Many income investors are understandably attracted to the energy sector. The dividend yields offered by energy stocks are often quite juicy. However, there are some downsides to investing in some energy stocks. For example, the volatility of oil and gas prices can, in some cases, reduce the dependability of their cash flow and dividends.

Not every energy stock comes with this baggage, though. Midstream energy companies aren’t concerned with oil and gas prices. Their pipelines are akin to toll roads, collecting fees for moving liquids through their pipelines regardless of oil and gas price swings. If you like energy stocks, in general, I think you’ll love these three pipeline stocks that you can hold forever and let the income roll in.

1. Enbridge: more than just pipelines

Enbridge (ENB 0.76%) ranks as the largest midstream energy stock based on market cap. It’s not surprising, therefore, that the company operates the world’s longest (and most complex) crude oil distribution network, with 18,085 miles of pipeline in the U.S. and Canada. Enbridge also operates 70,273 miles of natural gas pipeline, including the assets of its DCP Midstream joint venture with Phillips 66 (PSX +0.64%).

But as impressive as Enbridge’s pipeline networks are, there’s more to this company than just pipelines. Enbridge is also a utility stock. It’s the largest natural gas utility in North America by volume. The company is also investing in renewable energy, with a renewable energy capacity of roughly 7.2 gigawatts, including projects either operating or under construction.

Today’s Change

(-0.76%) $-0.41

Current Price

$53.74

Key Data Points

Market Cap

$117B

Day’s Range

$53.70 – $54.32

52wk Range

$39.80 – $55.44

Volume

209

Avg Vol

5.3M

Gross Margin

32.74%

Dividend Yield

5.09%

Like many pipeline stocks, Enbridge offers an attractive dividend. Its yield currently stands at around 5.3%. More impressively, though, the company has increased its dividend for 31 consecutive years.

Enbridge’s management has identified $50 billion of growth opportunities through 2030. And leadership has demonstrated that the numbers provided are reliable, as the company has achieved or exceeded management’s financial guidance for 20 consecutive years.

2. Energy Transfer: attractive to income and value investors

Want pipelines? Energy Transfer (ET +0.16%) has them — a whopping 140,000 miles of pipeline across the U.S. The midstream energy company focuses especially on the Permian Basin area in west Texas and the energy hub region near Houston, Texas.

Energy Transfer is a favorite for many income investors. Its forward dividend yield tops 7%. The master limited partnership (MLP) continues to maintain strong distribution coverage. Management is targeting distribution growth of between 3% and 5% per year.

Today’s Change

(0.16%) $0.03

Current Price

$18.96

Key Data Points

Market Cap

$65B

Day’s Range

$18.90 – $19.17

52wk Range

$14.90 – $19.86

Volume

51

Avg Vol

16M

Gross Margin

12.27%

Dividend Yield

6.99%

This pipeline stock could also appeal to value investors. Energy Transfer’s units trade at only 11.4 times forward earnings and 0.76 times trailing 12-month sales.

What about growth? This stock offers something on that front, too. Energy Transfer has a robust backlog of capital projects. It’s enjoying strong growth due to surging demand for artificial intelligence (AI), with the company signing long-term agreements to supply natural gas to three Oracle (ORCL 0.57%) data centers.

3. Enterprise Products Partners: the midstream “steady Eddie”

If I had to pick the best-managed midstream energy company, my vote would go to Enterprise Products Partners (EPD +0.69%). Nearly everything about this pipeline stock screams “steady Eddie.”

For example, Enterprise Products Partners boasts the highest credit rating in the midstream energy industry. It has delivered reliable cash flow per unit and double-digit returns on invested capital for two decades, a period that included several serious challenges for the energy sector.

Enterprise Products Partners

Today’s Change

(0.69%) $0.26

Current Price

$37.83

Key Data Points

Market Cap

$82B

Day’s Range

$37.40 – $37.94

52wk Range

$27.86 – $39.73

Volume

2.4

Avg Vol

4.7M

Gross Margin

12.86%

Dividend Yield

5.75%

Enterprise Products Partners has increased its distribution for 27 consecutive years. Its distribution yield is around 5.9%. The MLP has also rewarded unitholders by repurchasing $1.4 billion of its units through the years.

This pipeline stock is poised for growth, thanks to the same tailwinds benefiting both Enbridge and Energy Transfer. With Enterprise Products Partners, you can count on responsible growth investments that don’t weaken the company financially.

