Standard&Poor's Ratings Services bases its ratings on Enterprise Products Partners L.P. (EPD) and its operating subsidiary, Enterprise Products Operating LLC, on the companies' "strong" business risk profiles and "significant" financial risk profiles under our criteria. Key credit strengths include EPD's operating scale, business-line diversity, and high proportion of fee-based revenues. Offsetting these strengths in part are EPD's aggressive growth strategy, commodity price exposure, significant financial leverage, and status as a master limited partnership (MLP). As an MLP, EPD distributes the majority of free cash flow (after maintenance capital spending) to unitholders each quarter and generally relies on the capital markets to fund growth capital spending. EPD is one of the largest midstream energy partnerships in the U.S. Its
