ONEOK posts improved results
TULSA — A growing volume of natural gas and natural gas liquids ONEOK is handling from producers in Oklahoma's STACK and SCOOP plays and the Williston Basin helped boost the company's secondquarter results.
The Tulsa-based company announced Tuesday its second-quarter net income for 2019 was $312 million, or 75 cents a share, up 11% compared to $282 million, or 68 cents a share, in 2018.
The company also stated its second-quarter earnings in before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization were higher than they were in 2018— $632 million compared to $602 million.
As for those growing volumes on both its natural gas and natural gas liquids systems, officials said volumes of raw natural gas liquids it handled in the second quarter of 2019 were up 11%, compared to 2018, while secondquarter volume growth on the company's natural gas gathering and processing segments climbed by 8%, year-over-year.
Officials said results were boosted by the recent completion of the southern section of its Elk Creek Natural Gas Liquids Pipeline, which carries natural gas liquids from Montana across eastern Wyoming and northeast Colorado to Bush ton, Kansas.
From there, the product is carried south into Oklahoma, where other natural gas liquid lines also converge to feed the company's Arbuckle II pipeline, which, when finished in 2020, will carry natural gas liquids from west-central Oklahoma south across the Red River to Gulf Coast storage and fractionation facilities located at Mont Belvieu, Texas.
Earlier this month, ONEOK announced plans to expand its Bear Creek natural gas processing plant in North Dakota's Williston Basin, to expand its West Texas liquefied petroleum gas pipeline in the Permian Basin and to add Mid-Continent fractionation facility expansion of 65,000 barrels a day, plus adding other infrastructure to boost the ability to get natural gas liquids from Elk Creek to Arbuckle II.
Ongoing system improvement work, officials said, is expected to provide a “significant” earnings uplift in the last half of 2019.
“Our capital growth program remains on schedule and on budget and include multiple projects that will add critical natural gas and NGL infrastructure to significantly reduce flaring in the Williston Basin,” ONEOK CEO Terry K. Spencer, ONEOK stated in the earnings release.
“With solid results and volume so far in 2019 and the benefit of additional projects still being placed in service this year, we feel confident” the company will meet its 2019 guidance and will continue to grow.
ONEOK's second-quarter operating income in 2019 was about $476 million, compared to about $448 million the previous year.
While second-quarter 2019 operating costs were slightly more — $238 million, compared to $ 230 million in 2018 — and second-quarter revenue fell from about $2.97 billion in 2018 to about $2.5 billion in 2019, lower costs to acquire the fuels from producers enabled it to achieve operating income growth for the period.