Marathon Oil Corporation Q3 2009 Earnings Call Transcript

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2009-11-03 18:05:35.0

Tags: Slate, Call Transcript, Earnings, Simmons & Co., Taxes, Free Trade, Personal Finance, Financial Planning, Finance, Seeking Alpha, Marathon Oil Corp.

Question-and-Answer Session

Doug TerresonISI Group

I have a couple of questions for Gary about refining and marketing. First on Garyville are there any modifications on the planned crude slate that you guys have for the new facility?

Gary Heminger

Well, Doug, I need to answer that in two ways. For how we designed the plant we designed it to be able to run a very heavy slate. Obviously when you look at the way the markets are and the sweet-sour differentials to date as we start to gear up we would – the way I look at the market today I tend to state that we're going to run a more of a medium slate of crude on the front end just because of where the markets are today.

Doug TerresonISI Group

Okay, and Gary, let me ask you one more question on refining. Are there any new strategic [build outs] on the smaller plans in the system given the more challenging conditions that we're experiencing? That is, what's on your mind these days on Canton, Detroit, Texas City and/or St. Paul if there are any new viewpoints there?

Gary Heminger

Well, obviously Doug, we look every day at the crack spreads and ensure that these plants can run and hurdle the economics for the crude that's available and the markets that we're supplying and today they all do.

Operator

Our next questions comes from Robert Kessler – Simmons & Company.

Robert KesslerSimmons & Company

I was wondering with respect to Garyville, given that it doesn't sound like we should expect much in the way of margin contribution until maybe the second quarter of next year can I confirm that you would still expect mechanical completion by year-end and as such get the favorable sort of 50% tax deduction or accelerated depreciation for 2009?

Gary Heminger

Yes Robert, we are – as Howard said in his speech we're 98% complete. We're already into sequence start of up of some of our units expect the crude unit to go through that sequence here mid-November and followed by the hydro cracker and the balance of the units by the end of the year. So the answer to your question, yes, we expect all units to be mechanically complete by the end of the year.

Robert KesslerSimmons & Company

And in terms of – I'm assuming that will result in a fairly sizable sort of deferred tax cash benefit that would show up in the fourth quarter of 2009 is that fair to say, somewhere in the order of $400 million to $500 million?

 

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