Executive readout · one minute
Call research workspace
Read the call alongside every captured source. Audio, transcript, slides and SEC filings stay in one workspace.
Earnings call · FY2025 Q3
Executive readout · one minute
Read the call alongside every captured source. Audio, transcript, slides and SEC filings stay in one workspace.
Management tone
Confident
Net tone +62 · low hedging
Forward guidance
1 guided metrics
Management's latest ranges and targets are included below.
Research coverage
2 live sources
Switch sources without leaving this page or losing your listening position.
Open the source you need; every reader stays inside this workspace.
Stated verbally and extracted from the transcript.
| Metric | Period | Guided | Basis |
|---|---|---|---|
|
Adjusted EBITDA
full year 2025
|
$4.25B – $4.35B | Non-GAAP |
Listen and read together
The spoken word highlights as audio plays. Select any word to seek to that moment.
Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Pembina Pipeline Corporation Q3 2025 results conference call. At this time, all lines are in listen-only mode. Following the presentation, we will conduct a question-and-answer session. If at any time during this call you require immediate assistance, please press star zero for the operator. This call is being recorded on Friday, November 7, 2025. I would now like to turn the conference over to Dan Tucunel, VP of Capital Markets. Please go ahead.
Thank you, Danny. Good morning, everyone. Welcome to Pemina's conference call and webcast to review highlights from the third quarter of 2025. On the call today, we have Scott Burrows, President and CEO, and Cameron Goldate, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, along with other members of Pemina's leadership team. I would like to remind you that some of the comments made today may be forward-looking in nature and are based on Pemina's current expectations, estimates, judgments, and projections. Forward-looking statements we may express or imply today are subject to risks and uncertainties, which could cause actual results to differ materially from expectations. Further, some of the information provided refers to non-GAAP measures. To learn more about these forward-looking statements and non-GAAP measures, please see the company's management's discussion and analysis dated November 6, 2025, for the period ended September 30, 2025, as well as the press release Pemina issued yesterday. All materials are available online at pemina.com and on both Cedar Plus and Edgar. I will now turn things over to Scott.
Thanks, Dan. Yesterday, we reported our third quarter results, which were highlighted by quarterly adjusted EBITDA of $1.034 billion. We remain on track to deliver full-year results within our original 2025 adjusted EBITDA guidance range, and as Cam will discuss in more detail, and as we are three quarters of the way through 2025, we have updated and narrowed our guidance range to $4.25 billion to $4.35 billion. As we highlighted in the release yesterday, Pemina continues to execute its strategy, through which we strive to do two things. One, ensure the long-term resilience of our business, and two, provide investors with visibility to attractive growth through the end of the decade and beyond. The execution of PEMINA's strategy is highlighted by a number of recent developments. First, earlier this week, we were pleased to sign a 20-year agreement with Petronas for 1 million tonnes per annum of PEMINA's liquefaction capacity at the Cedar LNG facility. Petronas is a global LNG industry leader and one of the largest gas producers in Canada. We are very excited to expand our relationship with them and see this as an important development in Pemina's ongoing expansion of its export business. Pemina previously signed a 20-year take-or-pay liquefaction tolling service agreement for 1.5 million tons per annum of LNG to support the final investment decision on Cedar in June of 2024 and ultimately maintain key project timing and economic parameters within the expectation of remarketing the capacity at a later stage. By remarketing our CEDAR capacity, we are fulfilling Pemina's commitment to its financial guardrails and ensuring that the company's expansion into the LNG business is done within the risk profile of its existing business, characterized by its predominantly long-term, highly contracted, fee-based cash flow stream. We expect to reach definitive agreements for the remaining 0.5 million tons of our capacity by the end of 2025. Meanwhile, the project itself remains on time and on budget. Construction of the floating LNG vessel, including the hull and topside facilities, remain on schedule, and Cedar LNG has significantly advanced the onshore construction work. Pipeline construction is ahead of schedule, including the completion of all horizontal directional drill crossings. This is a major achievement and de-risked that portion of the project. Second, during the quarter, Temina and its partner, Kineticor, had an exciting announcement on the advancement of the Greenlight Electricity Centre, a proposed up to 1.8-gigawatt natural gas-fired power generation project designed to advance Alberta's innovation economy. Recent achievements include securing a 907-megawatt