利安德巴塞爾 (LYB) 2011 Q4 法說會逐字稿

Hello and welcome to the LyondellBasell teleconference. At the request of LyondellBasell, this conference is being recorded for instant replay purposes. Following today's presentation we will conduct a question-and-answer session. (Operator Instructions).

I would now like to turn the conference over to Mr. Doug Pike, Vice President, Investor Relations. Sir, you may begin.

Thanks, Brad. Well, hello, and welcome to LyondellBasell's fourth-quarter 2011 teleconference. I am joined today by Jim Gallogly, our CEO, Karyn Ovelmen, our CFO and Sergey Vasnetsov, our Senior Vice President of Strategic Planning and Transactions.

Before we begin the business discussion, I would like to point out that a slide presentation accompanies today's call and is available on our website, www.LyondellBasell.com. I would also like for you to note that statements made in this call relating to matters that are not historical facts are forward-looking statements, and these forward-looking statements are based upon assumptions of management which are believed to be reasonable at the time made and are subject to significant risks and uncertainties. Actual results could differ materially from those forward-looking statements and for more detailed information about the factors that could cause our actual results to differ materially please refer to the cautionary statements in the presentation slides and our financial reports, which are available at www.LyondellBasell.com/investorrelations.

Reconciliation of non-GAAP financial measures to GAAP financial measures, together with any other applicable disclosures including the earnings release, are currently available on our website at LyondellBasell.com.

Finally, I would like to point out that a recording of this call will be available by telephone beginning at 2 PM Eastern time today until 11 PM Eastern time on March 10 by calling 888-568-0611 in the United States and 203-369-3197 outside the United States. And the passcode for both numbers is 6565.

During today's call, we will focus on fourth-quarter and full-year 2011 performance, the current environment and the near-term outlook. With that being said I would like to turn the call over to Jim.

Thank you for joining our earnings call. As Doug mentioned a set of presentation slides accompany this call and are available on our website.

Let's take a look at page 4 and review a few financial highlights. 2011 was a strong year for LyondellBasell. We generated net income of $2.1 billion and EBITDA of $5.3 billion. If we take into account all of the items we don't believe reflect underlying business results, including the unique financing costs associated with our balance sheet restructuring, charges related to the suspension of operations at the Berre refinery, and our European restructuring, the underlying net income would be $2.7 billion and EBITDA would be $5.4 billion. The corresponding earnings were $4.71 per share excluding items of this nature.

In the fourth quarter, prices and margins in the olefins chain and refining declined from strong earlier levels. As a result of this and several charges our fourth-quarter EBITDA declined to $536 million or $675 million, exclusive of charges.

While the magnitude of the quarter to lead decline is significant there is positive momentum building in a number of our businesses at present. I attribute most of the weakness in the fourth quarter to global economic conditions particularly in Europe, unusual crude pricing movements in refining, and typical seasonal trends.

However the quarter was also impacted by other items, including turnarounds in the Intermediates & Derivatives segment.

Karyn and I will discuss all of the details later in the call, but first I want to discuss some of our 2011 accomplishments.

If you turn to page 5 of the presentation, I will begin with our 2011 Environmental, Health and Safety performance. Our safety statistics have continued to improve. While we typically only speak to you regarding our employee and contractor safety performance I would also like to highlight the improvement in our Process Safety Environmental performance. These are all indicators of focus and investment in our operations.

I'm quite proud of our results and the continued improvement to levels that rival the best in the industry.

Unfortunately though, I must report that in mid-January we had an incident in one of our low-density polyethylene lines in Wesseling, Germany. There were no injuries and the damage was limited to an older 130 million pound per year line. The line is currently out of service. We are still investigating the cause and assessing damages.

On page 6 we have outlined some of the key accomplishments. I will highlight just a few of the many achievements.

First, as a relatively young company, establishing strong governance has been an important focus. During the year we expanded our supervisory Board, adding world-class expertise. We have always emphasized cost management and 2011 was not an exception. Our underlying fixed costs were flat compared to 2009. I am also pleased to say that LyondellBasell shares outperformed the market, delivering a 10% return to our shareholders.

In the financial area we undertook an important balance sheet restructuring. This unlocked the value of our significant cash generation as we both reduced debt and paid a $2.6 billion special dividend.

Operationally, our plants established 35 annual production records while increasing ethane processing capabilities by approximately 5%. We also improved operations at the Houston refinery enabling us to increase throughput and benefit from strong [early year] margins. We advanced our investment program by completing major turnarounds at the refinery in two US olefins plants. We also completed many quick payout high return projects.

Further, we enjoyed significant commercial success. We advanced our growth plans. For example, we defined our US olefins expansion projects and the restart of an existing methanol plant allowing us to further exploit to North American natural gas and ethane advantage. Working with Sinopec, we announced plans for a joint feasibility study for a PO TBA plant in Ningbo, China.

The Houston refinery crew purchasing program was another bright spot. This effort diversified our sourcing while yielding an estimated $150 million advantage in 2011 versus the industry benchmark.

In contrast to these opportunities, the situation in European olefins and polyolefins as well as European refining was quite difficult. We addressed this as well. We initiated actions to restructure our European operations, and on January 4 we ceased operations at the Berre refinery.

On the bottom of the page you can see the EBITDA results by segment. For the year, all segments did quite well, improving from an already solid 2010 performance.

