The Williams Companies, Inc. (WMB) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Welcome everyone to the 10:15 presentation, Williams Companies fireside chat. Now to introduce Tristan Richardson as the moderator of today's conversation. He's Director of Equity Research at Truist Securities.

All right. Thank you guys for joining us. Our next presentation, we're so lucky to have the Williams Companies participating with us today. And here with us is the Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of Williams, Micheal Dunn. So thank you for joining us, Micheal.

I guess I would just start, clearly, it's been very thematic, both at this conference and over the past several years, just around climate disclosures, setting goals, emissions, et cetera. I think Williams even devoted an entire Investor Day and presentation on the topic earlier this year. And so we can maybe just kick things off there and just see where the conversation goes. But I think you guys laid out an ambitious climate goal late last year and discussed it at length earlier this year. But thinking about the emissions reduction target you set out for 2030, you went through sort of the sources of those reductions. What are some of the more near-term opportunities to tackle that near-term goal? What do you see as some of the low-hanging fruit on the emissions reduction side versus some of the longer dated, more longer lead-type initiatives?

Well, thanks, Tristan, and thank you for the opportunity to discuss Williams here at the conference today. Williams has really taken a great responsibility here to report upon our sustainability efforts, things that we've been doing for a long time that we really haven't been reporting on. And a couple of years ago, we began our sustainability report, talking about the activities that we're doing, not only to protect our employees, but protect environment. And the opportunity that we have in front of us to continue on our trajectory to a 2030 emissions reduction of 56% from our 2005 levels, we're well on track to do that. And the way we're doing that in the interim before our 2050 net zero ambition is really amping up our leak detection and repair activity, so reducing the methane leaks in our systems, which we've been doing for a long time, but we're making a concerted effort to do it across all of our processing and our G&P transmission compressor stations. And that's a major undertaking for our organization, but it's the right thing to do to keep the methane in the pipes and in the systems and keep it out in the environment. So that's one of the activities that we've undertaken. The other one that's a big transformation is introducing solar generation into our portfolio. And we're doing this from a capital investment standpoint to displace basically the power that we're buying from the grid today, either in our gathering and processing systems or in our transmission systems. And that's really the crux of our ability to reduce our emissions between now and 2030 to be able to meet that 56% reduction goal. And we're well under the glide path to get there. And we certainly believe that we'll continue to increase that trajectory. Renewable natural gas is another activity we kept underway, where we're introducing either landfill gas or methane from dairy farms into our systems. We've got 6 of those connected today into either our gathering or transmission systems and more activity underway to do that. So that's another way we can take methane out of the atmosphere and be able to do our part to continue on that trajectory.

So curious, maybe just if you could bucket those for us maybe as a proportional component of that overall 56% reduction goal?

Yes. The bulk of that is going to come from the first two with our leak detection and repair activities and our solar initiative. The renewable natural gas is a pretty finite resource in those opportunities. If they're too far from our pipelines, obviously, doesn't make sense to build long laterals to be able to capture that gas. So really, the biggest opportunities for us between now and 2030 are the ability to reduce the leaks on our systems and then ultimately implement the solar program that we have underway.

And do you see the leak -- like the LDAR initiatives as sort of maybe the most capital-efficient versus some of the solar priorities and investments being more upfront capital intensive?

Yes, most of the leak detection activities virtually take no capital. There might be some valve replacements here and there, but those are pretty low capital investment opportunities.

That's helpful. And then just very thematic and wanted to kick it off that way. But maybe hopping around to a few different topics. I think -- we think a lot about the supply side and what you guys are seeing in the Northeast and how that business has held up for you guys. And I think the consolidation theme has been prevalent in the Northeast for a while now. We always thought sort of the old -- the old axiom was consolidation leads to increased activity as a new owner has a different plan for the assets. Is that same logic true in the current environment where your supply side customers are taking sort of that more maintenance mode approach or that capital discipline mantra? Is that consolidation begets increased activity, is that still something that we should think of that holds true in the Northeast?

I think it does. If you think about some of the acquisitions that are upstream producer customers have done, it's really -- for example, EQT, where they've been pretty active in the acquisition front. They're acquiring acreage, and they are adopting their practices that they've implemented, where they've really become a lot more efficient up there and they're spreading that across these new acquisitions that they're making. And we continue to see that activity occurring up there. There's a lot of interest in consolidation here. We think it makes sense for them to continue to do that and take costs out of their businesses by doing so. And a lot of that G&A cost can be eliminated through those acquisition opportunities. But I think the really -- the big benefit they have is those very efficient producers can apply their techniques that they've adopted and implemented and approved upon across new acreage, and that's the activity that we're seeing today.

