MPLX (NYSE:MPLX) reported third-quarter financial results on Tuesday. The transcript from the company’s third-quarter earnings call has been provided below.
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Summary
MPLX increased its quarterly distribution by 12.5% for the third consecutive year, supported by durable cash flows and strategic growth projects.
The company reported third-quarter adjusted EBITDA of $1.9 billion, reflecting a 5% growth year-over-year.
MPLX divested midstream assets supporting St. Paul Park and Mandan refineries for $750 million, aiming to redeploy proceeds into growth plans in the Permian and Marcellus basins.
Significant operational projects include the start of Harmon Creek 3, expansions in the Permian Basin, and the FID of the Solitude pipeline system, all expected to bolster future growth.
Management emphasized strong natural gas and NGL fundamentals, driving strategic investments and continued producer activity.
The company remains committed to capital discipline, focusing on projects with strategic fit and attractive returns.
MPLX expects stronger EBITDA growth in 2027 despite the recent asset sales, underpinned by ongoing and upcoming projects.
The company is exploring both organic and inorganic growth opportunities, with a focus on high-return investments and optimizing integrated value chains.
Full Transcript
Julie (Operator)
Welcome to the MPLX third quarter 2026 earnings call. My name is Julie and I will be your operator for today’s call. At this time all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later we will conduct a question-and-answer session. Press star one on your touchtone phone to enter the queue. Please note that this conference is being recorded. I will now turn the call over to Brian Worthington. Brian, you may begin.
Brian Worthington (Vice President)
Welcome to MPLX’s third quarter 2026 earnings conference call. The slides that accompany this call can be found on our website at mplx.com under the Investors tab. Joining me on the call today are Maryann Mannen, President and CEO, Kris Hagedorn, CFO, and other members of the executive team. We invite you to read the safe harbor statements on slide 2. We will be making forward-looking statements today. Actual results may differ. Factors that could cause actual results to differ are included here as well as in our filings with the SEC.
With that, I will turn the call over to Maryann.
Maryann Mannen (Chairman)
Thanks, Brian. Good morning and thank you for joining our call. Effective November 1, two new independent directors joined the MPLX board. Michael Dunn and Bruce Niemeyer have strong records of accomplishment in the energy industry, making them outstanding additions, and we’re happy to have them join our board. Delivering on our commitments to return capital, MPLX increased its quarterly distribution by 12.5% for the third consecutive year. The increase is supported by our multi-year track record of delivering mid-single-digit adjusted EBITDA growth and growth projects coming online over the next several years. Additionally, this increase reflects conviction in the durability of our cash flows and execution of our strategy. MPLX’s distribution now equates to an annualized rate of $4.84 per unit.
As also announced this morning, in conjunction with Marathon Petroleum’s sale of the St. Paul Park and Mandan refineries, MPLX announced the divestiture of midstream assets supporting these refineries for $750 million, representing an EBITDA multiple of approximately nine times. Ensuring the competitive positioning of our portfolio is a strategic commitment, and we expect to redeploy proceeds from the sale to advance MPLX growth plans anchored in the Permian and Marcellus basins.
In the third quarter, MPLX delivered adjusted EBITDA of $1.9 billion, reflecting 5% growth versus the same period in 2025. Excluding the impact of the Rockies divestiture in late 2025, MPLX adjusted EBITDA would have grown 7.3% year over year for the third quarter. Strong execution across our business and continued progress on the growth strategies across our integrated natural gas and NGL value chains enabled the return of approximately $1.1 billion to our unitholders during the quarter.
The Harmon Creek 3 complex began operations with 300 million cubic feet per day of gas processing and 40,000 barrels per day of deethanizing capacity, increasing our Northeast processing capacity to 8.1 billion cubic feet per day and fractionation capacity to 800,000 barrels a day. As we continue placing high-return projects into service and increasing utilization across our system, MPLX remains positioned to deliver durable mid-single-digit adjusted EBITDA growth.
Natural gas and NGL fundamentals are robust, creating compelling opportunities to support increasing domestic and global demand for U.S. energy. Growing producer activity, increasing demand for natural gas-fired power generation, and expanding access to global markets support continued investment across our integrated value chains. Our disciplined capital allocation framework remains unchanged. Investments must provide strategic fit, durable demand, and attractive risk-adjusted returns.
