Frontier Oil Corporation Q3 2009 Earnings Call Transcript

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2009-11-05 13:02:08.0

Tags: Percentage, Call Transcript, Earnings, Financial Accounting, Finance, Seeking Alpha, Frontier Oil Corp.

Question-and-Answer Session

Operator

(Operator Instructions). The first question is from Jeff Dietert from Simmons.

Jeff Dietert - Simmons

You gave some statistics on light, sweet crude feedstocks for the third quarter. I would guess there was a fairly wide range of feedstock variance through the third quarter and then maybe even in October as the heavy, sour spreads change during that period. Could you give us a feel for your flexibility on the highest percentage of light, sweet versus lowest percentage of light, sweet at both Cheyenne and El Dorado?

Mike Jennings

Billy, do you have the monthly charge spreads there or differences by month for the two plants?

Billy Rigby

If we want to do it by month, I've got it by month here. I will grab it real quick.

Jeff Dietert - Simmons

Perhaps while we're waiting on that, I had a second question on the Keystone pipeline. Linefill expected to start later this quarter and that brings Canadian crudes into some incremental markets or at least incremental volumes. How do you expect that to influence Frontier's feedstock costs?

Mike Jennings

In the near term, there is a month of December expected injection date for the Keystone barrels. Quite honestly, it represents a lot of crude, I believe its 9 million total barrels. That probably has put some pressure on a differential given that incremental demand for the heavy crude. Through time, as that pipeline provides access, first, obviously, just to the Wood River plant, but ultimately to Cushing it's going to represent sort of an unconstrained feed of the Canadian heavy into our backyard. Longer term, I think that is good for Frontier, though in the immediate term the incremental demand for linefill is probably pressuring differentials to our detriment.

Mike Jennings

To answer your question, at Cheyenne, through the third quarter, our sweet crude and lighter crude percentage, we are working really hard to increase flexibility. We actually range from a high of 70% light and sweet crude in July or close to 70% to down to 56% as we worked to take advantage of those lighter, sweeter crudes. So our heavy did change quite a bit. In the fourth quarter, we actually have somewhat of an anecdotal opportunity to take advantage of more heavy crude as the Canadian heavy dip has widened for us. We've seen short term differentials for Canadian heavy out as wide as 1,350 off at Hardisty. So we are taking advantage in the short term in the fourth quarter of a slightly better Canadian heavy dip. So, we're moving our heavy percentages up to 40% or better simply because we've got that opportunity.

 

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