The ratings on Enterprise Products Partners L.P. reflect the company's average business profile whose strengths include a good market position, strategic alliances, fixed-fee contracts, and conservative financial measures. The business profile is offset by intense competition, volatile commodity prices, volumes for natural gas and natural gas liquids (NGLs), and a lack of geographic diversity. Enterprise is a provider of gathering, processing, and transporting services for natural gas producers. Enterprise also provides fractionation, transportation, and storage services to producers of NGLs and consumers of NGL products. Enterprise processes natural gas by extracting the NGLs and impurities, which allows the gas to be more readily transported. The NGLs are further processed into ethane, propane, butane, and natural gasoline, and are transported to