And then I guess it does beget the question around, you guys have done so much in your Northeast business from a structure standpoint, simplifying some of your relationships and partnerships. Do you think of that process is largely complete? Or we are in early iterations of that now? Are there more opportunities? Do you see this business simplify further from a partnerships and structure perspective? I think Williams and Alan have always talked about using partner capital, using -- developing partnerships where a partner may have access to lower cost capital to -- so just curious how you see the Northeast structure developing over time?

So our philosophy is to be large and have scale, where we're active and where we have assets. And we continue to do that in the Northeast, where a couple of years ago, we bought out our partner in the UEO processing complex, where we own 62%, but we weren't operator. So we bought that, but then we immediately folded that into the Northeast JV partnership with the Canadian Pension Board. And that's been a phenomenal success so far. We're continuing to see opportunities to do that where we have partnerships that we believe, ultimately, we would like to fold into a JV structure like that. The Blue Racer acquisition we made last fall was one that we were very patient on and continue to wait for that price to come back to us where it made sense. And we continue to think of those bolt-on activities in our current footprint and our current asset base where we can provide our scale and our efficiency that we see there with our operations to continue to improve the outlook for our business in the Northeast. And those opportunities are still there. We have a lot of JVs that are in place in the Northeast today that consolidation can continue to occur there, we believe, and we can continue to apply our scale to the benefit of our producers as well as our shareholders.

And even in a maintenance flow-type of environment on the part of customers, are we still a ways out from seeing specific pinch points in the Northeast that may demand additional investment on the midstream side?

Well, I think in our systems, we still have capacity that we're taking advantage of that's been latent. We've just recently completed our TXP III at our growth processing complex in West Virginia. And we're seeing our fractionation facility in the Northeast JV, the OVM JV, that's likely to be full this fall as well through the fall and summer. And so as I talked about earlier on the Blue Racer acquisition, we think that's an opportunity for us to share capacity between our 2 systems and the event in the future, one or the other of us has latent capacity. We can move very economically volumes between those 2 systems and take advantage of our scale there. So that's one of the things that we continue to see that we'll take advantage of. And you hear a lot of the producers talking about being in maintenance mode, and there are many of them that are, but we have producers that are private like Encino that's in our Cardinal and Flint systems, and they're very active. They've been increasing production significantly in the dry Flint and they're very active in the wet Cardinal system that we have as well. So we're seeing increased activity from them and increased interest from them continuing to bring volumes into the system. I think where you're going to see this constraint start to build is in the transmission takeaway world, where you have projects like Mountain Valley Pipeline that are stalled. We likely think -- we believe that project will be finished, and 85% of it's in the ground, we understand. And we do believe that one will ultimately get finished that we'll release constraints in the Southwest Appalachia. Our projects on the Transco system are also unlocking transmission capacity out of those production areas. Our Leidy South project will come online later this fall. That's 580,000 dekatherms of new capacity. Cabot and National Fuel are primarily Seneca Resources or the customers behind that project. And then we have our regional energy access project that will unlock an additional 829,000 dekatherms out of that Northeast production area in Pennsylvania, going into the Transco market, and we expect that project to be online in 2023. So there's a lot of incremental transmission projects that are coming on, not only on our systems, but other third parties that will continue to unlock over time those constraints.

You talked a little bit about optimization of any latent capacity on the assets themselves. I mean maybe optimization on the supply side is another interesting question. Can you talk a bit about Sequent the acquisition? What that business is versus -- and what it added that maybe Williams didn't have before? And what does that business give you?

Well, Sequent really gives us -- it's like I said earlier, it's a bolt-on opportunity for us. We had a marketing arm within our organization already. We marketed about 1 billion cubic feet per day of gas. Sequent, upon closing, will give us about 8 Bcf per day of marketing of natural gas through either AMAs or transactions that they have on transmission systems. And for us, it's just a natural synergy for our transmission assets and our GMP assets to have a marketing function like this at scale to where we can use the intelligence, the market intelligence that comes from a marketing company to drive more business to our assets. That's really what it's about for us. This is a small acquisition. It was $50 million, but it provides a lot of scale for our marketing opportunities. We have upstream acreage now that we've acquired through a number of transactions opportunistically last year through some bankruptcy processes. And we have the ability to market that gas that's coming off that upstream production, and we're going to utilize ultimately Sequent to help market that gas for us and take that to some really good markets in the Gulf Coast area, we think, as well as in the Rockies for that new production coming on from those upstream. Basically, our philosophy there is to drive new volumes through capacity that's already built out in our midstream systems with that upstream, the opportunities there. And Sequent is going to be a great fit for us to be able to continue to market that gas that's coming off those upstream assets of ours.