In the third quarter, MPLX and its joint venture partners announced the FID of the Solitude pipeline system, which, when completed, will provide an additional 4.5 billion cubic feet per day of natural gas egress from the Permian Basin. Solitude was one of the fastest projects to reach FID in the company’s history, with strong long-term contracts from shippers bringing the project from commercial to FID in under 90 days, supporting our view of long-term production growth in the Permian Basin.
Solitude increases MPLX’s interest in Permian natural gas long-haul pipeline capacity from 11 billion cubic feet per day to approximately 16 billion cubic feet per day and is expected in service in late 2029. MPLX is investing over 90% of its $2.9 billion organic growth capital program for 2026 toward natural gas and NGL infrastructure opportunities. Our growth towards the end of the year is supported by this capital investment and efforts to optimize operations. Secretariat 1 and Harmon Creek III have been increasing throughputs since being placed into service. We see opportunities to further increase processing utilization in the Marcellus Basin and in the Utica, where utilization rose from 73% in the second quarter to 89 in the third quarter.
We also anticipate ramping additional sour gas throughput on our Titan 1 plant, which is running at over 150 million cubic feet per day. In addition to these efforts, we are advancing several projects that support our integrated value chain into 2027. The Bay Runner pipeline is expected to be placed into service in the fourth quarter, providing additional access to LNG export infrastructure along the Gulf Coast. We expect volumes to ramp through 2027 to support the end users’ commissioning and scaling demand. Additionally, the Bengal pipeline expansion is expected to come online in the fourth quarter, increasing capacity from 250,000 barrels per day to 300,000 barrels per day and providing additional NGL takeaway capacity from the Permian Basin.
The Blackcomb Natural Gas pipeline began commissioning activities in July. The JV partners continue to progress the pipeline as planned, and Blackcomb is expected to achieve full commercial service in the fourth quarter. In the Delaware Basin, construction is progressing to expand sour gas treating capacity at the Titan complex to over 400 million cubic feet per day, expected by year end. New pipeline connectivity was placed into service between our Titan sour gas complex and our Delaware Basin processing footprint, further enhancing our ability to optimize volumes across our integrated Permian system. We expect these growth platforms to position MPLX for strong adjusted EBITDA growth in 2027.
Our Gulf Coast fractionation and export facilities continue to progress on schedule and on budget. We expect the first 150,000 barrel per day fractionator associated purity pipeline and our 400,000 barrel per day joint venture export facility to enter service in the first half of 2028. Furthermore, the second 150,000 barrel per day fractionator remains scheduled to begin operations in 2029. Through these investments, MPLX continues to strengthen its integrated wellhead-to-water strategy while positioning the partnership to generate durable cash flow growth.
Let me turn the call over to Kris to discuss our operational and financial results for the quarter.
Kris Hagedorn (EVP & Chief Financial Officer)
Thanks, Maryann. Slide 8 outlines third quarter operational and financial performance highlights for our crude oil and products logistics segment. Segment adjusted EBITDA increased $67 million when compared to the third quarter of 2025. The increase was primarily driven by higher rates across the business units and increased butane blending, partially offset by higher operating expenses, including incentive compensation. Terminal throughput increased 6% year over year, primarily driven by higher export volumes.
Moving on to slide 9, segment adjusted EBITDA in our Natural Gas and NGL Services segment increased $26 million compared to the third quarter of 2025. The increase was driven by higher volumes, including growth from acquisitions, partially offset by the divestiture of non-core gathering and processing assets in 2025 and higher operating expenses, including incentive compensation. Excluding the impacts of the Rockies divestiture, our Natural Gas and NGL Services segment adjusted EBITDA has grown 10% year over year.
For the third quarter, gathering volumes increased 14% year over year, driven by strong producer activity across the Utica, Marcellus, and Permian basins. Processing volumes were up 5% year over year due to increased production in the Utica and additional processing capacity entering service in the Marcellus and Permian basins. Utica gathering and processing volumes rose 19% and 20% year over year and remain an area where we anticipate strong producer activity.
Our Northeast processing system operated at an impressive 93% utilization in the third quarter, demonstrating the strength of producer activity in the Marcellus and Utica. In the Permian, increased utilization at Secretariat 1 and growing demand moving through Bengal further demonstrates the value of our integrated value chain strategy. Sour gas treating volumes averaged over 150 million cubic feet per day during the quarter as we continue progressing toward over 400 million cubic feet per day of capacity at Titan by year end.
