On the desk today · Enterprise Products Partners
Oil prices rise. Oil prices fall. The pipeline collects either way.
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The Farmer's Son Who
Built The Toll Road For Oil
In 1968, the son of a poor Texas farmer scraped together $10,000, bought two propane trucks, and started delivering fuel to petrochemical plants along the Gulf Coast. His name was Dan Duncan. He had no college degree. He had no investors. He had two trucks and a route.
Over the next four decades, Duncan did the same thing over and over. He built a pipeline. Then another. Then a processing plant. Then a storage terminal. Then another pipeline. He connected the places where oil and gas came out of the ground to the places where refineries and chemical plants needed them. He never drilled a well. He never pumped a barrel. He built the road between the two — and charged a fee for every molecule that traveled it.
I filled up my car last week. The gasoline that went into my tank started as crude oil somewhere in the Permian Basin. Between the wellhead and my gas station, that oil traveled through a pipeline — possibly hundreds of miles — to a refinery, was processed, and then traveled through another pipeline to a distribution terminal, and then by truck to the pump. Somewhere in that chain — and quite possibly in more than one place — the molecule passed through infrastructure owned by Enterprise Products Partners. I paid the gas station. The gas station paid the distributor. The distributor paid the refiner. And the refiner paid Enterprise for moving the oil.
Most people think of energy companies as drillers and producers — the companies that find oil and sell it. Enterprise is none of those things. It is the plumbing. It owns approximately 50,000 miles of pipeline — enough to wrap around the Earth twice — along with 260 million barrels of storage capacity for natural gas liquids, crude oil, and refined products. It operates 14 natural gas processing plants and 26 fractionators that separate raw natural gas into its component parts. And it runs marine terminals and export facilities along the Houston Ship Channel that send American energy to the rest of the world.
Dan Duncan built this network piece by piece from 1968 until his death on March 28, 2010. He was the richest person in Houston when he died. His daughter, Randa Duncan Williams, now chairs the board. The Duncan family still owns approximately 32% of the partnership.
In fiscal 2025, Enterprise reported $5.8 billion in net income. Operational distributable cash flow — the partnership's measure of cash available to pay unitholders — was $7.9 billion. Adjusted cash flow from operations hit a record $8.7 billion. Distributions declared for the year totaled $2.175 per unit, up 3.6% — marking Enterprise's 27th consecutive year of distribution growth. The partnership covered its distributions 1.7 times and still retained $3.2 billion in cash to reinvest in new projects.
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That 27-year distribution growth streak is the number income investors care about most. Enterprise has raised its payout every year since 1998 — through the dot-com crash, through the financial crisis, through the shale revolution, through the pandemic, through the oil price collapse of 2020, and through every rate cycle since. The distribution has never been cut. Not once. And at $2.175 per unit in 2025, the payout was covered 1.7 times by distributable cash flow — meaning Enterprise earned $1.70 for every $1.00 it paid out. That cushion is what lets the streak continue.
The pricing power is structural and largely invisible to the consumer. Enterprise charges a fee — typically a few cents per gallon or per barrel — for every unit of oil, gas, or NGL that moves through its pipelines, gets processed in its plants, or sits in its storage terminals. Most of these fees are locked in under long-term contracts with built-in escalators. When oil prices fall, producers may drill less — but the molecules already in the system still need to move. And when prices rise, production surges, and more molecules flow through Enterprise's pipes. Either way, the toll gets paid.
Dan Duncan's philosophy was simple, and his daughter has maintained it: build the infrastructure, own the infrastructure, and never sell it. In 2025, Enterprise invested $5.6 billion in capital projects — including $4.4 billion in growth capital for new pipelines, processing plants, and export facilities. One of the largest projects under construction is a second ethylene export terminal on the Houston Ship Channel, which will make Enterprise the dominant exporter of American-made petrochemicals to global markets. Every new pipeline, every new fractionator, every new terminal adds another fee-generating asset to a system that already spans 50,000 miles.
The flywheel runs on America's energy production. The Permian Basin is producing more oil than ever. The Haynesville Shale is producing more natural gas than ever. Every barrel that comes out of the ground needs to get to a refinery, an export terminal, or a chemical plant — and the most efficient way to move it is through a pipeline that already exists. Enterprise's network connects all three. The more America produces, the more flows through Enterprise. The toll doesn't depend on the price. It depends on the volume. And the volume keeps growing.
WHY THIS WORKS
Fee-based revenue regardless of commodity price. Enterprise collects a per-unit toll on every molecule that moves through its system. Oil at $40 or $100 — the pipeline still earns.
50,000 miles of pipeline is an irreplaceable asset. You cannot build a competing pipeline network across North America. The permitting takes years. The capital runs into the tens of billions. The infrastructure already exists — and Enterprise owns it.
27 consecutive years of distribution growth. Through every oil crash, every recession, every pandemic. The payout has never been cut. The coverage ratio of 1.7x means Enterprise earns far more than it distributes.
The Duncan family still owns 32%. Dan Duncan built the network from $10,000 and two trucks. His family still controls the board and the strategy. The time horizon is generational. The playbook hasn't changed in 58 years.
Dan Duncan died on March 28, 2010. He was 77. He had started with $10,000 and two propane trucks in 1968. At the time of his death, he was worth approximately $9.8 billion — the richest person in Houston. He left behind a pipeline network that spans 50,000 miles, storage capacity for 260 million barrels, and a partnership that has raised its distribution every single year for 27 years. His four children — Scott, Dannine, Milane, and Randa — each inherited equal stakes. Every quarter, the distribution arrives. Every quarter, the molecules flow. The farmer's son built a road that never closes.