power grid allocation, which was subsequently assigned to a potential customer of Greenlight, to enable development of the customer's innovation infrastructure development as early as 2027, prior to the startup of Greenlight in 2030. In addition, a recently signed agreement with a reputable equipment manufacturer provides certainty of availability and delivery timing of two turbines to support the approximately 900 megawatt first phase of green light. Pemina and Connecticut continue to progress towards a final investment decision in the first half of 2026. We see green light as an on-strategy extension of Pemina's existing value chain and an opportunity to enhance growth by investing in long-term contracted infrastructure with investment-grade counterparties while diversifying our customer base. Green light would create incremental demand for natural gas and associated liquids production within Western Canada, and we believe Pemina is well-positioned to leverage the assets and capabilities of our current core business to further support the project and serve customer demand for gas egress and liquids handling and transportation. Most notably, the proximity of Pemina's Alliance Pipeline offers a potential accretive expansion opportunity to supply natural gas to green light. Third, we continue to realize contracting successes that are strengthening the core business. In our conventional pipeline business, we now have recontracted substantially all volumes available for renewal under contracts with expiry dates in 2025 and 2026. In addition to the previous updates we have provided around various recontracting successes, we recently signed new transportation agreements on the peace pipeline system for the renewal and addition of volumes totaling approximately 50,000 barrels per day with a weighted average term of approximately 10 years. Approximately 80% of the volumes are currently being serviced today, and 20% are new volumes taking effect in 2026. Within our transmission business unit, recent shipper elections on Alliance Pipeline has significantly strengthened its long-term contractual profile, with shippers taking an average of a 10-year total auction on approximately 96% of the 1.325 BCF per day of firm capacity available. Fourth, we continue to deliver on our capital projects on time and on or under budget in total pemina and pemina gas infrastructure are nearing completion on approximately 850 million dollars of projects that are expected to enter service throughout the first half of 2026. rfs4 the new fractionator within our red water complex has progressed to approximately 75 complete it continues to trend under budget and we have narrowed the expected in service date to the second quarter of 2026. pgi's wapiti expansion which will increase natural gas processing capacity at the Wapiti plant is trending on budget and we have narrowed its in-service date to the first quarter of 2026. And PGI's K3 co-generation facility is now trending under budget and we have narrowed its in-service date to the first quarter of 2026. Finally, we are progressing numerous accretive investment opportunities to meet growing demand for pipeline and transportation services. PEMIN is well advanced on the development of approximately $1 billion dollars of conventional pipeline projects to enable wcsb growth and position pemina to win new liquid transportation opportunities these investments would be supported by a combination of long-term taker pay agreements a cost of service structure and the land and facility dedications engineering activities are ongoing and subject to regulatory and board approval pemina expects to move forward with a fox creek to the mayo expansion of the peace pipeline system a tailored gordondale project and a birch to tailored northeast dc system expansion As well, we continue to observe continued growth from the Clearwater area and strong customer demand for incremental services on the Nipissi pipeline. Following successfully recontracting Nipissi over the last few years, Pemina expects it to be highly utilized in 2026 and is currently evaluating opportunities to increase egress capacity. Alliance Pipeline previously solicited non-binding expressions of interest for a new short-haul point-to-point transportation service on the Canadian segment of its system in northwest Alberta. The proposed expansion would provide natural gas delivery to a new meter station in Fort Saskatchewan for up to 350 million standard cubic feet per day of incremental capacity, with an anticipated in-service date in the fourth quarter of 2029. Based on the results, Alliance Pipeline is planning to launch a binding open season in the first quarter of 2026 for all interested parties. Pemina continues to differentiate itself as the only Canadian energy infrastructure company with an integrated value chain that provides a full suite of midstream and transportation services across all commodities, natural gas, NGL, condensate, and crude oil. Our scope, scale, and access to premium North American and global markets uniquely positions us to capture incremental new volumes while unlocking new avenues for growth. I will now turn things over to Cam to discuss in more detail the financial highlights of the third quarter.