As additional projects enter service, we remain well positioned to support growing producer activity. The quarter included $77 million of expense associated with incentive compensation, $37 million higher than the third quarter of 2025. Year to date, this expense has totaled $167 million, which is $48 million higher than the same time frame last year, impacting our adjusted EBITDA growth by approximately 1% for the year. The increase was driven by charges to the partnership for annual bonus and long-term incentive compensation programs. The programs are a combination of financial and other metrics that include performance relative to peers and linked to its strategic partner Marathon Petroleum.
Looking ahead, MPLX remains positioned to deliver second half weighted adjusted EBITDA growth in 2026, underpinned by investments that are ramping through the balance of the year. While we expect these investments to generate modest cash flow in 2026, we are well positioned to accelerate cash flow growth throughout 2027. Lastly, we do not expect the sale of the midstream assets associated with the St. Paul Park and Mandan refineries to impact our ability to deliver mid-single-digit growth.
Now let me hand it back to Maryann for some concluding thoughts.
Maryann Mannen (Chairman)
Thanks, Chris. MPLX is executing its strategy with consistency and discipline. Our priorities remain unchanged: operate safely and reliably, grow through high-return investments, optimize integrated value chains, and return capital to unitholders. The durability of our cash flows enabled us to increase our quarterly distribution by 12.5% for the third consecutive year. This increase marks the fifth consecutive year of double-digit increases, resulting in annualized base distribution growth of greater than 70% over the past five years.
The divestiture announced today currently presents a headwind to 2027 that was not initially contemplated when other operational metrics were established. We still believe we can deliver mid-single-digit EBITDA growth and are comfortable with annual distribution coverage of 1.3 times. We acknowledge that another year of 12.5% distribution growth may be impacted by the loss of this EBITDA, and we still expect a significant distribution increase in 2027 greater than distributable cash flow growth.
In addition to the strong set of organic projects we are developing, we continue evaluating inorganic opportunities. Our announced divestiture provides an additional $750 million for growth, and we remain committed to deploying capital to opportunities that are strategic and deliver strong returns, underpinned by the optimization of our value chains and increasing utilization across recently completed investments. MPLX remains on track to deliver durable mid-single-digit adjusted EBITDA growth, and we expect even greater EBITDA growth in 2027.
Our strategic investments, financial flexibility, and strong relationship with MPC continue to differentiate MPLX and support long-term value creation. Now let me turn the call over to Brian.
Julie (Operator)
Thanks, Maryann. As we open the call for your questions, as a courtesy to all participants, we ask that you limit yourself to one question and a follow-up. If time permits, we will re-prompt for additional questions. We will now open the call to questions. Thank you. We will now begin the question-and-answer session. If you have a question, please press star then one on your touchtone phone. If you wish to be removed from the queue, please press star then two. If you are using a speakerphone, you may need to pick up the handset first before pressing the numbers. Once again, if you have a question, please press star then one on your touchtone phone. Our first question comes from John Mackay with Goldman Sachs.
Your line is open.
John Mackay (Analyst)
Hey team, thank you for the time. Maryann, maybe I’ll pick up on kind of the end of your closing remarks there. You guys have been talking a lot about confidence in the second half over first half EBITDA ramp. Maybe just a little more color you can share there and kind of specifically whether you’d expect the Titan expansion to contribute in fourth quarter and then not to ask for too much, but any incremental color you want to give on 27 over 26.
I know you sound constructive on it, but maybe any incremental detail we’d appreciate.
Maryann Mannen (Chairman)
Good morning, John, and thanks for the question. So let me take the first part, which is the ramp first half to the second half. We have been indicating for the last several quarters that the back half of our year, second half of 2020, we expected that growth to be stronger than the first half of the year, given the timing of project completions, et cetera. And we remain confident, frankly, in the fact that the fourth quarter will see incremental growth over the third.
Let me talk a little bit about why we see that and then I’ll talk about 27 for a bit. You know, as I mentioned even in my prepared remarks, we’ve got Secretary 1 continuing to ramp up, Harmon Creek 3 that came online in the middle of the year, just in the third quarter. It continues to ramp into the fourth quarter as well. We’re also seeing opportunity to increase Utica processing utilization. I think I mentioned in my prepared remarks, it rose from 73% in the second quarter to 89% in the third.
