Maryann T. Mannen
Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer at Marathon Petroleum
Thanks, Mike. Moving to fourth quarter results, Slide 6 provides the summary of our financial results. This morning, we reported adjusted earnings per share of $6.65. This excludes a $176 million LIFO inventory benefit, as well as $60 million gain related to the Speedway transactions. Adjusted EBITDA was $5.8 billion for the quarter, and cash flow from operations, excluding unfavorable working capital changes, was $4.4 billion. During the quarter, we returned $351 million to shareholders through dividend payments, and repurchased over $1.8 billion of our shares.
Slide 7 shows the reconciliation between net income and adjusted EBITDA as well as the sequential change in adjusted EBITDA from the third quarter of 2022 to the fourth quarter of 2022. Adjusted EBITDA was lower sequentially by approximately $1 billion. This decrease was primarily driven by Refining & Marketing, as the blended crack spread was down over $5 per barrel, reflecting a 20% quarterly decline.
Corporate expenses were higher in the fourth quarter driven by a retroactive operating tax assessment for prior periods. We intend to pursue recovery of these multi-year tax assessments. In addition, corporate includes special compensation expenses, which also affected our Refining & Marketing and Midstream segments. We do not anticipate that these costs will structurally impact future corporate cost. The tax rate for the fourth quarter was 22%, resulting in a tax provision of nearly $1 billion and the full year tax rate was 22%.
Moving to our segment results, Slide 8 provides an overview of our Refining & Marketing segments. Like many in the industry, several of our refineries were impacted by winter storm Elliott at the end of December, primarily in our Gulf Coast in Mid-Con regions. Most of our assets were back online after a short period, and we have not seen structural issues. The crude throughput impact was approximately 4 million barrels, which reduced our crude capacity utilization for the fourth quarter by roughly 2%.
Looking to January, we anticipate impacts to throughput of 3.5 million barrels which is reflected in our guidance for the first quarter of 2023. Even with a disruption at the end of the quarter, our refining assets ran at 94% utilization, processing 2.7 million barrels of crude per day at our 13 refineries. Sequentially, we saw per barrel margins decline most notably in the West Coast region, while U.S. Gulf Coast margins were relatively flat, supported by export demand. Capture was 109% reflecting a strong result from our commercial team.
Operating expenses were lower in the fourth quarter primarily due to lower energy cost partially offset by a special compensation expense of approximately $0.15 per barrel, paid in recognition for our employees' contributions. Due to lower throughputs in the quarter refining operating costs per barrel were roughly flat in the fourth quarter at $5.62 per barrel as compared to the third quarter. Our full year refining operating costs per barrel is $5.41 when we compare to 2021 refining operating costs per barrel of $5.02, this increase can be entirely attributed to higher energy costs. We believe the actions we have taken to reduce our structural operating costs are sustainable.
Slide 9 provides an overview of our Refining & Marketing capture this quarter, which was 109%. Our commercial teams executed effectively in a volatile market, light product margin tailwinds, improved secondary product prices and favorable inventory impacts all benefited capture. We do not expect all of these tailwinds to be repeatable. And in particular, we would expect the inventory impacts to reverse in the first quarter.
As our strategic pillar indicates, we have been committed to improving our commercial performance and we believe that the capabilities we have built over the last 18 months will provide a sustainable advantage. Historically, we communicated a captured target of 95%. But over the last few years, the baseline has moved through our commercial efforts closer to 100%. We believe we have built capabilities that will provide incremental value beyond what we have realized to date, and will produce results that can be seen in our financials.
Slide 10 shows the change in our Midstream EBITDA versus the third quarter of 2022. Our Midstream segment delivered resilient fourth quarter results. We did see lower EBITDA, primarily due to impacts associated with lower NGL prices. This quarter MPLX distributions contributed $502 million in cash flow to MPC.
