On its Q2 2026 earnings call, Plains All American (Plains) raised its Permian Basin oil production forecast to growth of 100-200 Mb/d on an exit-to-exit basis for 2026 versus 2025, up from a prior forecast of roughly flat, although the firm is primarily in the midstream business, the company produces fundamental analysis of the basin. Plains attributed the change mostly to new natural gas takeaway capacity arriving ahead of schedule. Commercial chief Jeremy Goebel said the basin has "a very favorable path to get to north of 7 MMb/d," with 8 MMb/d requiring better recoveries and supportive prices, though "it's not an unreasonable scenario."
A newly sanctioned expansion of Cactus III (formerly EPIC), the Permian-to-Corpus Christi crude pipeline acquired last year, to 725 Mb/d is expected to come online at the end of August. Management pegged the cost in the tens of millions of dollars and said future phases now look cheaper than underwritten at acquisition, though they'll wait on shipper commitments. Behind that, Plains is extending Permian gathering into newly dedicated Midland and Delaware acreage, and in Canada, the company is expanding the gathering system around its Rainbow assets in the Clearwater play and Rangeland system in the Duvernay, both backed by producer commitments.
In the Q&A session, CEO Willie Chiang mentioned that in Q2, the U.S. market "had record crude exports out of the Gulf Coast," and went on to say with global inventories drawing down, "this is really shifting to a demand-pull market." Goebel mentioned that the added 75 Mb/d on Cactus III "won't change the market, and our outlook for production is substantially higher than 75 Mb/d, so the market from a supply and demand takeaway [perspective] will be net tighter."
