NEW YORK, January 1, 2026, 18:39 ET — Market closed
- Energy Transfer units closed at $16.49 on Dec. 31, down 0.3%.
- U.S. stock markets are shut for New Year’s Day, with trading set to resume on Friday.
- Oil and natural gas prices fell at year-end, keeping energy-linked sentiment in focus.
Energy Transfer LP NYSE:ET units closed down 0.3% at $16.49 on Wednesday, the final trading day of 2025. The partnership traded about 13.5 million units as Wall Street headed into the New Year’s Day holiday.
U.S. stock markets are closed Thursday for New Year’s Day, leaving investors with a longer gap before the next cash session. That matters for ET because sharp late-December moves in energy commodities often set the tone for midstream trading when markets reopen.
Energy Transfer moved broadly in step with other large U.S. pipeline operators in the latest session. Enterprise Products Partners, Kinder Morgan and Williams also ended Wednesday modestly lower.
Oil fell on Wednesday, with U.S. crude settling at $57.42 a barrel and Brent ending at $60.85. Analysts cited by Reuters said expectations for oversupply have weighed on prices into 2026, and OPEC+ — the cartel and its allies — meets on Jan. 4.
Natural gas prices took the bigger hit. February NYMEX gas futures, traded on the New York Mercantile Exchange, closed down 7.2% after a smaller-than-expected weekly storage draw and warmer temperature forecasts, according to a Barchart analysis carried by Nasdaq.
In U.S. inventory data, the Energy Information Administration said crude stockpiles fell by 1.9 million barrels last week, while gasoline and distillate inventories rose more than expected on strong refining. “Year end numbers tend to be distorted,” said Josh Young, chief investment officer at Bison Interests. Reuters
Those commodity swings can sway positioning in midstream names even though Energy Transfer generates much of its cash flow from fee-based pipeline and storage contracts, which depend more on volumes moved than on day-to-day spot prices.
Energy Transfer is structured as a master limited partnership, a publicly traded partnership that pays distributions and sends unitholders K-1 tax forms. Its most recently declared distribution was $0.3325 a unit, or $1.33 annualized, an SEC filing showed — about an 8% yield at Wednesday’s close.
The units were choppy in the final two sessions: they rose 1.7% on Dec. 30 and then slipped 0.3% on Wednesday. ET traded between about $16.39 and $16.54 in the Dec. 31 session, market data showed.
Investors have also been weighing Energy Transfer’s growth outlook after it suspended development of the Lake Charles LNG export project in mid-December. In the same update, it upsized its Desert Southwest expansion of the Transwestern pipeline, lifting the projected cost to about $5.6 billion and capacity to up to 2.3 billion cubic feet per day — a measure of gas volumes.
Before the next session, traders will watch whether oil and gas futures stabilize after year-end swings and whether market depth improves after the holiday closure.
Energy Transfer’s next scheduled catalyst is its fourth-quarter report. Nasdaq estimates the partnership will report around Feb. 10, and investors will focus on distribution coverage — cash flow available to pay the distribution — and leverage.
On the chart, late-December support sits near $16.28, Tuesday’s low, with resistance around $16.55. A break on either side could help set the early-January tone once liquidity returns.
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