Can you talk a little bit about working capital intensity of adding substantially to your ability to optimize supply and drive utilization?

Yes. As far as the Sequent business goes, we would expect about $100 million of working capital there on an annual basis. So it's pretty modest in regard to our overall capital allocation strategy there. So we don't think that, that will be anything that certainly can't be handled by our team and the Sequent team going forward.

That's helpful. We can lay off the Northeast for a little bit, if you like. But I guess one thing that caught our ear on your recent earnings call, you guys used a key phrase that I don't think we'd heard in a while from you guys. And I think it was, as the business has outperformed, you guys have accelerated your delevering. There was obviously some 1Q events that had a positive impact and helped. But I think you specifically made mention to evaluating capital allocation alternatives. It was definitely a phrase that caught our ear, and I think some people may not have noticed it at all. But as you evaluate sort of the best use of your free cash flow, it almost suggested to us that you could see a priority shift to perhaps returning cash to shareholders. But curious the capital allocation philosophy and perhaps how that's inflecting? Or do I just perceive that in my mind?

Well, I think it's been evolving. We've been targeting to get to a debt-to-EBITDA metric of 4.2 for a number of years now. We had intended to get there this year at some point in time. We were fortunate enough to have a very good first quarter and be able to achieve that earlier than expected this year. So that does give us more flexibility as we go forward. And so now in earnest, we'll have those conversations in conjunction with our strategy session with our Board of Directors later this summer and be able to talk specifically about what our intentions are going forward. But it does open up new opportunities for us to possibly return capital to shareholders. Obviously, the whole mix that everybody talks about out there, you can continue to delever if that's a desire of our Board and our management team's suggestion. And certainly, we talk to our investors a lot to see what they think we ought to do. And we've recently gone through that process with a number of large investors to really get the perception as to what they would like for us to do with the opportunities that we have in front of us now that we've reached our goal. So further deleveraging is certainly an opportunity. Dividend policy is one that we've talked about a lot. And further investments in growth and/or maintenance projects on our transmission assets is another and then share buybacks, ultimately, depending on where your stock price is, that's an evaluation that has to be undertaken. So those conversations will be held in earnest this year, and certainly, we'll provide more information as those conversations evolve. But those are the opportunities in front of us today. It's great that we're finally at our target, and we've done it early. And very proud of the effort that the team has undertaken to be able to get us to this point.

Could we see 2022 as a turning point or a shift for Williams in terms of maybe deciding what TAC to take on that evaluation of capital?

Yes. I think we'll have to make a decision this year with our Board and implement that next year, if that's what the Board's desire is just because we continue to expect to have additional free cash flow generation of our assets and where we are today. And so I think within 2022, you're obviously going to know what our decision is there, pending those discussions with the Board. I certainly can't get in front of the Board and what their ultimate guidance and approval is. But the expectation is that would be implemented in 2022.

Makes sense. And at the risk of chasing shiny objects that are in the news headlines lately, I mean, we want to ask a broader cybersecurity question. Do we know enough about this event to make any early critical assessments, what you've seen and learned from this event? Or has this event triggered a review or a different approach with the way Williams looks at the systems, evaluate its protocols, et cetera? We ask this through the lens of the investor community, I think, generally is largely uneducated on this world. And just trying to help an investor understand this world a little better, and if there's anything that can be gleaned from the recent events.

It's obviously really early in the outcome of that event and the root cause there. But we are having a lot of conversations with peers and industry trade groups and our counterparts within the government that we talk to all the time about these issues. And so we'll continue to learn and understanding, we'll evolve on what happened there. But I feel that our company has taken this seriously for a long time. I obviously think we'll evolve whatever activities we need to based on the learnings of this. And there's nothing different than what we learned from either our peers in the industry, the trade groups or the TSA contacts that we have today, when these things occur. A lot of these things occur, you never hear about them, but we learn about them through informational channels that we have underway today. I think the thing that you will see coming for our industry is cybersecurity regulation. It's likely -- it's been discussed for a long time that the electric side has pretty significant regulation from a cybersecurity standpoint in place, and the natural gas industry really doesn't. There's a lot of guidelines out there. We have adopted, along with our partners in the industry, a lot of these guidelines as our de facto regulation, if you will, that we've implemented within our businesses, but I suspect there's going to be government regulation coming down the pipe now that this significant event has occurred to our industry. And we're not afraid of that. We think we do a great job implementing security measures within our systems. And we'll work to shape those regulations as best we can to minimize the cost impact, but also make sure that we're doing the right thing to keep our systems secure.