Thanks, Scott. As Scott noted, Pemina reported third-quarter adjusted EBITDA of $1.034 billion. This represents a 1% increase over the same period in a prior year. In pipelines, major factors impacting the quarter included higher demand on seasonal contracts on Alliance Pipeline, higher revenue on the Peace Pipeline system due to increased tolls mainly related to contractual inflation adjustments, higher interruptible volumes on the peace pipeline system higher contracted volumes on the nipice pipeline and lower firm tolls on the caution pipeline due to recontracting in july 2024 and lower interruptible volumes due to narrower condensate price differentials offset by higher contracted volumes in facilities factors impacting the quarter included higher contribution from pgi primarily primarily related to transactions actions with white cap resources, higher capital recoveries, and higher volumes at the DuVernay complex. In marketing and new ventures, third quarter results reflect the net impact of lower net revenue due to a decrease in NGL margins as a result of lower NGL prices coupled with higher input natural gas prices at Oxable, higher NGL marketed volumes including no similar impact of the nine-day outage at Oxable in 2024, and lower realized gains on crude oil-based derivatives partially offset by lower realized losses on NGL-based derivatives. Finally, in the corporate segment, third quarter results were higher than the prior period due to lower incentive costs driven by the change in Peminist share price in the period compared to the third quarter of 2024. Earnings in the third quarter were $286 million. This represents a 26% decrease over the same period in the prior year. In addition to the factors impacting adjusted EBITDA, the decrease in earnings in the third quarter was primarily due to the net impact of the recognition of a gain on sale of the North segment of the Western pipeline, higher depreciation and amortization due to a decrease in the estimated useful life of an intangible asset, a share of loss in PGI due to an impairment on certain PGI assets and higher depreciation expense partially offset by the recognition of a gain in net finance costs and lower losses on the interest rate derivative financial instruments and commodity related derivatives and finally lower share of loss from cedar lng primarily due to the impact of hedging activities on the credit facility total volumes in the pipelines and facilities divisions were 3.6 million barrels of oil equivalent per day in the third quarter this represents an increase of 2% over the same period in the prayer year, primarily driven by higher contracted volumes on the Nipissi pipeline and the Peace Pipeline system, higher volumes at Redwater and Oxable due to no similar outages which occurred in the third quarter last year.
Now turning back to the full year, as Scott mentioned, we tightened our 2025 adjusted guidance range to $4.25 to $4.35 billion, which reflects year-to-date results as well as the current commodity price outlook for the remainder of the year. i'll now turn things back to scott thanks cam as we have summarized today we have delivered solid quarterly and year-to-date results both operationally and financially remain on track to deliver full year 2025 adjusted ebitda within our original guidance range and look forward to providing our outlook for 2026 with the release of our guidance and capital budget update in mid december as we work successfully to close out 2025 and plan for 2026 we cannot be more excited of what is ahead for Peminent and stakeholders. Developments within the WCSB are providing tremendous opportunities to strengthen and grow our business. Thank you for joining us this morning. Please open up the line for questions.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the question and answer session. Should you have a question, please press the star key followed by the number one on your touchtone phone. You will hear a prompt that your hand has been raised. Should you wish to decline from the polling process, please press the star key followed by the number two. If you're using a speakerphone, please lift the handset before pressing any keys. One moment, please, while we assemble the queue. Your first question comes from Teresa Chen of Barclays. Please go ahead.
Thank you for taking my questions. Given your updated guidance range and the mention of the current commodity outlook, can you share what you're seeing or hearing from your producer customers as far as the read-through to your pricing outlook as well as your volumetric expectations, not just for the remainder of this year, but also 2026?
Morning, Teresa. Yeah, right now, you know, obviously commodity prices are a little lower, you know, hovering around that $60 WTI. So what we're really doing right now is just meeting with all of our customers, really listening to what they, their short-term, you know, the latter half of year, the end of 25, and what they need for transportation services going into 26. So we'll have a much more refined outlook with respect to 2026 when we do our guidance and capital press release in December. But right now, we're just really in listening mode and going to really try to meet our customers' needs.
And then maybe just adding on to that from a direct PEM and exposure, obviously, you know, as we look forward, we're seeing propane prices lower than we saw last year. There is some weakness in propane if you look at where inventory levels are, coupled with a strengthening eco price, which is obviously the opposite of that is good for our customers, but a high price does put pressure on our frack spread. So we are seeing, you know, a little weakness compared to, say, last year in our outlook for frack spreads for Q4, just given those dynamics.
Thank you. And in relation to Greenlight and your partnership with Kineticor, what are the next steps from here? And if Alliance were to be a source of supply for gas, what kind of uplift would you expect?