Let's turn to slide 7 and look at some of the metrics that drove the performance. On the left side of the chart, you can see that our ethylene production volumes were relatively unchanged versus 2010. This data reflects production after netting out our Channelview flex unit volumes. This tends to understate ethylene operating rates since we converted an increased percentage of our ethylene to higher value propylene.

The margin improvement is the more leveraging story. Our ethylene margins increased by 26% in North America. In Europe, ethylene margins also expanded but from a much smaller base and fell to a slight loss at year end.

In both regions, the improvement in ethylene margins was partially offset by reduced polyethylene spreads. Overall, chain margins increased and were strong in North America.

2011 was a difficult year for polypropylene. High polypropylene prices led to deselection and soft demand which is reflected in the reduced sales volumes. The Intermediates & Derivatives segment had a very strong performance. We saw an increase in intermediates products volume. Ethylene glycol was particularly strong as operating and catalyst improvements led to record production. However, propylene oxide product lines declined, primarily in Europe.

On the far right side of the slide, we show metrics for the Houston refinery. Crude throughput increased significantly, averaging slightly less than full capacity. This, coupled with the strong Maya 2-1-1 spread for most of the year and our crude purchasing strategy, led to an excellent annual result.

I would like to turn the call over to Karyn to discuss our financial performance.

Thanks, Jim. Please turn to slide 8 which charts our fourth-quarter and full-year segment EBITDA. As Jim said the fourth quarter experienced a significant decline from record third-quarter performance. We will cover details a little later but, in general, each segment experienced year-end slowdowns.

Additionally the North American Olefins & Polyolefins segment was impacted by price declines, particularly in ethylene coproducts. The Olefins & Polyolefins -- Europe, Asia, and International segment experienced similar trends in coproducts causing European Olefins & Polyolefins to operate at a small loss. The EBITDA generated within this segment came from polypropylene compounding and our joint ventures.

The Intermediates & Derivatives segment also generated lower fourth-quarter profits. This is primarily related to planned maintenance downtime, typical slow year-end sales, and weak sales into the aircraft deicing and use.

The Refining & Oxyfuels segment was impacted by very weak refining margins, while Oxyfuels results, though weaker than third quarter, benefited from stronger than typical winter margins.

The bar chart on the right depicts full-year EBITDA by segment. Notably the North American Olefins & Polyolefins segment delivered more than $2 billion of EBITDA. To put this in perspective this was approximately $0.26 per pound of ethylene production.

The other segments also performed well, with each major segment generating EBITDA of approximately $1 billion.

Now let's turn to slide 9 and see how we deployed the cash. The first thing you might notice is that in fourth quarter cash from operations, excluding changes in working capital, was negative $385 million. Let me point out that this includes approximately $400 million in premiums paid to refinance our balance sheet and a US tax payment of approximately $200 million.

On this chart I want to highlight our debt repayment and dividends. During 2011, we reduced our debt by $2.1 billion and paid $2.9 billion in dividends while maintaining a comfortable $1 billion cash balance.

The chart on the right provides a good picture of our overall performance since becoming public. Excluding changes in working capital we've generated approximately $5.6 billion from operations and returned over $6 billion to our investors through dividends and debt reduction. Working capital was managed closely, generating approximately $200 million. During the 20 months, capital spending was $1.5 billion.

Slide 10 shows a little more detail on our working capital and liquidity. We finished the year with $3.2 billion of liquidity, consistent with our target, and our net debt was slightly below $3 billion. While discussing liquidity I want to point out that we have not yet received the majority of our anticipated tax refund. We have received all required government approvals in January of this year and believe we will receive approximately $200 million shortly.

This being the beginning of a new year, I expect that you have a few modeling questions. Regarding capital, we are planning to spend approximately $1.4 billion during 2012. As always we will target putting this (inaudible).

Interest expense can be calculated based on approximately $4 billion of beginning debt at an average interest rate of approximately 9%. Additionally there will be an estimated $5 million to $10 million per quarter to amortized financing fees.

Annual book depreciation should be relatively unchanged [from] 2011. We plan to contribute approximately $160 million to our pension and other social programs and estimate an expense of approximately $80 million.

Regarding taxes, we currently expect a book rate of approximately 30% to 32% and after taking into consideration our refund and other tax attributes we expect cash taxes to be significantly below book taxes.

Now I will turn things back to Jim for a further discussion of our business results.

Thanks, Karyn.

Let's discuss segment performance beginning on slide number 11 with Olefins & Polyolefins -- Americas. Fourth-quarter EBITDA was $407 million, a decline of $266 million versus the third quarter. For the full year our segment EBITDA was $2.14 billion, an outstanding year given the generally weak global economy. The key driver of the quarterly decline was reduced ethylene coproduct prices. During the third quarter, propylene, butadiene, and benzene benefited from very strong pricing and the US naphtha cracking was quite competitive with ethane. These prices declined during the fourth quarter making naphtha cracking less competitive.

Let's discuss a few metrics to put the quarterly results in perspective. Relative to the third quarter, our average ethylene price declined by approximately $0.02 per pound while the cost of ethylene production metric increased by $0.11 per pound. The latter increase was primarily related to the cracking of non-ethane feedstock. In fact our average cost of ethane feedstock was relatively unchanged as cost increases in the Gulf Coast were offset by decreases in the Midwest.

Production volumes increased moderately as we continued to operate our ethylene plants near full capacity. However, characteristic of year-end buying patterns, our ethylene sales declined. During the quarter we built some inventory in preparation for upcoming turnaround.