Helpful. I appreciate it. Just flipping topics again. I think one aspect of your business that I think perhaps the investor community generally overlooks in terms of level of understanding, perception of value, et cetera, is your Gulf of Mexico business. Clearly, you have some large projects progressing right now. And you've laid out a potential for the incremental EBITDA contributions from some of these projects. How would you help an investor understand this business a little better? What do you see this business developing into over the next few years? And perhaps the flip side of that is how does this enter -- how does this business balance within sort of an energy transition framework and/or your emissions reduction targets?

Well, we're very excited about the opportunities that we see in the Gulf of Mexico. And one thing that's probably not well-known is the Gulf of Mexico production is some of the most ESG-friendly oil and gas production in the world. And so that's obviously something that's -- that we need to talk more about. The producers out there do talk about it, and they're starting to talk, obviously, a lot more about that because they're going to continue to be active in the Gulf of Mexico with the discoveries that are currently announced and to be announced that are out there. And we're in a great place there with the capacity that we've had out there for a long time. A lot of capacity that's ready to go with tiebacks, for example, that are really no capital outlay on our behalf and the producers are just coming to us and tying back into systems that we've had in place and been operating for a long time. So those are the best kinds of projects to have, where we deploy no new capital. We take advantage of capacity that's been out there and paid for, and we get to move new volumes through that system and continue to keep those systems full. So there is a lot of opportunity there. We've talked about $250 million to $300 million of EBITDA uplift in -- within the next several years in that part of our business, and we're very excited about the opportunities we continue to see there.

And can you talk about maybe sort of concentration, right? That incremental contribution both from -- you briefly mentioned capital intensity, but also just the number of projects, thinking comparatively to adding $300 million of incremental EBITDA from a supply project in the West, perhaps. Just thinking about capital intensity in the Gulf of Mexico, right?

Yes. With the majority of those projects, we're not deploying any capital. It's obviously very capital-intensive on the producer side. But for us, it's -- we would be more than doubling our EBITDA coming from the Gulf of Mexico activities alone. And so these are big projects these producers are bringing on. So it's not a lot of projects to be able to accomplish that from the producer side. There's 4 major ones that we talk about a lot. Shell Whale being one of the biggest that has not been FID-ed yet, but there's been a lot of activity underway there. We've been working under a reimbursement agreement for quite some time there to progress the project forward, and if the producers decide not to go forward with it, we get our costs reimbursed on that. So we've already bought the pipe. The pipe has been delivered. Although it's a number of years out, we are well in front of that activity. And so I believe we'll continue to see some FIDs come through on the producer side. But these are big projects. And so there's not a lot of them. And it just creates a great opportunistic future for us out in the Gulf of Mexico.

We've touched a little bit on the Northeast, and we've also talked about the Gulf of Mexico. I mean just to spend a moment on the West, I think you guys have been very successful in M&A efforts there on the divestiture side and consolidation of partnerships. We think a lot of that came from your high priority for delevering over the past several years. As you're delevering initiatives have kind of been pulled forward, and you're now at your target, do additional opportunities for either partnership consolidation or select divestitures, those become less of a priority now that we are -- Williams has at its consolidated leverage target? Or does this represent an opportunity for incremental shareholder return or return to the balance sheet in the West?

Our team has done a great job making some opportunistic divestitures to be able to accomplish our debt-to-EBITDA metric levels that we have reached today. And I would say we're continually looking for those opportunities to sell assets if the market is right. We're not going to sell at a bad price. And so if there is interest to either sell down a portion of our West gathering and processing business or all of it, if somebody is interested in that, we'll do that. But I would say this part of our business requires very little capital. So it generates a lot of free cash flow with not a lot of capital intensity. And I think the tide has turned a little bit with the Haynesville, for example. We would expect to see a lot of interest in the Haynesville with our recent upstream acreage that we acquired via the Chesapeake bankruptcy. We had a lot of interest in partners coming in and working with us on that. We had great timing on that activity where gas prices have started to firm up, and there's more interest coming from the Haynesville. It's in close proximity to the LNG facilities that are continuing to be expanded. And I think those opportunities will continue to land to potentially even transmission projects out of the Haynesville to serve those LNG facilities. So there's a lot of opportunity still within our West assets. But in the meantime, we are generating great free cash flow from those, and we'll continue to harvest that cash flow. And if somebody comes along and is interested in some or any portion of those assets, then we'll consider that.