And we still see opportunity there ramping on additional sour gas through our Titan 1 plant. I think the question you asked is whether or not Titan 2 would see any incremental volumes. And the answer is no. We expect Titan 2 to complete at the end of this year, and it will begin its ramp to 400 in 2027. But certainly Titan 1 operating well. As a matter of fact, Greg, Chris, and I had the opportunity to visit the Titan facility just a few weeks ago and experience really the progress on that asset as well.
Quite pleased with where we stand and confident in the team’s ability to get that Titan 2 completed by the end of the year. Then we’ve got Blackcomb pipeline that began its commissioning in July, and that’s expected to achieve full commercial service in the fourth quarter as well. And then BANGL, you know, the NGL pipeline, 300 to 400 in the fourth quarter. So again, we feel pretty confident about that. And then for 2027, even with the loss of the EBITDA from the assets associated with MPC sale, we still expect 2027 EBITDA growth to be stronger than 2026, as many of the projects that we were talking about begin to come into service. Again, the one thing I want to pass to Chris, we talked a little bit about the compensation expense, and that could be a headwind or a tailwind. Chris talked about it in his remarks, but I just wanted to give him a second to talk about that as well.
And then I’ll come back in the event you have any other follow-up.
Kris Hagedorn (EVP & Chief Financial Officer)
Yeah. Hi, John. Just to elaborate a little bit on what I had in my prepared remarks, emphasizing two numbers. When you look at third quarter and you look Q over Q versus 2025, our expense was $37 million higher this year than it was in prior year, associated with these long-term incentive compensation programs. When you look at third Q year to date versus prior year year to date, it’s about $48 million higher than the 2025 year to date numbers. So thinking about going to our proxy-like information filed in our 10-K, we know that MPLX doesn’t really have employees. Instead, MPC employees are used to serve MPLX arrangements, and then there’s a reimbursement associated with that. That compensation program that all employees participate in is tied to certain financial metrics but also metrics that are tied to MPC share price. So when you look at MPC share price this year, that significant kind of outperformance as compared to prior year is impacting the expense that we’re recording this year.
So as Maryann had stated, we can’t really predict what that price is going to do in the fourth quarter. So it could be a headwind, it could be a tailwind, but we’ll continue to monitor that movement.
Maryann Mannen (Chairman)
So John, operationally we remain confident in the fourth quarter being as we suggested and obviously the back half of this year being much stronger than the first half of this year heading into 2027. Let me pause and make sure we answered your first part of your question, John.
John Mackay (Analyst)
No, that was great color. Thank you. Thank you both. Maybe just second one for me. We obviously saw the joint sale today. Just curious if Maryann, you can touch on kind of how you see the MPC–MPLX relationship kind of progressing from here. Again, you did a joint sale. Could you do a joint acquisition at some point? And then we have some recontracting coming up in early 28. So maybe just kind of pull that into sharing your general thoughts on the state of things.
Thank you.
Maryann Mannen (Chairman)
Yeah, sure. Thank you for the follow-up, John. You know, the relationship with MPC and MPLX remains very strong, strategically important, a lot of value there. The decision for MPC to sell the Mandan and St. Paul Park obviously resulted in the loss of some EBITDA for MPLX. But we remain committed to the basins that we talk about: Permian, Marcellus, our nat gas NGL strength, and then obviously Utica increasing our utilization there. These remain strongholds in our growth portfolio.
We’re confident in the portfolio that we have today. In terms of the recontracting, see no reason why MPC and MPLX would not recontract. As you know, we typically look at this 12 to 18 months out, but it would be MPLX and MPC’s intent to obviously re-up those contracts. So no change in that strategic relationship at all, John.
John Mackay (Analyst)
Thank you very much for the time. Appreciate it.
Maryann Mannen (Chairman)
You’re welcome. Thank you for the questions.
Julie (Operator)
Thank you. The next question comes from Manav Gupta with UBS. Your line is open.
Manav Gupta (Analyst)
Morning. I’m going to cheat a little here. I’m going to ask a question which I should be asking on the other call, but I’m reasonably sure somebody else might beat me to it. So I’m going to ask you a question. Why Minnesota and North Dakota refineries? Why were those two not core to MPC? Why was the decision to move ahead with that divestiture along with those midstream assets?