Polyethylene sales price declined by approximately $0.05 per pound versus the third quarter. The decline came early in the quarter and reversed in December when we realized a price increase. Polypropylene spreads declined by approximately $0.02 per pound as price declines outpaced the propylene monomer price decline. Polyolefins sales volumes were relatively unchanged versus the third quarter.

Although fourth-quarter results declined relative to the third quarter, exclusive of 2010 lower cost or market adjustments, they outpaced the fourth quarter of 2010 by $65 million. For the full year, EBITDA exceeded 2010 by more than $400 million, primarily due to higher ethylene margins.

Overall, it was a very good year for this segment and the underlying fundamentals that supported the performance have remained intact. We still have cheap US ethane as compared to heavier feedstocks.

During the first quarter, we have been experiencing positive price momentum in several products. We are also benefiting from lower ethane, propane, and natural gas costs. During the first two quarters of 2012, the industry will have a very active maintenance schedule.

I remind you that at the end of February we will begin to turn around at Channelview. This is a significant turnaround and we expect to lose approximately seven weeks' production from one olefins plant and half a month at the second plant. Although we have taken many commercial actions to prepare for this, you should expect an impact on the first- and second-quarter results.

Let's turn to slide 12 and review performance in the Olefins & Polyolefins -- Europe, Asia, and International segment. The fourth quarter was very difficult as we generated EBITDA of only $62 million, a decline of $199 million from the third quarter. For the full year, EBITDA was $931 million, 14% above 2010.

Results in this segment followed the trends that we discussed during a recent Investor Day. Profitability in olefins and commodity poly-olefins was slightly below breakeven.

Profit was generated through differentiated products. During the fourth quarter we maintained solid earnings in our polypropylene compounding business and received dividends from one of our Saudi Arabian joint ventures.

In prior quarters, we benefited from substantial earnings in our butadiene operations. While butadiene recovery remained profitable during the fourth quarter, the average butadiene price declined approximately $0.45 per pound versus third-quarter lower coproduct prices caused ethylene margins to decline by approximately $0.07 per pound. Ethylene production declined by 13% due in part to normal seasonal trends but also from a weak European economy.

Polyolefin sales volumes also declined by approximately 13%. Polyethylene margins declined by approximately $0.02 per pound while polypropylene margins were generally unchanged. Compared to the fourth quarter of 2010, we experienced lower polyolefin margins and volumes. Results in polypropylene compounding were relatively unchanged and joint-venture dividends increased.

Throughout 2011, differentiated business areas performed well. The first three quarters benefited from coproduct strength, particularly butadiene. Polyolefin results were also relatively strong during the first half of 2011. However as the European economy weakened, results in these products' decline.

In summary, it was a respectable year for this segment but a difficult quarter, primarily in European commodity products. We continue to aggressively pursue restructuring in this region. Over the past several years, we have shattered European capacity while starting up advantaged joint venture assets elsewhere in the world.

Most recently, we announced a planned closure of additional polypropylene capacity at our Wesseling site.

Our commercial restructuring efforts are well underway. In the near term we have seen some positive price moves within Europe, but economic uncertainty remains a key factor over the coming months. I would also remind you that this segment includes the Middle East and Asia which performed well during 2011. Thus far, this trend remains intact.

Now please turn to slide 13 for a discussion of our Intermediates & Derivatives segment. Fourth-quarter EBITDA was $173 million, a decline from the prior quarter. However, for the full year, results were very strong, generating record EBITDA of greater than $1 billion. This segment of our Company has normally been very stable. And the fourth quarter volatility is larger than we have typically experienced. The drivers of the decline are different than within our Olefins & Polyolefins segment. The majority are either nonrecurring or seasonal in nature.

More than half of the quarterly decline occurred in propylene oxide and derivatives and most of the balance was in acetyls. Both of these areas executed significant turnaround during the fourth quarter and this was the major driver of the lower results.

Having said that, other factors also contributed such as seasonally slower year-end sales in the urethane industry, very weak propylene glycol sales into aircraft deicing due to warm weather in both the US and Germany, lower ethylene glycol prices and seasonal marginal declines in TBA chemicals.

Absent the turnaround impacts, underlying business results were somewhat stronger than the fourth quarter of 2010. For the full year, EBITDA exceeded 2010 by approximately $200 million. Propylene oxide and derivative results were strong in both years. Acetyls and ethylene oxygenates experienced particularly good results in 2011. Acetyl strength was driven by low US natural gas costs and competitor operational issues.

Ethylene oxygenates benefited from a tight supply demand environment and strong production as we debottlenecked our plant and upgraded our catalyst system.

Looking forward, year-end maintenance activities are behind us. Temperatures have only recently cooled and as result deicing sales continue to lag. Additionally, Intermediates & Derivatives product sales are often influenced by durable good end uses and therefore sales volumes can be susceptible to global economic volatility.

Let's move to slide number 14 for a discussion of the Refining & Oxyfuels segment. Fourth-quarter EBITDA in this segment includes $136 million of charges related to the suspension of operations at the Berre refinery. Absent this, results were still very weak at $26 million. This decline of $493 million from the third quarter is primarily related to lower industry margins.

In comparison to the fourth quarter of 2010, underlying results declined by approximately $50 million. This is attributed to weak November and December refining spreads.