The News Media Guild, the union that represents AP journalists, said more than 120 staff members received buyout offers on Monday.

The news organization is becoming more focused on visual journalism and developing new revenue sources, particularly through companies investing in artificial intelligence, to cope with the economic collapse of many legacy news outlets. Once the lion’s share of AP’s revenue, big newspaper companies now account for 10% of its income.

“We’re not a newspaper company and we haven’t been for quite some time,” Julie Pace, executive editor and senior vice president of the AP, said in an interview.

Despite changes – the company has doubled the number of video journalists it employs in the United States since 2022 – remnants of a staffing structure built largely to provide stories to newspapers and broadcasters in individual states have remained.

That has its roots well back in American history; the AP was started in the mid-19th century by New York newspapers looking to share the costs of reporting outside their immediate territory.

Exact numbers of staff reduction unclear

The number of AP journalists who will lose jobs is murky, in part intentionally. The AP does not say how many journalists it employs, though it has a large international presence as well as its U.S. staff. Pace said the AP’s goal is to reduce its global staff by less than 5%.

Since buyouts are being offered now to only U.S. journalists, it stands to reason that the cut among that workforce will be more than 5%. Whether there are layoffs depends on how many people take the offer, Pace said.

“The AP employs hundreds of talented journalists who are willing and able to adjust to the changing media landscape,” the union said in a statement. “However, the company refuses to offer them appropriate training and tools. Instead, AP continues to get rid of experienced staff and flirt with artificial intelligence — ignoring the opportunity to differentiate AP news stories as ones that are and always will be created by human journalists.”

The union said AP ignored a request last week to bargain over artificial intelligence. The news outlet had no immediate comment on that claim, or the union’s estimate of how many people were offered buyouts. It’s not clear whether the buyout offers were concluded by Monday afternoon.

Over the past four years, the AP’s revenue from newspapers has declined by 25%. Gannett and McClatchy, two of the largest traditional newspaper publishers, dropped AP in 2024.

In recent days, the company learned that Lee Enterprises — publishers of newspapers like The Buffalo News, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and the Richmond Times-Dispatch — is seeking an early exit from a contract due to expire at the end of 2026.

Pace said the buyout plan was in the works before learning about Lee Enterprises. “We made a decision earlier this year that we needed to be bolder in this transformation,” she said.

An even higher focus on the day’s biggest stories

Besides the transition to more video capabilities, the AP is deploying rapid-response teams where staff members, no matter their geographic base, contribute to the day’s big stories, she said. The AP is putting more journalists on beats to break news on topics of known customer interest. But it is committed to maintaining a presence in all 50 states.

“The AP is not in trouble,” Pace said. “We’re making these changes from a position of strength but we’re doing so now to recognize our changing customer base.”

Those customers now are dominated by broadcast, digital and technology companies, an illustration of where people are getting news. The AP has seen 200% growth in revenue from technology companies over the last four years, said Kristin Heitmann, senior vice president and chief revenue officer.

The AP was among the first news outlets to make a deal with an AI company, agreeing in 2023 to lease part of its text archive to OpenAI as it built out its capabilities. The AP launched on Snowflake Marketplace last year to license data directly to enterprises building their own system. It has launched AP Intelligence, a division designed to sell data to financial and advertising sectors, for example.

Google contracted with AP last year to deliver news through the Gemini chatbot, the tech giant’s first deal with a news publisher.

“If you can think of a large technology company,” Heitmann said, “they are a customer of ours.”

Predictions markets now part of the picture for AP

Last month, the AP agreed to sell U.S. elections data to Kalshi, the world’s largest predictions market.

AP’s long tradition in counting and analyzing elections data is another growth area; the company saw a 30% increase in customers between the 2020 and 2024 cycles. It got an additional boost last year when ABC, CBS, NBC and CNN signed on to the service.

The company, traditionally a wholesaler of news to other companies, has also seen growing interest in its direct-to-consumer product, apnews.com, which provides revenue through advertising and donations.

The new business frontiers do not indicate a weakening in the AP’s standards of providing fast, accurate, non-biased news, leaders said. “It anything, it makes it more important that we retain these values as we make the transition,” Pace said.

The AP is trying new forms of fact-checking, including use of video, and more often putting its journalists in public to explain how they got particular stories, she said.

“I think that authenticity, and the fact that you can associate a real person who is often quite experienced and quite deep on their beats … it builds more credibility,” she said. “We’re really trying to embrace that because I do think it’s vital when there is so much misinformation out there.”