Maryann Mannen (Chairman)
Sure. Good morning, Manav. So first of all, I want to thank all of the employees of MPC and MPLX. Critically important, these employees have continued to run all of our assets safely and reliably and will continue to do so throughout the rest of the year before that sale occurs. You may remember maybe as far back as August of 2024, one of the messages that I wanted to be sure that I and the rest of the leadership team continued to convey was our commitment to ensure that we had the appropriate portfolio both at MPC and MPLX for today and the appropriate portfolio for the future.
Looking at demand strength, opportunities, et cetera, we felt at this juncture, given the opportunities that we saw and what we believe to be a good valuation and the fact that we were selling to a company that we believed would take good care of the employees and the assets, that the proceeds from that could be redeployed to continue to ensure that the portfolio for the future was optimized in an even better fashion than we were currently optimizing today.
So that would be the reason why we made that decision. Hope that helps.
Manav Gupta (Analyst)
Perfect. My second question is we have seen some of your peers buy assets out there. M&A has been hot. I’m trying to understand, is it more function of that the asset package that came in did not fit the MPLX profile or was it, do you think the prices that were out there were too high for MPC to make those acquisitions and make the maths fully work? If you could talk a little bit about that.
Maryann Mannen (Chairman)
Yeah, certainly. You know, I would say across both MPC and MPLX, we continue to look at M&A opportunities that fit our strategic intent. Right. They must be able to deliver the value proposition that we have shared with our unitholders and our shareholders. So when you, you know, you look at the opportunities that we would be evaluating for MPLX, we want to be sure that wellhead to water, our growth of our Permian footprint, and the importance of NGLs is a strong area of consideration for us.
Of course, looking at the utilization in the Utica and obviously our Marcellus basin as well. We also need to be sure, particularly as we’re looking at this, that they fit our returns profiles. In the case of MPLX, if we’ve said mid-teens returns are critical and these opportunities must also be able to deliver our mid-single-digit returns, we will be very disciplined in ensuring that when we put capital to work both organically and inorganically that we meet those objectives.
And that would be, Manav, why I would say whether we have or have not transacted here in the recent past.
Manav Gupta (Analyst)
Thank you so much.
Maryann Mannen (Chairman)
You’re most welcome. Thank you for your question.
Julie (Operator)
Thank you. The next question comes from Doug Irwin with Citi. Your line is open.
Doug Irwin (Analyst)
Hey team, thanks for the question. Maybe a little bit of a follow-up to Manav’s line of question there just on the asset sale. Curious how quickly you expect to be able to redeploy those proceeds and then should we be thinking about the target there as being more organic growth or M&A or maybe a mix of both as far as how you recycle those proceeds?
Maryann Mannen (Chairman)
Yes, certainly. Thanks for the question. So on the proceeds from the sale of these assets, we think, one, it strengthens our balance sheet position and continues to give us flexibility. While we have not talked about our 2027 capital yet, we’ll obviously do that on the next earnings call. And as you can imagine, there are projects that we are completing: our two fractionators and our export dock. As a matter of fact, Sean and I were just out there a few weeks ago seeing the progress there and, as I mentioned in my remarks, that will be ready for operations, at least Frac 1 and the export dock, no later than 2028.
The completion of Titan II is happening this year. We’ve got Traverse for 2027. The second fractionator at our Texas City will also be done. We’ve got our Marcellus gathering expansion that will be complete in 1H28, Eiger Pipeline, Solitude that we just announced, and Secretariat. So these are all projects that are currently ongoing and, again, we don’t expect 2027 capital to be stronger at this point than what we saw in 2026. As you know, we actually accelerated some.
But we’ll look to deploy those proceeds as quickly as we can on organic or inorganic opportunities, as we see fit, that meet that criteria. I hope that helps, Doug.
Doug Irwin (Analyst)
Great. Yeah, that’s helpful. And maybe a follow up on the asset sale again. You’ve now announced two fairly sizable asset sales in each of the last two years, I guess. Do you view these as more opportunistic, or are they maybe kind of part of a broader plan to keep shoring up your footprint here around the Northeast and the Permian?
Maryann Mannen (Chairman)
Yeah, I’d say it this way. When you look at the Rockies, as we shared when we decided to do that divestiture, we felt that those assets were better placed in the hands of those who had a different capital allocation strategy to those assets. And we wanted to deploy funding from that into natural gas and NGL, as you have seen us do. In the case of this particular sale, this was really the result of MPC’s decision to monetize and to sell those two assets.