At our Houston refinery, quarterly EBITDA was slightly above breakeven. Margins declined as the quarter progressed. Additionally, crude purchasing advantages seen in prior quarters were temporarily lost when WTI crude pricing abruptly increased compared to other crudes like brent due to the announcement of the Seaway Pipeline reversal.

In general, this impacted some prior purchases which were based on a WTI crude index. The WTI brent spread has widened in recent weeks.

During the quarter the Houston refinery operated near full capacity, consuming approximately 262,000 barrels of crude daily. The Maya 2-1-1 spread averaged $13 per barrel during the quarter and only $9 per barrel during December. Our Berre refinery operated at 61,000 barrels per day while consuming existing crude inventories prior to ceasing operations on January 4.

Underlying EBITDA for the quarter declined by approximately $35 million versus the third quarter as the benchmark spread declined by $1.00 per barrel and throughput was reduced by a labor strike related to the anticipated closure.

In oxyfuels, our results were influenced by seasonal margin declines. However the declines were somewhat less than normally experienced during winter months. Excluding the $136 million of charges related to the Berre refinery, underlying segment EBITDA for 2011 was approximately $1.1 billion, an improvement of approximately $650 million versus 2010. This includes the Berre refinery EBITDA loss of approximately $[150] million.

Thus far in 2012 the Maya 2-1-1 spread has improved from its December low point, averaging approximately $15 per barrel in January and near $20 per barrel during the first days of February. Although operations at the Berre refinery have been suspended we continue to clear the unit and safely secure the equipment so that it can be [mine vault]. During the first and second quarters we will continue to incur fixed cost at the refinery. Oxyfuels margins have been good for this time of year.

I would like to close with a few final thoughts on the past quarter and our near-term outlook. First I want to be clear that the fourth quarter was disappointing. We had record earnings in the second quarter, again in the third quarter and so I've set high expectations.

Yes, we had some unusual charges in the quarter but clearly macroeconomic conditions changed as we approached the end of the year. We always see seasonal weakness in the fourth quarter but this year, global sentiment was negative as well.

Our US Olefins & Polyolefins business weathered this storm reasonably well and the fundamentals that created outstanding full-year results are intact. Crude oil prices remain elevated while US natural gas prices and NGL prices have continued to decline.

As you can see on page 16, margins are already rebounding nicely. Our refinery results in the US fell dramatically but margins have recently rebounded. We have stopped operations at the Berre refinery, have taken a significant charge to earnings in the quarter and will in the coming months eliminate this drag on earnings.

Our Intermediates & Derivatives business is a relatively steady performer, but not immune to general market and seasonal impacts. This segment fared reasonably well but was impacted by two major turnarounds in the fourth quarter. Our European Olefins & Polyolefins business was significantly impacted by macroeconomic conditions. This segment appeared to be recovering from trough conditions earlier in the year but experienced very weak markets late in the year.

We will remain vigilant and disciplined in our restructuring efforts and will push hard to regain profitability in this region.

While we see some early indications markets are improving, particularly in the United States, we will always remain focused on a few key things. Safety, operational reliability, reducing our costs, including the cost of our debt, being disciplined stewards of our capital as we undertake growth plans, and returning value to our shareholders.

We are now pleased to take questions, Brad.

(Operator Instructions). David Begleiter of Deutsche Bank.

Good morning. On the US ethane price situation do you see those lower prices immediately or is there some sort of lag given your inventory situation?

Ethane prices are usually seen almost immediately. The prices, as you probably recognize, are under $0.50. I believe they were $0.47 a gallon yesterday and, of course, even much cheaper in the Midwest. We see that almost immediately in our operations.

Very good. And can you comment on the advantage and benefit of both the Conway hub as well as your Corpus Christi cracker versus -- they are buying NGLs from the Eagle Ford versus Gulf Coast metrics?

Yes. The Midwest is just dramatically advantaged at this point in time. Ethane is being priced at a price even below the value of natural gas, which is incredibly low for February. You know in the $2.50 Henry hub range. So the Midwest has a terrific advantage. A couple billion pounds of ethylene cracking there.

Corpus Christi is a slightly heavier cracker, although we have been moving significantly more ethane through that unit. The other thing that has happened as a result of the Eagle Ford production is we are taking in steeply discounted condensates into that unit. That has been helping our overall cost structure. So we saw that cracker move from a relatively high cost cracker to a middle of the pack, despite its being fairly heavy.

Just last. When do you expect European olefins profitability to remain similar in Q1 to Q4?

We have seen some price increases already. January was reasonably weak but people have been committed to moving prices. There have been some pretty dramatic increases -- price increases, ethylene, propylene, and pushing our various polymer prices pretty hard, too. So we will see how the quarter develops but there is a lot of activity around that.

The other thing that you have to recognize is butadiene. It has moved up EUR235 a ton in February. So as we pointed out in Investor Day, butadiene is a lot of where the value was extracted last year. We saw prices fall in December. They are increasing earlier in the year. So that will help us.

Thank you very much.

Bob Koort of Goldman Sachs.

Jim, you guys have quite a few projects on tap to do some debottlenecks around field expansion and get some more ethane consumption. Could you talk a little bit about the mood of the producers, ethane producers, in giving you some long-term confidence that you are going to see these low rates? It seems like there is quite a bit of contentious chatter on whether ethane is going to be long for a few years or tight for a few years. And then obviously there is that giant balloon of ethane out on the horizon.

So can you talk about negotiating for some security or stability in ethane? And then also what path do you see over the next few quarters as we get through the turnaround seasons and back into a more normal environment?

