Standard&Poor's Ratings Services bases its ratings on midstream energy company 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. As of Dec. 31, 2010, EPD had about $13.5 billion of reported debt. Key credit strengths include EPD's operating scale, business-line diversity, and high proportion of fee-based revenues. EPD's aggressive growth strategy, commodity price and volume risk exposure, and significant financial leverage partially offset these strengths. As a master limited partnership (MLP), EPD distributes a high proportion of free cash flow (after maintenance capital spending) to unit holders each quarter and generally relies on the capital markets to fund growth capital expenditures. EPD's
