, Columnist
To Be an MLP or Not to Be, That Is the Question
The structure used to be about cheap financing; that rationale doesn't hold now.
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Enterprise Products Partners LP is a bellwether for the master limited partnerships sector. Which is why this chart represents a fundamental problem for the MLPs:
MLPs aren't strictly a "sector," like healthcare or utilities; just a particular, tax-advantaged form of financing that wraps around an underlying business operating energy infrastructure, such as pipelines. The sole purpose of the MLP is to raise financing as cheaply as possible.