Enterprise Products Partners L.P. (ticker: EPD) recorded the first quarter of 2018 with a net income of $912 million, or $0.41 per share. Last year, in Q1 2017, the company reported a net income of $761 million, or $0.36 per share. Capital investments were $1.1 billion during the first quarter of 2018, including $66 million of sustaining capital expenditures.
By the numbers
Jim Teague, CEO of Enterprise’s general partner said liquid pipeline volumes set a record at 6.2 million BPD. Teague said the partnership transported 13 trillion BTU per day in its natural gas pipelines in Q1.
“Enterprise’s pipelines had volume increases in crude oil, NGL and natural gas production from the Permian basin and the resurgence of the Rocky Mountains and Haynesville Shale regions,” Teague said.
“Our Midland-to-ECHO crude oil pipeline system, which was in limited service during the first quarter 2018, averaged 400 MBPD net to our expected 80 percent ownership interest.”
Teague said the integrated midstream system and its petrochemical and refined products services segment benefited from strong domestic and international demand for energy products and from the reduction in commissioning costs of the propane dehydrogenation facility.
The company said its marine terminals had another strong quarter handling approximately 1.6 million barrels per day of NGLs, crude oil, refined products and petrochemicals.
Expecting no equity issue in 2018
“Distributable cash flow provided 1.5 times coverage of our distribution for the quarter,” Teague said. Based on retained distributable cash flow of $458 million for the first quarter 2018 and our current expectations for the remainder of the year, we do not expect to issue any equity in 2018 to fund our growth capital investments …,” said Teague.
Larger-than-expected capacity in Midland-to-ECHO crude pipeline may be enough
“We currently expect the Midland-to-ECHO crude oil pipeline system will have approximately 575 MBPD of gross transportation capacity—depending on the quality of crude oil shipped.
“We will continue to evaluate whether or not we would still need to repurpose an NGL pipeline into crude oil service,“ Teague said.
Enterprise said its propane dehydrogenation plant began commercial service in April 2018 and it began commissioning activities for the Orla I natural gas processing plant in the Permian basin in April.