Yes, those are very good questions. If you look at where ethane was last quarter in the fourth quarter, you saw some prices that were above $0.90 and obviously today under $0.50. So that is a very dramatic shift.

There was a lot of chatter in the markets about there being issues around transportation and all and, as I said at Investor Day, I think that probably was overstated. I personally think that the market is reasonably balanced.

As you know there are several turnarounds going on right now. Some unplanned outages. That puts tremendous pressure to move ethane, and as a result you see product move dramatically lower. That pressure is going to remain on ethane, I believe in the first and second quarters at a minimum, because of all the turnarounds. There is a remarkable amount of work going on in the industry right now.

Going into the third and fourth quarter we expect there to be some NGL fractionation capacity coming on, and we will see how markets are going to react to that. But I personally think ethane prices should stay fairly low for the year. I feel pretty good about that. Especially when we are sitting here in February with the prices where they are.

And certainly the strips out there even through [2013] of sub $0.45 ethane would validate that. But has there been any willingness of the producers, the suppliers of ethane to lock in long-term contracts with you? Or are they still are reluctant?

There are some people that are out there looking for strips right now and as you said we could do a fair amount of stuff through the end of this year at a minimum. There are people approaching us from the Marcellus, some other folks in other of these regions that are coming in and would like to know that they can move the product. We think ethane is going to go long, and so we are hesitant to do that at this point in time. We have discussed it but at this point in time don't look to lock any of those margins.

And quickly can you give us a methanol update on that project? Thanks.

Yes, we continue to do engineering work. Of course the plant [at just] today and the most important thing is getting a permit. We still are looking at the end of 2013 to get that started up.

P.J. Juvekar of Citi.

Jim, given the [extensive] propane in the US with warm winter and all that, can you ship some of your liquid to your European crackers to give them a little bit advantage?

Yes we can. We have been historically buying some Algerian condensates. One of the things that people don't necessarily recognize about the shutdown of the Berre refinery is that will allow us to change our feedstock slate into our cracker at Berre. We can look at some condensates. We can try to buy naphtha at a little better pricing. We think we will have some pricing. We think we'll have some benefit at the Berre cracker as a result of that the ability to change the feedstock slate a bit.

But in terms of the United States, obviously ethane is very advantaged. The thing that people don't necessarily see is that last quarter we had real deterioration in coke product prices and propane has come on pretty strong and so we can go ahead and put some propane back into furnaces and make some propylene and make some money again. That should be -- should help us quite a bit here in the first, second quarters.

Okay, and you also mentioned that you have been converting more ethylene into propylene. So can you help us understand what are the economics of metathesis unit today? And what are your thoughts about accelerating your metathesis, new metathesis capacity?

Yes. In the fourth quarter we lost some of that advantage. Just didn't make sense to go ahead, given propylene prices to convert ethylene into propylene. So we were doing considerably less of that. That hurt our earnings but at this moment in time that makes sense again and we are running what we call double dime remote.

And anything on the new capacity?

We are still working on that project. So nothing new from what we said at Investor Day. I think February propylene contract price is up over $0.16 so that is very very significant and that is why the sudden shift back to double dimer.

Thank you.

Duffy Fischer of Barclays Capital.

Good morning. On the turnarounds this year at Channelview how should we think about that as being a year-over-year impact on lost earnings?

We are going to have OP-1 down for that entire period of time. We will start at the end of this month in that turnaround and as a result of having a co-gen unit down that takes our steam down, we are having to also shut down OP-2 for a short period of time. So remember we did the turnaround of OP-2 last year but, unfortunately, with the way we have co-gen setup and the lack of steam, we just can't run OP-2 across that turnaround at the co-gen unit. So both will be down.

We have been in the process of turning around our crackers in a significant way last year and this year. And then as you look forward into the year after that and the year after that, we are not going to have as much to do. Now in Europe we have one of our big crackers down in the fall at Wesseling, but we are catching up with our turnarounds and in the next few years we will be in pretty good shape on that.

Okay.

Before I forget, I mention that we built some inventory in December and we did take some commercial steps to try to mitigate the impact. So -- of the big turnaround at Channelview.

Okay. And then two housecleaning questions. The inventory at Berre was supposed to be a nice cash flow inflow for you guys as you worked off that inventory when you shut it down. Has that already happened? Have we seen that cash come through the cash flow statement yet? Or is that still in the future? And then if you would just touch on the remaining expense of debt you have got and what we should think about for plans for that over the next year?

I will let Karyn answer those questions.

From a cash flow perspective, as it relates to Berre, approximately $100 million was liquidated in the fourth quarter. We do expect, given current pricing, another order of magnitude around $300 million or so in the first quarter of 2012.

In terms of our current debt that we have outstanding, the remaining 2017 and 2018 notes have their call date in May of 2013. Today the market fundamentals and technicals are very strong but I expect volatility will remain high. So there are windows of opportunity that exist in the market. If the market provides opportunities for the Company to move towards its transformation into an investment grade like capital structure and also have a significant reduction in our weighted average coupon rate on our bonds then we should, as we are, continue to explore those opportunities. We will continue to monitor the markets and balance market risk with tender costs and potential annual interest saving.

Terrific. Thank you.

Jeff Zekauskas, JPMC.