Hey, Teresa, Chris Sherman, thanks for the question. You know, as we shared in October, we're continuing towards the first half 2026 FID schedule. We're really continuing our commercial discussions with our customer, continuing our feed work to get our engineering in line in hopes of that first half next year FID. as far as uplift associated with the pipe i mean they really are two two separate projects uh but we think each can stand alone on its own uh on its own two feet and really support solid economics thank you your next question comes from jeremy tonette of jp morgan please go ahead hi good morning morning hi uh thanks for all the color today want to go to project green light a little
bit more i i believe uh last quarter there was talk about potential for 2029 um entering service uh and just want to see i guess uh latest thoughts on how you see this unfolding you know with all the um you know unfolding of the interconnection queue uh seems like there might be some concern in the market so just wondering if you could buy a little bit more color there sure again it's it's Chris so you know I think there has been a maybe a little bit of confusion that's the center of the market right and I think it's it's worth taking a second to maybe separate the two projects and clarify what's happening there our customer is progressing their innovation center and that's
really you know where the grid connections rest and the associated DTS arrangements I know there been some disclosure that referenced 2030 our understanding is that's really an outside date and they're still pushing towards as early as 2027 for that that first phase the innovation center and the associated grid connections are really our customers projects and since we assigned or sold our land and secured those mega uh allocated those those megawatts to our customer that's really between them uh and the aso but as far as our project um the related project We're progressing our 1,800-megawatt gas-fired power generation facility, the first phase of 900 megawatts is, as you referenced, planned for 2030, and all of that remains on track.
Got it. That's very helpful. Thank you for that. And just want to touch on the guidance tightening a little bit. It seems like the midpoint moved down just a little bit there. I was wondering if you could dive in a little bit more on the drivers there and just what trends you see coming out of 25 into 26 and how we should think about that.
Hey, Jeremy, it's Cam here. No problem. The first thing I'll mention, and obviously to step back for a second, is I think one of the things we anchor on is a very stable and resilient business. And I would say, you know, notwithstanding a ton of variability in the market over the course of 2025, you know, we remain squarely in the heart of our original guidance range from a year ago and continue to be anchored on that in a material sense for the year. When we looked at our outlook back in August for the balance of the year, I would say that based on where we were at that point, we likely expected some option value to come in the second half of the year, and particularly the fourth quarter through the marketing business. You know, we probably expected a little bit more than we've now expected we've seen. So, you know, on the margin, we've tightened that guidance rate a little bit, obviously, to just to give the market a bit of direction in terms of what we're seeing. You know, at the same time, what I would say is that, you know, while it's early, the results in the core business outside of marketing are continuing to trend strong. I would say that, you know, from what we're seeing in terms of early results from our October volumes, you know, they continue to be, you know, at or exceeding plan. So we're seeing a lot of constructive signs outside of the marketing business. At the end of the day, you know, we saw a little bit, a little less optionality in that commodity business. So we tightened it up a bit, but materially, you know, we don't see a lot changing in our business.
Very helpful. I'll leave it there. Thank you.
Your next question comes from Samia Jain of UBS. Please go ahead.
Hi, good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. Could you provide more color on the brownfield opportunities you were looking at in the sour gas space? How is sour gas infrastructure currently positioned in the basin and how would Pemina benefit from it?
Good morning, Samia, Jarrett. Great question. So yeah, as the demand for condensate as oil sand production grows as oil egress pipelines get de-bottlenecked out of western canada more and more condensate is going to be required and a lot of that condensate is coming from the montany which does have associated sour gas with it pgi through our heights facility our k3 facility kakwa river i'm probably leaving a couple off the list but we have an extensive network of sour gas processing, sulfur recovery, and also acid gas injection. Pemina has successfully, we're the only entity who's actually built a sulfur recovery unit here in the last about 25 years, and we did that on time and on budget. So I think our project execution, our understanding of operations in that space and the platform and the footprint that PGI offers, I think we're in a really good spot to enhance the customer's needs and continue to allow them to grow that sour gas production in face of condensate demand.
Okay, great. Thank you. And then on the regulatory side, what progress are you seeing at the federal or provincial level? And are there any policies or changes that will especially impact Hamina in the near term?
Yeah, I think overall, we're definitely seeing a constructive tone from the federal government. You know, we like what we're seeing. We're seeing it, you know, I think on the ground in terms of our interactions as well. I think it's a little too early to comment on what new projects may or may not come out of that, but certainly a constructive and supportive tone from the federal government.
