Item 3. Quantitative and Qualitative Disclosures About Market Risk

Interest Rate Risk

Our current interest rate risk exposure is related primarily to our debt portfolio. Our debt portfolio is primarily comprised of fixed rate debt, which mitigates the impact of fluctuations in interest rates. Any borrowings under our credit facility and any issuances under our commercial paper program could be at a variable interest rate and could expose us to the risk of increasing interest rates. The maturity of our long-term debt portfolio is partially influenced by the expected lives of our operating assets. We may utilize interest rate derivative instruments to hedge interest rate risk associated with future debt issuances (see Note 6 – Debt and Banking Arrangements).

Commodity Price Risk

We are exposed to commodity price risk through our natural gas and NGL marketing activities, including contracts to purchase, sell, transport, and store product. We routinely manage this risk with a variety of exchange-traded and OTC energy contracts such as forward contracts, futures contracts, and basis swaps, as well as physical transactions. Although many of the contracts used to manage commodity exposure are derivative instruments, these economic hedges are not designated or do not qualify for hedge accounting treatment.

We are also exposed to commodity prices through our upstream business and certain gathering and processing contracts. We use derivative instruments to lock in forward sales prices on a portion of our expected future production and to lock in NGL margin on a portion of our commodity-exposed gathering and processing volumes. These economic hedges are not designated for hedge accounting treatment.

The maturities of our commodity derivative contracts at June 30, 2024 were as follows:

(1)See Note 7 – Fair Value Measurements and Guarantees for discussion of valuation techniques by level within the fair value hierarchy. See Note 8 – Commodity Derivatives for the amount of change in fair value recognized in our Consolidated Statement of Income.

(2)Commodity derivative assets and liabilities exclude $143 million of net cash collateral in Level 1.

Value at Risk (VaR)

VaR is the maximum predicted loss in portfolio value over a specified time period that is not expected to be exceeded within a given degree of probability. Our VaR may not be comparable to that of other companies due to differences in the factors used to calculate VaR. Our VaR is determined using parametric models with 95 percent confidence intervals and one-day holding periods, which means that 95 percent of the time, the risk of loss in a day from a portfolio of positions is expected to be less than or equal to the amount of VaR calculated. Our open exposure is managed in accordance with established policies that limit market risk and require daily reporting of predicted financial loss to management. Because we generally manage physical gas assets and economically protect our positions by hedging in the futures markets, our open exposure is generally mitigated. We employ daily risk testing, using both VaR and stress testing, to evaluate the risk of our positions.

We actively monitor open commodity marketing positions and the resulting VaR and maintain a relatively small risk exposure as total buy volume is close to sell volume, with minimal open natural gas price risk.

The VaR associated with our integrated natural gas trading operations was $3 million at June 30, 2024 and $9 million at December 31, 2023. We had the following VaRs for the period shown:

Our non-trading portfolio primarily consists of commodity derivatives that hedge our upstream business and certain gathering and processing contracts. The VaR associated with these commodity derivatives was $4 million at June 30, 2024 and $3 million at December 31, 2023. We had the following VaRs for the period shown: