Spectra Energy Q4 2008 Earnings Call Transcript

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2009-02-05 15:35:33.0

Tags: Analyst, Call Transcript, Spectra Energy Corp., Earnings, Assumption, Investment, Financial Accounting, Finance, Seeking Alpha

Question-and-Answer Session

Operator

Thank you sir. (Operator Instructions).Your first question comes from the line of Sunara Gussini (ph) with UBS.

Unidentified Analyst

Hi good morning guys.

John Arensdorf

Hi Sunara.

Unidentified Analyst

Congratulations on both of your new roles.

Gregory Ebel

Thank you.

Unidentified Analyst

You guys gave out thorough details today which is great and greatly appreciated. I just wanted to ask I guess two kinds of big picture questions, one kind of bullish, one kind of bearish. Just starting with the bearish one, given where oil and nat gas is kind of sitting today, how does your capital plan, liquidity plan, so forth to change if these assumptions... if your lower case assumptions and to the high... come mid-year and so forth, would you be swallowing back any back further CapEx or this is a solid plan for the year and so forth?

John Patrick Reddy

Well from a CapEx perspective, I don't see any significant changes. As you know when we put projects to work, they are already contracted up with good investment graded customers. I don't see any change on that front. I mean if anything, I guess if gas prices really took up and it cranked up some of the domestic drilling that folks are pointing out how rigs have been laid out, then that might crank up the interest in accelerating projects. But I don't see a downside from that perspective. Obviously if oil prices were lower than we expected on average for the year, that has an earnings impact out of DCP and some cash impacts. But I don't see that change in the CapEx program for 2009.

Gregory Ebel

And the real judgment call is as we go through the year, how are things going to look for 2010 and going forward.

Unidentified Analyst

Okay. And then the flip side is, if the capital markets ever return and specifically for the MLP market, is it a safe assumption that we could see SEP and DPM seeing some asset dropdowns on both sides and so forth, is that a reasonable assumption?

Gregory Ebel

Well I'll speak to SEP and maybe Tom as the Chairman of DPM can speak on that front. With respect to SEP, we put that vehicle in place to grow the entire pie. So, and frankly as currency is held up quite nicely relative to other currencies and definitely see that as a vehicle that we can use to grow the entire business as opposed to doing dropdown. One thing I will say, obviously we've indicated our desire to keep growing that business and distributions. But the first focus would be on the organic growth that it already has, which is nice in the pipeline and storage business.

 

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