Ethane production really stepped up in the US in the fourth quarter. In that, I think gas plant production was 942,000 barrels per day in October and 985,000 in November. Do you think that gas plant production has increased since November or do you think it is about the same? And then earlier in your comments you said that you expected more capacity, more ethane capacity to come on. So where do you think gas plant production might be by the end of 2012?

I think there were more NGLs produced at the end of the year. I think that trendline continues.

I will tell you that there has been a slight reduction in the number of rigs that are running. But having said that they are looking at dry gas. People are making their money on the liquid still and so my best guess is that ethane is going to be long and we believe that this is a continuing trend. There's still lots of rigs drilling for gas. When prices are $2.50 an M that is not the best economics for the producers, but having said that, a lot of them have obligations, continue to drill there under acreage.

Generally the ethane production trend is up, and some of these transportation bottlenecks that people talked about are being fixed. You know the issues surrounding Bellevue related to a fire last year and some of the jumpers that need to be put in. A lot of that work is done and so we are not seeing the same number of issues.

All right and then lastly you know there is a very positive 2-1-1 crack spread but there has been a negative Maya spread. Do you think you can do anything about the negative Maya spread or is there a way to configure your feeds so that you can widen out your refinery margins over an intermediate period of time?

That light heavy differential is part of the crack. And there was new capacity that came on in the fourth quarter that caused that light heavy differential to shrink. But then there was other capacity toward the very end that went offline that helped us again.

Right now that 2-1-1 crack is pretty good. We also see quite a widening of the WTI to brent differential and, given how we price certain of our crudes, that has been helpful. I perhaps didn't emphasize it enough on the call but we got hurt when that collapse happened in WTI to brent. That was overnight and had nothing to do with physical movement of oil. That was just a trader phenomenon and we had priced crude off of WTI and so when it dropped over $10 a barrel it hit us.

Thank you very much.

Don Carson of Susquehanna Financial.

Jim, are you able to do much in the way of opportunistic spot ethylene sales similar to what you did back in March/April 2010 when margins were about $0.35? I think there's over $0.40 today. Or does your upcoming turnaround at OP-1 preclude you from taking advantage of these very attractive spot opportunities?

We always watch that and you properly point out that spot is very, very high. It is in the low to mid $0.60 a pound right now compared to mid 50s for contract. So there are opportunities to move spot pounds. Having said that, supply is pretty tight and we are watching the turnaround schedule.

We think that that tight supply is going to continue. When you see that kind of a spread between contract and spot that tells you where inventories are. So we were building in December, ran really hard in our crackers in anticipation of what might happen early in the year. Built some inventory, put some cash to work doing that and, hopefully, that will pay out for our investors as we come into the end of the first/second quarter.

Can you talk a bit about demand from some of your polymer customers both in the US and export business into Asia? There appears to be a bit of restocking going on but is it continuing? And what is your view of pipeline inventories after what seem like a lot of destocking in the fourth quarter?

Yes. the fourth quarter was really pretty weak in polymers almost around the world. Less so in the United States probably than Europe. Asia definitely took a breather in the fourth quarter. I was on the phone with our sales team as late as yesterday talking about where Asia was coming out of the Chinese New Year. They tell me that there is some renewed activity, that traders are reentering the market. Those are all positive signs.

But we are just out of the Chinese New Year so we are going to have to see if that trend continues. Early days, positive. We will see where that goes. In the United States we were able to get a price increase in December. That seldom happens. It was $0.05.

We've got a couple more price increases on the table. Things look reasonably tight especially when you look at where turnarounds are going, and so we are going to push those price increases real hard.

Thank you.

Vincent Andrews of Morgan Stanley.

Just hoping to dimensionalize a little bit more, Jim, your expectations for ethane pricing particularly in the second half of the year. Just when we look at it, we see a fair amount of incremental ethane demand coming from [BSF plant] and some others as well. And then presumably all of the unplanned outages are back in the plant as well.

I just wanted to get a sense of your comments that ethane prices were going to stay -- I don't know if you meant they were going to stay about where they are or if you just meant they are not going to go anywhere back near where they were in the second half of last year.

So if you could just try to bring sense to those a little bit more, that would be helpful.

Yes, I thought ethane prices when they got above $0.90 were exaggerated and certainly not market at the time, although I did hear some experts say, well, that's probably here to stay and I just disagreed with that. It was abnormal conditions.

I think where we are at right now is a bit abnormal conditions. They are very, very low.

Having said that, when we look at and think going forward there is a fair amount of product you can buy on the strip for these kind of prices. I think somebody commented on that before. So the market thinks that ethane stays a bit long through the year.

A lot depends on how people operate, whether everybody comes out of the turnarounds on time. Those kinds of things. But there is an abnormal amount of turnaround activity in the United States at this point in time.

Now coming out, a lot of people are lightening up under feed and some of the work that is going on in the turnarounds is to accomplish that objective. So we will see how the market settles out, but I still think we are in a very advantaged market condition.

And we can't forget that natural gas prices in February you are in the $2.50 range and oil price, brent is $1.18, $1.19 and we are sitting there just around $100 on WTI. So we can't forget that big spread which is something that affects the minds of people trading ethane.

Can you remind us of your ability to take advantage of that ethane strip?

We haven't gone out and tried to buy any that we could. We can go out there like anybody else and buy into that for certain volumes but at this point in time our philosophy is not to do that. We would just -- we are going to watch and see how the market goes and we feel fairly good about ethane pricing into the rest of the year.

Okay. Thanks very much.

Laurence Alexander of Jefferies.