Slide 11 presents the elements of change in our consolidated cash position for the fourth quarter. Operating cash flow, excluding changes in working capital was $4.4 billion in the quarter. Working capital was a $72 million headwind for the quarter, driven mostly by declining crude prices offset by benefits from inventory impacts. Capital expenditures and investments totaled $1.3 billion this quarter. We saw consistent spending in refining in the fourth quarter as work progress on the Martinez renewables fuel facility conversion and the STAR project at Galveston Bay.
While not reflected in the 2022 capital spend, due to the timing of the JV close, the 50% reimbursement from Neste for Martinez capital spend, was received and reflected in overall cash flows in the third quarter. MPC returned nearly $2.2 billion via share repurchase and dividends during the quarter. We began using the incremental $5 billion share repurchase authorization in November.
For the full year, we returned $13.2 billion out of $17.7 billion of our 2022 cash from operations, excluding working capital impacts, representing a 75% payout. This was partially enabled by our commitment to complete our $15 billion capital return program. The outstanding purchase authorization of $7.6 billion, which includes the incremental $5 billion approval demonstrates our commitment to returning capital. At the end of the fourth quarter, MPC had approximately $11.8 billion in cash and short-term investments.
Slide 12 provides our capital investment plan for 2023, which reflects our continuing focus on strict capital discipline. MPC's investment plan, excluding MPLX, totals approximately $1.3 billion. The plan includes $1.25 billion for the Refining & Marketing segment, of which approximately $350 million or roughly 30% is related to maintenance and regulatory compliance.
Our growth capital plan is approximately $900 million split between low carbon and traditional projects. Within low carbon $150 million is allocated for completion of the Martinez conversion. We are also executing a project at our Los Angeles refinery, which will improve energy efficiency and lower facility emissions. This is a multi-year project. In 2023, we expect associated capital spending to be $150 million. And we have allocated $50 million to smaller projects focused on emerging opportunities.
Within traditional refining, $150 million is associated with the completion of the STAR project. $200 million is focused on smaller projects, targeted at enhancing the yields of our refineries, improving energy efficiency, and lowering our cost. In marketing, we plan to spend $150 million for projects that focus on enhancing and expanding the platform for our Marathon and ARCO brands.
This morning MPLX also announced their 2023 capital investment plan of $950 million. Their plan includes approximately $800 million of growth capital and $150 million of maintenance capital. The capital spending plan focuses on adding new gas processing plants and smaller investments targeted at expansion and debottlenecking of existing assets to meet customer demand.
Turning to guidance, Slide 13, we provide our first quarter outlook. We expect crude throughput volumes of roughly 2.5 million barrels per day, representing 88% utilization. Utilization is forecasted to be lower than fourth quarter levels due to turn around impacts in our U.S. Gulf Coast region. Plan turnaround expense is projected to be approximately $350 million in the first quarter, with a significant level of activity in the Gulf Coast region. The remaining scope of the STAR project, specifically 40,000 barrels per day of crude and 17,000 barrels per day of resid processing capacity is expected to be tied in during the turnaround at Galveston Bay in the first quarter, and should begin to ramp starting in the second quarter of 2023.
We expect the level of 2023 turnaround spending to be similar to the level of spend in 2022. However, unlike 2022, we expect turnaround activity to be front half weighted this year, with significant planned work in the first and second quarters. Therefore, we will have executed four consecutive quarters of heavy turnaround work. Operating costs per barrel in the first quarter are expected to be flat at $5.60 per barrel for the quarter. In conjunction with our turnarounds, we anticipate higher project related expenses as we utilize our planned downtime to complete other work plans.
We are seeing the benefits from lower energy costs in the Gulf Coast and Mid-Con regions. But given the majority of our turnaround activity is heavily weighted to the Gulf Coast. Our expectations of flat operating costs quarter-to-quarter is driven by our West Coast exposure, where we have not seen a decline in energy costs recently.
As we look into 2023, we anticipate our operating costs per barrel would decline and trend towards a more normalized level as we complete this turnaround and project activity. Distribution costs are expected to be approximately $1.3 billion for the quarter. Corporate costs are expected to be $175 million representing the sustained reductions that we have made in this area.
With that, let me pass it back to Mike.