So really perhaps different rationale. We continue to say that Permian, Marcellus are critical basins for us. Almost 90%, frankly, of our capital is being put to work in natural gas and NGL. I mentioned actually in my remarks the speed at which the Solitude pipeline got FID’d. So these are places where we see, particularly when you look at the demand pull coming from LNG, et cetera, places where we see opportunities. Having said that, we are quite pleased with the MPLX asset portfolio. It is operating well. All of our assets are cash flow positive, as are the basins where we operate. And so we remain pleased with the portfolio as it exists today.
Doug Irwin (Analyst)
Great. Thanks for that.
Maryann Mannen (Chairman)
You’re welcome. Thank you for the question.
Julie (Operator)
Thank you. The next question comes from Gabe Dowd. Your line is open.
Gabe Dowd (Analyst)
Thanks, operator. Good morning everyone. Maryann and team. Hey, Maryann. Was hoping we could maybe just get your perspective on the large Appalachian M&A on the E&P side last week. Just curious how that transaction could maybe impact the business moving forward since it did include one of your key customers.
Maryann Mannen (Chairman)
Yeah, good morning, Gabe, and thanks for the question. First and foremost, I’d say when we look at EQT and Range, both of these are long-term existing customers of MPLX with whom we believe we maintain very strong relationships. And frankly, we are absolutely looking forward to continuing to work collectively on that combined set of assets. We don’t typically discuss any of the specific terms of our customer contracts, but we can share that we’ve got durable long-term commitments and strong acreage dedications that extend largely over a decade from one of those customers.
And we don’t expect to be negatively impacted by the combination. We at MPLX strive to be the midstream company of choice to support our producer goals and customers. But anyway, let me pass it to Greg. Greg’s got deep customer relationships as well and he can share a little bit more with respect to the insights in that combination. Thanks for the question, Gabe.
Greg Floerke (EVP and Chief Operating Officer)
Yeah, thanks, Maryann. Gabe, we were in the very beginning with Range in the Marcellus, I’m proud to say, and we’ve grown over that. Goes back almost 20 years. EQT, same, 15-year relationship or a little over that. So as we built out the Marcellus and created the position, the integrated position we have with C3 plus ethane purity pipelines, all interconnected to third parties, we built out a system that’s integrated and both of these customers are part of that.
So, as we’ve continued to build out our Liberty Gathering system in Washington County that we’re going to be expanding along with Majorsville, that sort of ties into the Harmon Creek 3 expansion, our Houston plants, our fractionator and the entire integrated system. So, you know, we’re running at 93%, 94% even after the Harmon Creek 3 plant came online, which is our largest yet built. So we continue to have opportunities to grow here and these are two key customers for us that we hope to continue to do that with.
Gabe Dowd (Analyst)
Thanks, Chris. Thanks, Maryann. That’s helpful. And then as a follow up, given your position on the Permian egress side of things, could you maybe give us your updated thoughts around supply against the expected capacity that should show up by 2030 or so? I think there’s pretty close to 20 Bcf a day that could come on from an incremental egress standpoint by 2030 versus supply expectation of just, you know, maybe 7 to 8 Bcf a day of growth by then.
So can you maybe just talk to the mismatch and are the volume expectations just simply too low? Will the basin be long piped for maybe a short period of time? We’d love to get your thoughts on that.
Maryann Mannen (Chairman)
Yeah, sure, Gabe, I’m going to ask Dave to give you some thoughts and then I’ll come back there with any other follow-up that you might have.
Dave
Hey Gabe, great question. So let me step back a little bit. We’ve been participating in this basin on egress pipelines for almost 10 years now and, as Maryann’s comment stated, we’re participating in six long-haul pipes now with the most recent being Solitude, recently announced, so moving almost 16 Bcf a day out of the pipe. So your comments are spot on. But as Maryann touched on with Solitude, that pipe was the fastest FID of any of the six pipes out of the basin, whether it be to Agua Dulce or to Katy.
So we’re seeing continued strong shipper demand, customer demand in that. And the other interesting part about Solitude is our partners. All these pipelines are multi-partnered, as you know, and the partner mix from not only midstreamers but producers in the Solitude pipeline kind of gives you a little bit of view of how people are thinking about the necessity for capacity going forward. So as we think about it and looking forward, whether it be driven by data centers, power demand generation, but more specifically in the U.S. Gulf Coast by LNG, we continue to see the demand and the need and we see strong customer support and commitment to these long-haul pipes coming out of the basin. So as we look forward, we will continue, through the lens of strict capital discipline, to participate in the basin, whether it be in-basin G&P with Greg and his team or participation in long-haul pipelines that get the gas out of the basin into the customers that are actually pulling and wanting the demand there.
