Reuben Gregg Brewer, The Motley Fool

Sat, Jun 7, 2025, 7:15 AM5 min read

• Energy Transfer has a lofty 7.4% yield backed by an inherently domestic business.

• The midstream giant has made some decisions that should leave conservative investors with trust issues.

• Enterprise Products Partners' 6.9% yield will likely be a better fit for most investors.

• 10 stocks we like better than Energy Transfer ›

Dividend investors are always trying to maximize yield, but that requires extra consideration on the risk front. A high yield that isn't backed by a reliable company could leave you in the lurch and, likely, at the worst possible time. This is why investors looking at Energy Transfer (NYSE: ET) and its lofty 7.5% distribution yield will probably be better off taking a little less yield and choosing Enterprise Products Partners (NYSE: EPD) instead. Here's why.

Energy Transfer and Enterprise are two of the largest midstream companies in North America. They both hail from the United States and generate most of their business from the country.

The truth is, owning energy infrastructure assets like pipelines essentially forces these two businesses to be American at heart. After all, you can't move oil around the United States on a pipeline that gets built in Europe. That pipeline has to get built on U.S. soil.

The midstream is actually the most boring segment of the overall energy sector. That's because businesses like Energy Transfer and Enterprise charge fees for the use of their assets. Although the oil, natural gas, and other products that flow through the system may have volatile prices, midstream companies don't really care about the price of what they move. They just care about the volume of product they move. The higher the volume, the higher the toll-like revenues they generate.

Given the importance of energy to the global economy, demand for oil and natural gas tends to remain fairly robust even when commodity prices are weak. Even recessions don't materially diminish demand, since the world would, literally, stop in its tracks without oil and natural gas. From this perspective, Energy Transfer and Enterprise Products Partners are on equal footing.

Here's the thing: Energy Transfer doesn't have the same history of treating its investors well as Enterprise does. That difference is why conservative income investors should be happy to trade down to Enterprise's 6.9% yield. The first big issue happened in 2016, during a time when oil prices were weak.