Maybe just on the upstream asset side. I think it perhaps got a lot of attention. You guys have talked about it. It's a very small piece of overall Williams. And you guys have identified it as sort of not particularly core to a midstream company. But maybe just curious kind of a thought process on timing. You noticed -- you noted that we've seen a commodity firm out, that's advantageous. You guys, it's offered a tailwind. And so it doesn't seem as though there's necessarily a rush to look into partnerships or evaluating potential divestitures. But curious sort of what that could take and perhaps the timing of such?

Well, just to be clear, upstream activities are not our core competency. That's not the business we're going to be in, but we took advantage of very specific situations here. I mentioned the Chesapeake bankruptcy, where we negotiated through that whole process with them. They came out of bankruptcy very healthy, but we acquired that acreage in the Haynesville and we're going to partner with someone out there to come in and be very active on that acreage and then drive really business through our midstream. That's the whole goal here is we've got capacity that's available today, and we're going to drive new business through that via the control of that partnership in the Haynesville, and it's the same in the Wamsutter, where the Southland bankruptcy occurred. We had a very contentious battle through that. But ultimately, we prevailed there. And hopefully, the bankruptcy court soon approves that. I believe that's coming up here within the next week or so. We would expect that to occur, and then we'll close upon that asset. We already own the BP acreage, which is checkerboarded within the state of Wyoming there between the BP acreage and the Southland acreage. We'll be able to unlock about 1 million acres of productive acreage there. Some of that owned in fee ultimately by Williams. So we don't pay any royalties is basically what that means on a lot of that acreage. You don't have that royalty burden. And we'll partner with someone in there to come in and help develop that acreage. But really, the ultimate goal is drive business through our midstream assets via those partnerships. And ultimately, pare down our ownership interest in those partnerships to where we're not going to be the operator. We're ultimately not going to be the owner of that upstream acreage. But we are going to control new business that's coming through basically capacity that we built out for the people that were there before, and now we're going to drive business through those assets.

Makes sense. And maybe perhaps just a little bit of left field. I think we've heard some of your peers talk about interest in assets downstream of traditional midstream and some of the competitive moats there that exist. We haven't necessarily thought about that as core for Williams, particularly since your divestitures a decade ago. But thinking about that -- hearing peers talk about that, is that an opportunity you would ever evaluate again, downstream either petrochemical, power generation, something that's a bit of a step-out for Williams?

I think for us, we talk about our strategy is natural gas. And that's the strategy we're going to continue to believe in. Now if there's downstream opportunities associated with that, that really makes sense from a value chain standpoint, I think we'll consider that. But for us, natural gas is here. It's going to be here for a long time. There's a lot of opportunities within our current footprint. And for example, in the Southern states and the Mid-Atlantic states, the amount of coal-fired generation that's went in our asset footprint on the Transco system is enormous. That's going to be shuttered at some point in the future. I can't predict exactly when, but we're going to be there, and we're going to take advantage of the opportunities to work with the customers that we already have there, we already serve all of these customers from a natural gas standpoint. They're obviously going to evolve their business. They're going to have more renewables to replace some of that coal generation. But the bulk of it is going to be served either on a primary or backup basis by natural gas. And we're going to be there to serve that load. And that's what we believe in. Downstream opportunities, we've been there. And I think we've obviously sold off those assets that we've had. And I think we're going to be focused on natural gas.

Helpful. Maybe just flipping back to the West for one more. Curious sort of prioritizing just with what we've seen the commodity do and where we've seen at least backward looking, seemingly activity increasing, people optimistic about exit rates. Curious in the West, maybe prioritize sort of where you see the fastest-growing regions in the West.

The Haynesville right now, I think, on the gathering and processing side is very interesting. We'll see continued growth in the Haynesville. Chesapeake's obviously come out of bankruptcy, very healthy in the acreage that they continue to hold in the Haynesville. We'll be continually developed by them. They've got 3 rigs running in the Haynesville now, and the bulk of that goes through our systems. And so we're very optimistic about the Haynesville and the firming of natural gas prices going forward. And the continued demand that we're seeing from the Gulf Coast LNG as well as Mexico, between those 2, we're seeing between the LNG is getting close to 12 Bcf a day. And in Mexico, we've got about 6 Bcf a day going into Mexico from an industry standpoint. So 18 Bcf a day going offshore basically, and that's really firm about natural gas. And we're pretty optimistic about the Haynesville right now. So I'd say that's probably our biggest growth area in the West today, but the Wamsutter is pretty exciting as well. Because if you think about that, that's more of an NGL and condensate oil play as well as a lot of natural gas that comes from that new horizontal production there. And with the firming of NGL and oil prices, we'll continue to see some opportunities coming out of the Wamsutter as well.

