The best way to take advantage of high oil and natural prices is to buy a company that produces these vital fuels. A U.S. producer like Devon Energy (DVN +4.76%) would be a good option, since its production isn’t being impacted by the geopolitical conflict in the Middle East. There’s just one small problem: history is clear that today’s high oil prices won’t last forever.

That’s why long-term investors should consider a business like Enterprise Products Partners (EPD +0.00%). The most notable feature of this investment will be its lofty 5.7% yield. But that’s just part of the story behind why you might want to put $10,000 into it today.

What does $10,000 of Enterprise get you?

From a purely practical point of view, $10,000 will let you buy roughly 260 units of this master limited partnership (MLP). That will generate around $570 in annual income for you, given the 5.7% distribution yield. But these are not the most important facts. What you are getting when you buy Enterprise Products Partners is a rock-solid energy business.

Enterprise operates in the midstream segment of the broader energy sector. It owns energy infrastructure, including pipelines, storage, and transportation assets. It basically connects the upstream (production) to the downstream (chemicals and refining) and the rest of the world. Unlike upstream and downstream businesses, which tend to be commodity-driven, midstream players like Enterprise largely use a toll-taker model.

Enterprise Products Partners

Today’s Change

(0.00%) $0.00

Current Price

$39.23

Key Data Points

Market Cap

$85B

Day’s Range

$39.16 – $39.68

52wk Range

$30.01 – $39.73

Volume

2.7M

Avg Vol

4.5M

Gross Margin

13.45%

Dividend Yield

5.58%

Essentially, Enterprise charges fees for the use of its energy infrastructure. That means that the volume of energy moving through its system is more important than the price of what is being moved. Energy is vital to the global economy, so volumes tend to remain robust regardless of oil prices. This changes the equation for investors in a big way.

Enterprise produces reliable income from a strong foundation

High yields are normal in the midstream sector. But Enterprise also stands out for the consistent growth of its distribution, which has increased annually for 27 consecutive years. That’s basically as long as the MLP has been publicly traded.

One of Enterprise’s other attractions is its financial strength. It has an investment-grade-rated balance sheet, and its distributable cash flow covered its distribution by a very impressive 1.7x in 2025. There is a huge amount of leeway here for adversity. Right now, it is also important to note that Enterprise operates in North America, far from the conflict in the Middle East. North American energy markets could also see increased demand in the long term if energy security becomes more important to countries worldwide.

EPD data by YCharts

On the growth front, Enterprise has $5.3 billion worth of capital investment projects in the works. Some of the current projects run through the end of 2027, providing the MLP with a multi-year growth opportunity. If history is any guide, Enterprise will add more to that backlog of work over time. Occasionally, the MLP also buys assets. All in, slow-and-steady business growth is the goal.

Enterprise will keep paying you even when oil prices decline

Enterprise Products Partners will clearly be favored by income-focused investors. But reinvesting the distribution over time has resulted in a total return of 4,400% since the MLP’s initial public offering. Over that same span, the S&P 500 index‘s (^GSPC 1.24%) total return was a little under 1,000%. So even growth investors should take a closer look here.

The key is that when oil prices fall, which history is clear will eventually happen, Enterprise will keep paying you well to own it. That will be a difficult time for energy investors, as stock prices will be weak, particularly for focused upstream producers. Buy Enterprise, however, and you can watch your lofty distribution checks roll in rather than focusing on weak stock prices.

Minerals like copper and cobalt are in high demand thanks to the $700 billion AI infrastructure buildout. Microsoft’s 80-megawatt Chicago site, for example, required 2,100 tons of copper alone. Nickel, cobalt, and lithium are needed for the batteries that power data centers. Rare earths are critical to powering the magnets in server fans and hard drives that keep AI systems up and running.

The problem is that most of these minerals are mined or processed by the U.S.’s main geopolitical competitor: China. The country is the leading refiner for 19 out of 20 of the most important strategic minerals, with an average market share of 70%, according to the International Energy Agency. 

Without a new source of minerals, the U.S. faces a precarious dependence on China for the raw materials underpinning its technological and economic future. If left unaddressed, that vulnerability could hand Beijing enormous leverage over American industry for decades to come.

The Trump administration has taken notice of this resource dilemma. In 2025, President Donald Trump signed an executive order directing the Department of Commerce and other agencies to pursue the exploration and exploitation of deep-sea resources.

Several U.S. companies are now planning on extracting polymetallic nodules (PMNs), mineral-rich rock formations that sit unattached on the abyssal plain of the ocean floor. 

Of those is American Ocean Minerals, a firm in the process of closing a $1 billion merger with Odyssey Marine Exploration, and which tapped former Rio Tinto CEO Tom Albanese to take the reins.  

The firm just earned a license to conduct research in an exclusive economic zone around the Cook Islands in the South Pacific. He claimed the EEZ holds a vast bounty of PMNs.

“This could be hundreds of years of endowment,” Albanese told Fortune.

The big bet on potato-sized mineral balls 

PMNs are potato-sized balls that form over millions of years as layers of metal oxides slowly accumulate around an existing object on the ocean floor, such as a shark tooth or shell fragment.

Composed primarily of manganese and iron, they also contain economically valuable metals including nickel, cobalt, copper, and rare earth elements.

The Cook Islands EEZ is over 770,000 square miles wide, nearly five times the size of California. 

“And you can imagine that’s sprinkled with nodules,” Albanese said.

The Cook Islands Seabed Mineral Authority, which ensures responsible management of the country’s seabed minerals, said the region holds 6.7 billion metric tons of PMNs. That includes an estimated 20 million metric tons of cobalt, about 100 times the annual amount coming from the Democratic Republic of Congo—the world’s top producer, where China controls the majority of output.

Environmental, governance, and scientific considerations

While American Ocean Minerals was granted exploration licenses in the Cook Islands EEZ, the horizon for actually mining commercially is a bit further in the distance. In fact, there is currently no deep-sea mining activity happening anywhere in the world. These minerals, rather, are harvested from land sources. 

The International Seabed Authority, which regulates mineral-resource-related activities in the ocean, hasn’t yet approved any company to extract them commercially, with a meeting in March ending in a stalemate. 

And a growing coalition of 40 countries is now backing a moratorium on deep-sea mining, raising environmental, governance, and scientific concerns. Others have called for an outright ban, including some island nations in the South Pacific.

The ocean floor is quite biodiverse. The Ocean Exploration Trust, a nonprofit ocean discovery organization, led an expedition of the seabed around the Cook Islands last year and found “so many creatures we know absolutely nothing about.” It’s likely deep-sea mining would disrupt life under the sea.

A separate report from the American Museum of Natural History estimated that the impact of a deep-sea mining machine would decrease the abundance of animals by 37% in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone, a Pacific region also said to be rich with PMNs. 

Still, proponents argue deep-sea mining may be less damaging than land mining, which contributes to massive habitat destruction, biodiversity loss, and toxic contamination of water sources. In addition, many operations, like those in the DRC, rely on forced labor.

Mineral demand is only expected to increase. The International Energy Agency estimated that demand for nickel, cobalt, and rare earth elements could more than double by 2040. For Albanese, the lack of mineral source diversification will remain a key geopolitical tension if new, independent sources aren’t explored.

“I see the merits of continued engagement with China,” he said, “but also see the risks of being overly dependent on the Chinese industry for any part of critical supply chains.”