Okay, great. Thank you for the caller.
Your next question comes from Aaron McNeil of TD Cowan. Please go ahead.
Hey, morning all. Thanks for taking my questions. It's great to see Pemina continue to announce contract renewals on conventional pipe. The question we always get is on pricing. I can appreciate that you're not going to get into specifics here, but given the emergence of a competitive alternative, how should we think about renewal pricing and your ability to maintain current margins on a per barrel basis?
Good morning, Aaron. Yeah, thanks for the question. So our most recent announcement of the 50,000 barrels of recontracting is a tremendous outcome for Pemina. And why I want to say that is 100% of those volumes are within the competitive alternative transport area. 20 percent of those volumes flow to the alternative today and upon reconnection they will be once that project is complete they'll be flowing on the peace system and essentially all of the volumes i can tell you maintained current contracted toll there's obviously a lot of things that go into a transportation agreement a lot of different things are important to our customers tolls obviously one of them but there are other factors that um that go into that negotiation And in this particular instance, we were able to maintain that. Obviously, in some areas, at certain receipt points, we will discount our tolls if it's prudent to do so. But those are very calculated decisions that we make. I would point out that I know we don't externally show this information, but since the inception of the alternative pipeline, the EBITDA per barrel of our conventional business actually has been increasing. And the factors that go into that, there's a few of them that I wanted to outline for you. The first one is we've been extremely focused on lowering our cost structure, providing safe, reliable, cost-efficient operations through our supply chain strategies and through our continuous improvement and our operational excellence journey that we've been on here internally at Pemina. Additionally, as we move west, further away from Edmonton Market, obviously that garners a higher toll just due to the proximity and the distance into the market. And then thirdly, the majority of all of our contracts on the pipe side have CPI inflators built into them. And then finally, what I would leave you with on how we maintain margin is our industry-leading project execution and our ability, and I said it earlier, safe, reliable, cost-efficient operations continue to be a competitive advantage. We basically can allow our commercial teams to go out there, maintain the internal expectations of Pemina. Teams are bringing our projects on time and under budget, and that really allows them to have some flexibility with the customers to meet their needs, but also maintain our margin and our internal financial expectations. Hopefully that answers your question.
Yeah, there's more detail than I expected, so thank you for that. For my follow-up, I've got to ask on PGI. You've previously talked about the benefits and the capital efficiency of owning 60%, but 100% would also likely have benefits, such as perfect alignment on incremental capital, just given that KKR doesn't have the downstream benefits that you do. So, again, to sort of get you on the record one way or another, can you speak to your potential appetite to want to consolidate that remaining 40%?
Yeah, I think as a general concept, we generally don't comment on specific M&A situations. But what I will say in this specific situation is the fact that we still like the partnership, we like how it was set up, and we believe it's delivering what it was originally intended to do. so we're happy with it.
That's great. Thank you so much. Turn it back.
Your next question comes from Spiro Dunas of Citigroup. Please go ahead.
Thanks, operator. Good morning, team. I want to go back to the outlook quickly. So you've got the alliance CER process out of the way. You've now got some piece recontracting done. So it addressed a lot of maybe the larger unknowns headed into 2026. At the same time, you've got some tailwinds coming from M&A, headwinds from commodity. So, just curious, in the context of that original fee-based EBITDA you provided back in 2024 for 2026, how do you think a lot of these moving items and factors play into that original range?
Spiro, thanks for the question. And it's a really good one because I think that's one of the things we're most proud about. You know, as we set out about a year and a half ago and put that guidance range out at our 2024 Investor Day, you know, we have had a lot of confidence in that range. and, frankly, a lot of confidence in being in the upper end of that range, continue to execute along the same ways that Jared just talked about, you know, through the core-based business, through the commercialization, as well as some really, really creative and attractive, you know, sort of bolt-on M&A opportunities across our business. And obviously, you know, what we've seen is on one hand a couple of headwinds, you know, primarily related to the revised Alliance CER settlement. But what we've also done, as Jarrett mentioned, is really taken a keen eye to our business and looked for opportunities to operate differently, to operate more efficiently, to focus on work that is higher value add versus lower value add. And I would say that, you know, without sort of getting ahead of our 2026 guidance outlook, which will come in about a month's time, I would say we maintain a lot of confidence in obviously achieving that range and achieving a range or a spot in that range, which would reflect something consistent with our own expectations and the market's expectations. So we feel really good about that. We're working really hard on that. And I think, again, we continue to tout the resilience of our business in many ways and the benefits of the diversity of it, the exposure to multiple commodities, the place that we play in the Western Canadian sedimentary basin, and we think that performance, you know, even in light of headwinds, which they come in business, demonstrates that.