That's really helpful. Appreciate it. And I have 1 last question, more thinking around the sustainability side of things. But with only 5 minutes left, I did -- and this could actually lead into it pretty well. One question we do have from the audience is what has Williams been doing to evolve their ESG efforts. Can you talk about maybe the recent time line about the goal setting that you guys have done on your Sustainability Analyst Day? Maybe perhaps remind some folks kind of the big steps you guys have made over the past year to 2 years.

Yes. So 2 years ago, we started our sustainability report. We've done 2 of those now, some of the other activities that we had underway. We had a -- we basically had an ESG Analyst Day in January, where that's all we talked about. We talked about our sustainability efforts. We talked about our safety improvements across our business. That's a large component of ESG, and it's not just about the E. It's about our employees and the public as well in keeping them safe. So we made tremendous strides in improving the safety performance within our business. Our employee safety numbers continue to go down. Our continued improvement on the mechanical integrity side of our business improves, which obviously is good for our assets. It's good for our shareholders, but it's absolutely good for the public. These incidents that occur within our industry are very sensational, if you will, in the media when they occur. And it's really incumbent on all of us in this industry to improve our mechanical integrity within our asset footprint. And so that's a huge undertaking that we've been under for a number of years now and continue to improve upon that. So I would say those are the biggest activities that we've had underway. But I also always go back and remind people these are things that Williams has been doing for a long, long time. Leak detection and repair is something that we have undertaken a long time ago and been very active in that activity, and it's just something that we started reporting on from a publishing of a sustainability report because there are obviously, a lot of shareholder interest and a lot of NGO interest in what we are doing as an industry. And it's really important for us to portray what we are doing to improve the environment, improve our social standing in the community with our safety improvements. And so those are really the evolving things that we've done today. Williams really stepped out there last year and was the first midstream business to make a net zero commitment by 2050. Now there's a lot of technology implementation that has to occur there and evolve and get more efficient for us to be able to reach that 2050 ambition, but we feel very confident we'll be able to meet our 2030 goal of a 56% reduction in our CO2 equivalent emissions based on the 2005 baseline. And so we were the first midstream business to do that and very proud of that. And we just think it's very important for us to continue to report on what we're doing.

Appreciate the summary, Micheal. I think this kind of just weaves into my last question on the sustainability side. And I don't know if there is an answer to this, but you guys have issued both medium-term and long-term climate goals or emissions reduction goals and been a leader in the midstream space on the sustainability disclosure side. Do you see investor perception of the natural gas space changing over time or perception of Williams changing over time from a very large-scale investment-grade oil and gas infrastructure company to something that's much more viewed through the sustainability lens of natural gas being a clean fuel. Curious, what does Williams or the industry need to do to help change that investor perception of energy infrastructure?

I believe it's important for us as an industry to continue to talk about the benefits of natural gas and what natural gas has done for improving the emissions profile of this country. It's incredibly important for us to continue to talk about that. There's a lot of detractors. Obviously, the fact that fracking now is looked at as a very bad thing in the minds of some of the environmentalists is disappointing because natural gas has basically transformed the emissions profile of this country. And we all need to talk more about that. We as an industry need to band together and find a way to communicate this better. And the other thing that we really, really have to do is start talking about the impact to the consumer of an immediate transition away from fossil fuels and primarily natural gas. Natural gas is incredibly efficient. It is economic. And moving to an electrified world has real-world cost to people that can't afford it. And that's not being talked about enough. We've done studies. We've had third-party independent studies done. But if you look at any of these, for example, in the Northeast, electrification from a heating standpoint costs 6 times as much as natural gas. And if you start thinking about the people that are most harmed by that, how are they going to pay for that? That's a story that's not being talked about enough. And I think we, as an industry, need to talk more about that. And politicians need just to start thinking more about that. Who is going to pay for all of this in the future?

That's helpful. Really appreciate it. Micheal, thanks for spending time with us today. I appreciate the update on Williams, and thanks for coming.

Thanks for being -- I really appreciate the opportunity to talk to you about Williams. Thank you.