NEW YORK, December 30, 2025, 01:09 ET — Market closed
- Energy Transfer units closed up 0.12% at $16.27 on Monday.
- Oil settled more than 2% higher, lifting energy sentiment into year-end trading.
- Traders are watching U.S. inventory data, pipeline regulatory developments and the next earnings timetable.
Energy Transfer LP’s units closed up 0.12% at $16.27 on Monday, after trading between $16.24 and $16.34. Volume was about 11.8 million units.
The modest move matters because Energy Transfer sits in the midstream pipeline group, where investors focus on cash payouts and steady fee revenue rather than big swings in commodity prices.
Midstream operators are sometimes described as “toll roads” for oil and gas: they earn fees to move and store fuel. That can cushion earnings when oil and gas prices whip around, but the units still trade with rate expectations and risk appetite.
Oil prices settled more than $1 a barrel higher on Monday, with Brent up 2.1% at $61.94 and U.S. crude up 2.4% at $58.08, after Russia accused Ukraine of targeting President Vladimir Putin’s residence and as tensions in Yemen raised supply concerns. Investors also waited for a delayed U.S. stockpiles report.
Energy Transfer drew attention earlier this month when it said it was suspending development of its Lake Charles liquefied natural gas (LNG) export project — LNG is natural gas cooled into a liquid for shipping — to prioritize natural gas pipeline investments. In the same update, it raised planned capacity of its Transwestern Desert Southwest expansion to up to 2.3 billion cubic feet per day, a measure of gas flow, and put the project cost at about $5.6 billion with an expected in-service date in the fourth quarter of 2029. “There is quite a bit of capacity out there, and way too many projects. Some more projects will wither away,” said Uday Turaga, founder of ADI Analytics. Reuters
Regulatory headlines also stay on the radar. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers released an Environmental Impact Statement — a document required by law to assess environmental effects — recommending that the Dakota Access Pipeline keep operating with conditions such as monitoring and new leak-detection technology, in a step that supported the operator, Energy Transfer.
Energy Transfer is a publicly traded limited partnership, meaning it trades on an exchange but is structured as a partnership and typically returns cash to “unitholders” rather than paying a standard corporate dividend. A Business Wire release said it operates roughly 140,000 miles of pipeline and related infrastructure across 44 states.
Income remains central to the ET story. In October, the partnership raised its quarterly cash distribution to $0.3325 per unit, or $1.33 annualized — about an 8.2% yield based on Monday’s close.
In its third-quarter update, Energy Transfer said it expected 2025 growth capital spending of about $4.6 billion and planned roughly $5 billion of growth capital in 2026, with most aimed at natural-gas projects. It also guided adjusted EBITDA — a cash-earnings measure before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization — to land slightly below the low end of its prior $16.1 billion to $16.5 billion range.
On the charts, ET has been trading below key moving averages, which many short-term traders use to gauge momentum. The 50-day simple moving average was around $16.54 and the 200-day around $16.80, TipRanks data showed.
Before the next session, traders will watch whether ET holds the $16.24 area, near Monday’s low, and whether it can push back through the mid-$16.30s, where it topped out in the prior session.
Earnings timing is another near-term marker on investor calendars. MarketScreener lists Energy Transfer’s fourth-quarter results as a projected Feb. 17 release, while Nasdaq shows the company has not posted a date on its earnings page.
Beyond the next print, investors are watching for updates on contract demand tied to power generation and industrial loads, and whether the partnership can keep funding new projects while maintaining distribution growth.
Macro moves still matter. A sharp swing in crude prices can shift sentiment across the energy complex even when pipeline earnings are mostly fee-based, setting the tone for ET and peers such as Enterprise Products Partners and Williams in the opening hours of the next session.
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