So we see a strong outlook there. Hopefully that helps.
Gabe Dowd (Analyst)
That’s very helpful. Thank you all.
Maryann Mannen (Chairman)
You’re welcome. Thanks for the question.
Julie (Operator)
Thank you. The next question comes from Keith Stanley with Wolfe Research. Your line is open.
Keith Stanley (Analyst at Wolfe Research)
Hi, good morning. Appreciate the flexibility on the distribution growth next year. I think it’s a prudent move given the asset sale. You still noted you intend to raise the distribution faster than DCF growth next year. I’m curious if, as part of that, you’d consider a larger increase in buybacks as a lever that you could use to reduce the unit count and improve your coverage and allow for faster distribution growth if organic growth opportunities don’t materialize.
Maryann Mannen (Chairman)
Hey Keith, good morning, it’s Maryann. Thanks for the question and appreciate your color there. I’m going to pass it to Chris to talk a little bit about buyback in your question, and then I can take any follow-up that you might have.
Kris Hagedorn (EVP & Chief Financial Officer)
Hey Keith. And I know you’ve done the math, but what I would tell you is, first and foremost, our capital allocation strategy is really unchanged. So when you think about us maintaining safe, reliable operations, then distribution growth, then growth capital, and then your unit buybacks being the last consideration for return of capital to our unitholders, that’s unchanged. And when you think about buybacks as a tool to help with coverage ratio, it’s really hard.
It takes a lot of money to move that dial, as I kind of opened with. So that’s not something—it’s something that we look at, but it’s not something that we’ve considered at this point.
Keith Stanley (Analyst at Wolfe Research)
Understood. That makes sense. Thanks for that. Second one, and I apologize in advance for revisiting it, but on the whole affiliate relationship, it’s pretty striking just the performance difference between MPC and MPLX this year and obviously market conditions are driving that. MPC has $12 billion of cash at the MPC level, you’re selling another $3 billion of assets, you have a lot of free cash flow the rest of the next few quarters, with the MPLX public float only $22 billion.
Is there any consideration at all to using this unique period of time to simplify the structure and consider maybe buying in MPLX? It would just seem like if you were ever going to do it, this could be the time to do it. Or is it just something you want to keep permanently out there?
Maryann Mannen (Chairman)
Yeah, no worries, Keith. I’m happy to address the question. So, as I’ve mentioned before, we continue to believe that MPC and MPLX, the strategic focus, the relationship is critically important. Having said that, we recognize that our objective with respect to the unitholders of MPLX and the shareholders of MPC is to ensure that we are providing and creating, via structure and all other capital allocation that we do, that we are creating the optimum value creation for both of those organizations.
So of course we’ll always look at structure. And to the extent that any change is necessary, we would certainly make any adjustments that would be necessary. I would tell you, however, and you know this, that our exchange ratio wouldn’t be the only criteria. Of course, that’s not the sole criteria that we would use to consider that.
Keith Stanley (Analyst at Wolfe Research)
Appreciate the color. Thank you.
Maryann Mannen (Chairman)
You’re welcome. Thanks for the question.
Julie (Operator)
Thank you. The next question comes from Theresa Chen with Barclays. Your line is open.
Theresa Chen (Analyst)
Good morning. I want to go back to the Northeast customer consolidation, understanding that there should be opportunities for MPLX to grow alongside the combined EQT-Range entity. But given the greater scale of the customer post-, how should we think about the potential impact on rates and contract economics over time?
Maryann Mannen (Chairman)
Hey, Theresa, good morning. Thanks for the question. I’m going to let Greg talk a little bit about that. But again, we believe, based on long-term contracting, particularly when you look at sort of the decade of that contracting, that we’re quite optimistic, if you will, of our ability to execute through that. But let me let Greg give you incremental color there.
Greg Floerke (EVP and Chief Operating Officer)
Thanks, Marianne. Teresa, you know I mentioned, as I mentioned previously, we have a long-standing relationship with both Range and EQT. We process gas for both and fractionate for both. Gather for one. The infrastructure we build out has been built out over 15 to 20 years and we have continued to have the ability to incrementally add capacity, whether it be in the processing side, fractionation, or debottlenecking. As we continue to do so based on the durability of our contracts, the acreage dedications, and the extension of that in the rich area, we feel really confident not only about the contractual situation that we’re in, but also the ability to grow incrementally with these customers. And as is the case with any customer and particularly with the combination and with scale, we’ll always be open to discuss and be willing to discuss other win-win arrangements that could help both the producer customers and our growth.