Good morning. I guess the first question is a two-part question on contracts. Are you seeing a shift in ethane pricing to a percentage of proceeds other than just a fixed fee by the midstream companies? And how long do you think your WTI indexing contracts will be sustainable or do you think there is going to be a movement to shift those to brent indexes?

On the first part on the midstream business I can't really tell you if there is that big of a shift. I used to participate pretty heavily in that in my old job but the one thing that happens is those contracts don't change overnight. And so, you are looking at new plants and what producers are doing and typically it is a basin by basin thing, and how much competition is there. So I would hesitate to give you a general trend (technical difficulties) usually have to look basin to basin.

On the second, on WTI pricing, some is priced off of brent, some is priced off of WTI. It just depends on how relevant one is compared to the other.

Toward the second half of the year people were generally trying to price off of brent but I'll still say that there are a fair amount of transactions done off of WTI. Ultimately, remember that that crude is available. WTI isn't that far away from us and there is a pipeline connection that is going to happen midyear that will bring some of that pricing down into the Gulf Coast. So it is still a relevant index.

And then secondly on the outages. If OP-1 and OP-2 will both be down at the same time is a good bogey that it is about a [70 million to 80 million] head wind for the quarter in terms of a sequential bridge?

Well, we really don't give that number out and remember we have taken some commercial average efforts to build some inventory so we would rather not publish a number on that. We gave you the basic timelines and how long we will be down. That is about as much as we would like to say.

Yes I think, Lawrence, you know the capacity of those plants so you have got a pretty -- a reasonable picture of volumetric impact and things.

And the -- what's your -- now you mentioned that the cash tax rate would be significantly lower than the reported taxes. Do you have a rough sense for where the cash tax rates should come out?

Yes. The expectation for 2012 we have got 30% to 32% on the book tax but somewhere around the range of 15% or lower for cash taxes going forward. Again you have to take into consideration the receipt of the $200 million in the cash tax refunds for 2012.

Hassan Ahmed of Alembic Global.

I was taking a look at page 6 of your slide presentation and you listed a number of accomplishments in 2011 be they increasing your ethane feedstock capabilities or wrapping up pre-maintenance turnaround and the like. So now with those behind us just trying to get a sense of how we should think about 2012 EBITDA improvements because of having these accomplishments behind you in 11.

Yes, we spent a fair amount of time talking about 2012 forward in our Investor Day. For instance one of the things that we specifically mentioned about the European restructuring is we are looking to take a couple hundred million dollars a year out of our cost structure there. We talked about the Berre refinery being shut down and in the second half of the year we won't have that earnings drag. We've talked about the ethane advantage that we have incorporated in the United States increase it by another 5%. Things like that help us on an ongoing basis.

Further down the road after this year and into the next few years, we have got expansion plans at La Porte, maybe a bit at Channelview, methanol plant restart. We have got a butadiene unit that we are working on as we speak that is a lump-sum turnkey contract in Germany that has got beautiful economics.

So this is a growing company. The capital budget is up to $1.4 billion this year and so we feel very good about our future.

Now I will say that we are heavily dependent at this moment in time on US olefins and polyolefins. I mean, that is where the key driver is and last year we saw a really nice bump from refining. Refining didn't come to us in the fourth quarter. In fact it was a very, very tough fourth quarter in refining.

But the fundamentals of our business are still intact. And we are going to continue to drive very hard to improve our performance.

Very helpful. And a follow-up, if I may. We have spent a fair bit of time on this call talking about the ethane side of things and ethylene polyethylene and the like, but where do you see --? Propylene prices obviously came down tremendously through the second half of last year. Where do you see propylene prices directly going through 2012?

Propylene is a very short molecule at this point in time and I can't explain why it fell as fast as it did in the fourth quarter, but we have had some pretty significant price increases early in the year. People are cracking lighter in the United States which should make that a more valuable molecule going forward into the chain.

I did mention in the call today that polypropylene demand had been diminished as a result of high prices. Propylene [into] polypropylene so we have seen that market deterioration. On the other hand there are other uses like the propylene oxide business. We feel pretty good about propylene prices going forward and we didn't have that benefit in the fourth quarter. We hope to see it the rest of the year.

Very helpful. Thanks so much.

Kevin McCarthy of Bank of America Merrill Lynch.

I was wondering if you could comment on prospective demand in the propylene chain? If I look at slide number 7, it looks like polypropylene resin volumes were down 0.5 billion pounds, POPG down as well.

How much of that would you attribute to price elasticity? And to the extent that that was a factor, do you think it is mostly played out now so that we can resume growth in 2012?

My hope, Kevin, is that that did play out. The polypropylene prices were materially higher than polyethylene prices. Those who could switch fairly quickly did and so I think there are certain uses where polypropylene just makes a lot more sense, car parts and all of that. I mentioned that our polypropylene compound business was really good in 2010 and stayed really good in 2011. We still see that continuing.

So a lot of the applications are still there, still solid, and I think we have seen the adjustment in those volumes.

Now, it also goes into things like our propylene oxide business. You always have a little bit of reduction in the fourth quarter. Some of that unseasonal but pretty steady. We'll see where that goes but if we have a bit of an improvement in the world economy I expect it all just gets better.

I would, as Jim just said, sort of separate the propylene oxide considerations from the polypropylene. I think some of that was our turnarounds year-end, the deicing and things. Not anything from really propylene pricing.

