Quick Read
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EPD yields 6.19% and ET yields 6.64%, turning a $100,000 equal split into $6,413 in annual passive income.
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Energy Transfer cut its distribution 50% in 2020, while Enterprise has grown its payout for 27 consecutive years without a cut.
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Energy Transfer is supplying roughly 900 MMcf/d to Oracle-run data centers, making AI power demand a key growth driver.
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Energy pays some of the highest yields in the market, and it carries a risk most income sectors avoid: commodity prices. When crude falls, an integrated major can lean on its refining business. A pure producer sees its cash flow rise and fall with oil and gas prices. A midstream operator collects fees on the volumes moving through its pipelines, plants and export docks, so its cash flow holds up better in a downturn.
Both names below are midstream partnerships. Over the past month, one fell 8.05% and the other fell 4.87%, while their distributions stayed the same. As a result, both forward yields are now above 6%. A $50,000 stake in each of these two ultra-high-yield names would generate the following. The total investment is $100,000, and it would produce more than $6,000 of passive income each year. Each yield is the latest quarterly distribution annualized.
Enterprise Products Partners
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Yield: 6.19% (forward, on a $2.24 annualized distribution and a $36.19 unit price)
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Units for $50,000: 1,381.6
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Annual Passive Income: ~$3,094.78
Enterprise Products Partners ( NYSE:EPD )runs an integrated North American midstream network that handles NGLs, crude oil, natural gas, petrochemicals and refined products. As an MLP, it passes nearly all of its available cash to unitholders, and its fee-based contracts support a payout well above the broader market's. Second-quarter 2026 pipeline volumes hit a record 14.7 million barrels per day of oil equivalent.
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Dividend safety is Enterprise's strongest point. In Q2 2026, distributable cash flow reached a record $2.3 billion. That covered the distribution 1.9x and left $1.1 billion for growth projects and buybacks. Net leverage is at the company's 3.0 target, and 97% of its debt is fixed rate. Enterprise paid 44.5 cents every quarter of 2020, and its growth streak now extends 27 consecutive years.
The bull case rests on $6.5 billion of growth projects under construction. These include an LPG export expansion on the Houston Ship Channel that is due by the end of 2026. One concern is that the record quarter exaggerates the normal run rate. Management credited about $200 million of Q2 results to unusually strong global demand in April and May and said those price differences "have largely normalized." Because Enterprise is an MLP, holding its units in an IRA can generate unrelated business taxable income (UBTI).
Energy Transfer
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Yield: 6.64% (forward, on a $1.36 annualized distribution and a $20.49 unit price)
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Units for $50,000: 2,440.2
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Annual Passive Income: ~$3,318.69
Energy Transfer ( NYSE:ET )runs a diversified U.S. midstream system. It moves and stores natural gas, collects and processes gas and ships NGLs, refined products and crude oil. Its high payout comes from the same MLP structure.
Coverage looks solid today. Q1 2026 distributable cash flow rose to $2.70 billion from $2.31 billion a year earlier. Q2 adjusted EBITDA climbed 31% to $5.07 billion, and management raised full-year guidance to $18.8 billion to $19.1 billion. The $0.34 Q2 distribution was the 19th consecutive quarterly increase.
The partnership's record in the last downturn is its weak spot. In November 2020, Energy Transfer cut its quarterly payout to $0.1525 from $0.305 and kept it there through 2021. The key risk is that under stress, management protected the balance sheet first. The bull case is rising gas demand. The Hugh Brinson Pipeline is scaling toward 1.5 Bcf/d. New supply agreements will deliver about 900 MMcf/d to data centers run by Oracle ( NYSE:ORCL ), and the Transwestern Desert Southwest expansion was expanded to as much as 2.3 Bcf/d. The same UBTI issue applies to IRA holders.
How $100,000 Splits Across Both Partnerships
| Name |
Yield |
Annual Dividend Income |
|---|---|---|
| Enterprise Products Partners |
6.19% |
$3,094.78 |
| Energy Transfer |
6.64% |
$3,318.69 |
| Total |
6.41% |
$6,413.47 |
What Midstream Cash Flow Delivers Each Year
Together, these two positions generate $6,413.47 in annual passive income from a $100,000 investment, producing a combined yield of 6.41%. Enterprise Products Partners adds $3,094.78, and Energy Transfer rounds out the group with $3,318.69.
Enterprise is the stronger income anchor of the pair. It has 1.9x coverage and a distribution that held steady through 2020. Energy Transfer offers the higher yield and the bigger growth pipeline, but its payout cut means its coverage should be checked every quarter (the warning signs that a fat yield is about to be trimmed are the whole subject of our free dividend trap guide). Fee-based midstream income depends more on volumes than on prices, and that steady quarterly cash flow tops the $6,000 target with room to spare.
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