So we’re interested in continuing to have those discussions.
Theresa Chen (Analyst)
Thank you.
Greg Floerke (EVP and Chief Operating Officer)
You’re welcome, Theresa. Thank you.
Julie (Operator)
Thank you. Our final question today comes from Reddy with JPMorgan. Your line is open.
Reddy (Analyst)
Hey, good morning. Thanks for taking my question. It’s been hit on a couple times during the call, but just curious how you, with the additional capital redeployment flexibility, how you evaluate the Marcellus Utica growth opportunities versus the Permian and should we think about that as primarily processing additions given what you’ve mentioned so far? There are other parts of the value chain that you’re looking at at this moment.
Greg Floerke (EVP and Chief Operating Officer)
This is Greg again, I would say that we continue to see, as indicated by the ramp of our Harmon Creek 3 plant that came online earlier, we are continuing to actually loop pipeline in the Marcellus area, add compression, and debottleneck some of the plants. We’re obviously at high utilization near mid-90s, but we do have opportunity to continue to incrementally extract more capacity out of our fleet of plants out there. The NGL prices are really good.
Light oil and crude on the Utica side is really good, the pricing there. And so we’ve got a lot of, you’ve seen we’ve almost doubled our volume and utilization in the last three years in the Utica and we were fortunate. We had some capacity that was built out that we’re able to grow into. We’ll continue to do that in both the Utica and the Marcellus and all those systems are integrated together into fractionation and both liquids and gas takeaway.
So I think we will continue to see opportunities there for incremental growth.
Kris Hagedorn (EVP & Chief Financial Officer)
Yeah. And I just wanted to quickly add as well, this is kind of thinking again about our capital allocation strategy and where do we see the growth. When we think about the Northeast, you’ve thought about that. We’ve always been a just-in-time processing, fractionation builder. When Greg and team get to that kind of mid-90s, we’re thinking about what’s that next expansion project? You know, it’s the low to mid-90s, they better start engineering it.
So if you think about the Majorsville expansion that’s going to be coming online, that comes on just in time. When you think about the Permian in the Southwest, that’s an area where, as you’ve seen, there’s exponential growth. We just talked about some of the egress that we’re expected to see through 2030, but it’s also the area that we do just in time, right. So we’re not deploying stranded capital, rather we’re getting the acreage dedications and the line of sight to the volumes to fill both processing and fractionation as it’s scheduled to come online.
Reddy (Analyst)
Great, thanks for that. And as a follow-up, how would you guys frame the long-term CAPEX run rate at this point? Obviously fundamentally supportive backdrop in ’27 has a lot of growth projects coming online. But as you think about longer term, how would you frame that run-rate CAPEX?
Kris Hagedorn (EVP & Chief Financial Officer)
Yes, I’ll take that one quickly. What I would tell you is when we think about our CAPEX, ’26 is an elevated amount and what we did, we pulled forward a lot of capital spend that was associated with some of these big organic projects that we’re doing. You think about Secretariat II, you think about our wellhead-to-water on the NGL side of the house. These are pull-forward, not overspend. So it’s an important thing to delineate there. This is just so thinking about that, right. ’27 likely looks less than ’26. When you go longer term, you start thinking ’28, you start thinking ’29. What I’ll remind is that base business continues to get bigger and bigger. So to get to that mid-single-digit EBITDA growth you’re going to have and you require those mid-teens return on either organic or inorganic projects. The amount you have to spend gets bigger and bigger each year. And what I would also tell you is just like you saw with this year, it won’t always be linear, right.
It can come in in chunks. So that’s how I’d probably answer that. Hopefully that helped.
Reddy (Analyst)
Yeah, that’s helpful. Thank you.
Julie (Operator)
Thank you. And that was our final question.
Brian Worthington (Vice President)
All right. Thank you for your interest in MPLX. Should you have more questions or would you want clarification on topics discussed this morning, please contact us and our team will be available to take your calls. Thank you for joining us today.
Julie (Operator)
Thank you for your participation. Participants, you may disconnect at this time.
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