Simple color, Cam. Second one, going back to green light as well, could you maybe just put a finer point on when we can expect to start to see cash flows from this project to Pembina?
And when it comes to the phases, I think this initial phase is about half that total, capacity and vision but i know i think you guys had mentioned four potential phases in total just maybe remind us again how you're thinking about the remaining phase scope and then the timeline uh well so so the original phase phasing was four phases of 450. um we are now talking about two phases of you know roughly 900 so again we've gone from kind of a first phase of 450 to a first phase of 900 if that makes sense um we would expect based on our current timeline and current estimations that cash flow would occur in 2030.
Perfect.
Your next question comes from AJ O'Donnell of TPH. Please go ahead.
Hey, good morning, everyone. Maybe if I could just sneak one more in about green light. As the data center, innovation center conversations continue to pick up momentum. I'm curious, is there a way to bridge the gap further? Have you guys explored potential like mobile or modular power solutions? Is that something that you guys have looked at before?
AJ, thanks for the question. I mean, we've looked at a variety of different modes and means to facilitate this business. You know, I think from our perspective, what we have in place, The type of facilities and structure we have in place today is scalable and really, really effective for what our customers are looking for. And so that's really what we stay focused on.
AJ, it's Cam here. I would just add on top of that, I think our experience has been when we've looked at, you know, other developments as this occurs. You know, once you get the base, the core assets in place, they do tend to cluster. and obviously as we think about the advantages that that our solution has for this obviously proximity access to utilities access to water all of the embedded advantages uh you know we do see benefits and we do see that that being an advantage uh in our offering for the future so we think there's opportunity beyond this okay uh great appreciate the detail there and then maybe if i could just go to cedar real quick um you know there was a amendment filed for um the increase of feed gas capacity from 400 to 500 mmcf um curious what the read-throughs are there if you
could speak to some of the details and potentially does that equate to you know more volumes or more marketing upside um for pemina aj it's sue taylor um i'll maybe try to provide some clarity so when When we originally were scoping out the project and looking at the size, we did permit the project for 3MTPA, 400 million cubic feet per day. As we were going through engineering design, we've seen an opportunity to, for very minor dollars, increase that capacity from 3MTPA to 3.3, and so we undertook that spend. We are currently designing and building to the 3.3, and our announced capital actually incorporates that size we knew we would have to go back from amendment to the permits and so we did that and again there's no change to the scope of the project or any of the capital cost estimates again as you go through these projects and you continue to work with engineering we've seen again engineers don't design right to the exact capacity they do at that in their facilities and infrastructure and so we've looked at since we were going for the amendment we believe the facility has the opportunity for on you know on days particularly cold weather days there will be an opportunity for incremental throughput through the facility and so as we were looking to do the amendment we did increase that that size of the the amendment and increased it from 400 to 500. Obviously, we need incremental gas supply. These are potential volumes as we go forward. We will be working on that on a go-forward basis. And pardon me, these will be incremental cargoes, I'm sorry, beyond what we have contracted. We have only contracted the facility to the three MPPA size. So any incremental gas or incremental cargoes are upside for us.
That's super clear. I appreciate the detail. Thank you.
Your next question comes from Maurice Choi of RBC Capital Markets. Please go ahead.
Thanks, and good morning. If I could just start with a question about project execution. When I think about how globally resources are being directed towards supporting the AI sector, and this could obviously lead to inflationary pressures globally in the coming years, I know that you've highlighted your project execution track record and capability, So just wondering what you tend to do in these early years before those pressures arrive, what actions you tend to take to kind of get ahead of the curve.
