our growth projects. We can fund, you know, two and a half billion dollars internally from cash flow that we generate. As that eBay dot continues to grow, that will continue to grow. And so we really just use our external financing strategy to refinance our maturity and this tax reform won't influence that.

Got it.

Thank you. At this time, I am showing no further questions. I'll turn the call back over to you for any closing comments.

Thank you very much. Have a good evening.

Thank you. This concludes today's conference call. You may go ahead and disconnect at this time.