Okay. That's helpful. And then, Jim, at Investor Day you talked a fair amount about earning the right to grow. I think the emphasis at the time was organic growth through the various projects that you have outlined. We continue to see quite a bit of M&A activity across the chemical sector. Even with the special dividend you are levered about half a turn right now. What is your current view on the outlook for M&A for Lyondell?

As you mentioned, the program that we put forward in Investor Day was organic-oriented. We, like other companies, look for opportunistic opportunities. We just haven't seen something that we are interested in yet. A lot depends on pricing, those kinds of things. We will pay a lot of attention we do. Sergey is sitting next to me on the left and he is nodding his head. He is always keeping track of everything out there.

But we also will tell you that if you pay too much at the wrong time you hurt the Company a great deal and we are interested in earnings, not being big.

Gregg Goodnight of UBS.

Jim, you mentioned the weak pricing in natural gas and there's some forecasts out there that have gas even under more pressure. A couple questions in that area.

Number one is your acetyls business directly exposed to the spot gas? And question number two is could you sort of size the Company's leverage to say $1.00 reduction in natural gas either through BTUs per month type numbers or $1 million per $1.00 of gas?

Yes. The acetyls business does buy its gas on a spot basis. It has been very good for the business recently, with this very very cheap $2.50 in the heart of winter type price. On the kind of indexes you might think of $1.00 in MM BTU lowering our utility cost about $275 million a year. That includes the co-gen steam purchase impacts.

And then if you think of it into the ethane chain you know $1.00 MM BTU equals $0.07 a gallon ethane $0.01 a pound, COE, something like that. Those are pretty good ratios, I think.

Okay. Second question. You mentioned the turnarounds you had in the fourth quarter in propylene oxide and acetyls. Could you size those up in terms of what the direct cost maintenance costs were for those turnarounds?

We don't -- we don't usually talk to those direct costs. And of course they get amortized over time on those large turnarounds.

Okay so we are going to have to break out then the impact of the lower volumes versus the turnarounds?

What you're seeing is -- what you see in the third to fourth quarter results, as Jim said in the prepared comments, was largely the turnaround impacts was one of the most significant effects between third and fourth quarter profitability. Acetyls, of course we only have one acetyls unit in the system. So when it is down you have that pretty big [impact] and then on the propylene oxide side, the site that was down is the propylene oxide solvents, C4 chemicals and BDO site. So there is a combination of impacts on that site.

Great. How long was the acetyls area down in fourth quarter?

I don't remember the length of the turnaround. I think it was -- I will have to get back to you. I just don't recall.

We are going to I think take one more question because I think we are running out of time here.

Ed Mally of Imperial Capital.

Just a quick follow-up on the question about the dent in the capital structure. With respect to the high cost that, generally, would your priority be to refinance that into lower-cost debt when the opportunity arises? Or would you look to place a priority on using excess cash flow to pay down debt outright? And then also within that complex, you addressed the 27 -- 2018 bonds as a target. Any thoughts on the 2027 bonds?

Yes in terms of reducing those 2017 and 18 bonds yes we look to the market here and see if there are opportunities to overall reduce the overall cost from a coupon perspective. Then we will look to tender those bonds and go into the bond market and potentially extend the maturities on those bonds as well as an overall reduction in the cost.

In terms of our overall leverage that we have, expectation is where we are at is appropriate for us. We are a commodity chemical. It is critical to ensure that we have sufficient liquidity. As previously discussed on our Investor Day maintaining that $3 billion range is appropriate from a liquidity perspective. We are looking to reduce our weighted average cost of capital, and I believe in this market it is an achievable goal.

When you look at where our current market and where our 1% -- our 6% 1 billion bonds are trading today, that would indicate the availability out there in the market and indicate a longer tendered maturity staggered capital structure with the current leverage profile that we have. Now, of course the capital considerations would be different if there wasn't sufficient liquidity in the market.

But given our current credit rating, the nature of our business, the global outlook for our business, the capital base and our access to sufficient liquidity then the current leverage profile that we have today is appropriate.

Okay. Thank you. And then with respect to the 2027 bonds that had 8.1% similar to the other higher cost paper, would you look to address those as well as the 2017, 2018?

I think is you look back at the history of those bonds, and it is a pretty small issue for us at $300 million, they have been out there and survive through quite a bit. It is something that is a pretty nice piece of that for us. Yes the interest rate is a little higher than we can achieve right now but with all the other considerations of going through this.

So I think as Karyn said, the focus is on those larger issues and what we can do with those particularly with the 2013 [costs] coming up and the opportunity that the market presents and we hope will present across this year.

Thanks very much.

Thank you, everyone, for your continued interest in our company. We did have a disappointing quarter. We recognize that. It was seasonally slower as we often see in the fourth quarter. But in addition to that we took a significant charge related to the Berre refinery. $400 plus million related to our refinancing efforts in the fourth quarter but I think those unlock significant value.

We had a very weak Maya 2-1-1 crack spread in our refining business. The collapse of WTI at a certain point in time. Europe has obviously been quite weak in the fourth quarter. Seeing a little signs of life, but fundamentally we have a very, very strong business. Ethane thing is very cheap right now. There are lots of turnarounds on the horizon. We are going to continue to press on reducing our cost structure. We have a good business and we came off of record earnings in second quarter, record earnings in the third quarter. We are going to continue to press.

Again, thank you for your interest. Look forward to talking to you next quarter.

Thank you for your participation on the conference call today. At this time all parties may disconnect.