Morning, Maurice. Yeah, so I think the question was really about, you know, future pressures in certain areas. And, you know, one of the things that we're really focused on and we're really aligned with our board and they ask us about is creating long-lasting partnerships with Tier 1 contractors and obviously Indigenous communities. So I think that's part of our overall strategy is, you know, not always going for the lowest dollar, but committing ourselves to, you know, the safest, making sure that we have the A-teams, we're aligned from the top with respect to our safety messaging and our project execution. and the services that we'll be providing um so i think we've we've made material ground with respect to that um i think internally here um i've talked about it before i think we just have a culture of one team one pamina um when we're when we're approaching these projects um and i think it's it's something that we've been cultivating and and we're really good at thank you and uh if
I could finish off the question on balance sheet in general. Again, just to know philosophically, what is the comfortable or optimized cushion for you versus the 4.25 maximum debt to EBITDA? And where do you see that being about a year-end and peaking next year due to CDLNG, GAPEX?
Hey, Maurice, it's Cam here. Yeah, I think good question because we've talked about that. And obviously, first thing worth reminding everyone is that is a proportionally consolidated number, so that reflects not only the debt that we carry at the PEMTA level, but debt that is included in the PGI credit stack, notwithstanding the fact that it's recourse, as well as at the moment construction debt associated with CEDAR LNG, which is obviously, again, non-recourse, but carried at that level. So as we see exiting 2025, obviously we see that in the sort of the mid threes range because of the timing and really remember that 2026 is the peak investment year for Cedar LNG, obviously without any of the commensurate earnings along with it. So if we go back and remind ourselves of our message from our 2024 investor day, you know, we obviously talked about that three year outlook for capital being largely free cash flow neutral with, you know, some some shape to it throughout those individual three years. and and this would be consistent we obviously are expecting uh free cash flow positivity in 2025 we saw free cash flow positivity in in 2024 and we would expect to see a uh you know some free cash flow negativity in in 2026. however uh you know on the on the long term uh we feel obviously that we set our balance sheet up to be able to handle that and obviously as we move through 2026 uh we would expect that to moderate back down to the type of range that we've been comfortable with longer term. Ultimately, that comfort zone is largely three and a half to four times. Could we go above that? It's not where we would intend to go in the near term. So that's the way we think about the balance sheet at the moment.
Thank you.
The next question comes from Robert Cattelier from CIBC Capital Markets. Please go ahead.
Rob Cattelier from CIBC. I want to talk about, given all your contracting this quarter, maybe I can start with the mechanics on the synthetic liquefaction agreement with Petronas. Maybe you can walk us through that and the circumstances you need to see to generate that incremental value enhancement.
Yeah, I'll talk about the contract in general, and then I'll turn it over to Chris to provide some further details um you know i think as you can appreciate we're still finalizing the other uh 0.5 uh million tons and so you know given that the status of that um you know we're going to stay away from specific details um but what i can tell you is that we were very pleased with with the outcome of that negotiation and maybe chris i'll turn over to you to talk about the contract and then as far as contract structure it's effectively synthetic tolling i mean we are we are taking the obligations we have with Cedar and almost entirely passing those on to our customer.
And then in addition to passing the terms on, we've been able to capture some participation in the upside of the market. So to the extent the ARB is open and attractive between Canadian ecogas and the parties, we'll have an opportunity to capture some of that upside and participate in that.
Okay. Just generally speaking, in terms of contracting the capacity at Cedar, have you been able to leverage that to other business with Petronas or otherwise? And I'm thinking, you know, downstream, you know, gathering liquids, fractionation, et cetera.
Yeah, I mean, I don't think we can get into that right now. But what we will say is we think we have a very strong relationship with Petronas that we're building on with this arrangement. And our hope is to continue to build on that and do much more together.
Hey, Robert, it's Cam here. I guess I would just add on top of that, that I think obviously, you know, achieving a partnership with an entity of the prominence in the LNG space like Petronas is, I think, really important for us. and essentially really validates Cedar LNG, you know, in the global scale from an LNG project in terms of both the competitiveness of it and the reality of it. I think what we would see is, you know, we already had a relationship with Petronas on the upstream side, you know, dating back to the middle of the last decade in terms of servicing them on the northeast BC side. But we would certainly love and see this as a beachhead to continue to try and expand that. We have a ton of respect for them as an organization. You know, I would say likewise that as we as we think about the remaining balance of Cedar and future LNG ambitions, obviously, we've had lots of interest from customers in our core business looking to achieve diversity of market access for their volumes. and say that there is a view that CEDAR is a scarce resource and can continue to drive value both for them but for Pemina in win-win type solutions. So I would say to answer your question pointedly, yes, we are seeing that type of value accretion through the rest of the core business.
Some good detail. And then just a couple quick ones here. Just given the RFS4 revised timeline, it looks like a second quarter in service state. i'm wondering how that interplays with the upcoming ngl contract here in other words do you have any available capacity to market there and will you be able to market it into the upcoming contract here given the servant state seems to be tight with the start of that year 100 rob jerry here yeah you nailed it like you know we're working really closely with with our execution team to bring that on um as close as we can to the ngl season uh frack capacity is very tight in the ford right now and um so it does give our commercial teams a lot of flexibility to work with customers and bringing them in um the closer we can get to april 1st but uh yeah you nailed it okay and finally i'm just curious on the alliance re-contracting and the the one one-time option for term extension you know i think 96 of your uh from capacity is contracted I wondered if there was any contracts there with the marketing affiliates. No. Thanks, everyone.
Our next call comes from Ben Pham of BMO. Please go ahead.
I had a couple of questions on peace in the conventional business segment. And I'm wondering if you can characterize or comment on the volume trends in convention this year. It looks to be more in that 2%, 3% context versus the 6% or 7% plus. Before, I know you've had a bit of a phase pickup in the volumes, but could you comment on that and what's the thought process into 2026 with new contracts and the broader business environment?
Yeah. Hey, Ben, it's Cam. I'll start and then maybe pass it over to Jared. I think one thing I would mention is that obviously, you know, if you stand back for a moment and look at our volumes that we report in our conventionals, those are obviously, as we said before, always the revenue volumes, which reflect our physical volumes plus take or pay contracts that we have in excess of that. And as you go through and try and look at the quarterly trend, you know, it is a bit, it can be a bit misleading if you sort of are trying to make meaning out of that on a really narrow timeframe, meaning quarter to quarter. You know, if I stand back for a second and look at what our conventional volumes did, you know, in Q3 versus Q2 sequentially, you know, those physical volumes would have been up about 4% quarter over quarter. So we think if you sort of look at that relative to the industry, if you look at that relative to other basins, you know, that reflects very competitive and consistent growth. I think as we sit and look at 2026, you know, it's kind of the, I'll say, the heart of that budgeting season right now for everybody. And I think what we expect to see longer term is continued growth in that single digit range. And that's all supported by obviously continuing demand growth from the oil sands. I think we continue to see other infrastructural debottlenecks by our peers. We continue to see the large operators talking about incremental debottlenecks on their projects to drive incremental supply. And we also see incremental gas demand outlet and incremental supply opportunities in the natural gas side, which, of course, drives the condensate and the NGL volume. So longer term, we are very, very confident in the continued growth in that, you know, at least in that single digit level. I think in the near term, you know, we have to be mindful that, you know, in the new business environment that our producers operate in where returns and value are paramount over simply volume growth, you know, they are making decisions to optimize their longer term profiles and taking a longer term perspective. So, you know, in any given year, you know, the growth may be more producer-specific versus broad-based, or it may be simply timing-related. But longer term, we continue to see that. And I think, you know, if you look around our major producers, you know, many are demonstrating growth in that same level. Some are choosing to defer some, but longer term, we continue to see growth in that single-digit level.
Yeah, and just to add to that, Ben, you know, I think, you know, some of the recent announcements you would have seen, the Ovintiv NuVista transaction, you know, the CNRL Chevron transaction, you know, although we talk about, you know, some customer consolidation sometimes puts some compression on our business, it also results in an acceleration of product being produced. So when Cam talks about specific producers accelerating or staying flat, we have a great relationship with Obintiv and with NuVista. They're both very large and dedicated customers to Pemina. And so, you know, that transaction, Obintiv talked about accelerating, you know, production and drilling and those types of things on those lands because they have available capacity. You know, that stuff gets us excited. You know, seeing those consolidations, it's sad to see one of our great customers. go but it's it's also exciting to see them talk about filling the gas plants faster with 600 million a day of incremental gas processing or sorry of 600 million day of contracted processing pgi for example has approximately services about 80 of that um so super excited to see those types of things and and really we got to listen to our customers and kind of go through this but overall the macro trend is oil sands is growing condensate condensate demands growing import pipelines are essentially um getting really full so that condensate has to come domestically and we're in a great position to support our customers to get to edmonton and up to the oil sands there are
no further questions at this time i will now turn the call back over to scott burrows president and ceo please continue great thank you everyone for your time and we look forward to updating you in the middle of december with our 2026 outlook ladies and gentlemen that concludes today's conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.