The Market And Energy Page, T+338 -- December 25, 2017

Disclaimer: this is not an investment site. Do not make any investment, financial, job, travel, or relationship decisions based on anything you read here or think you may have read here.

EPD: from Motley Fool, December 24, 2017 -- three companies that skew toward the lower end of the risk spectrum; one of them: EPD --

... stable assets support about 92% of the company's earnings, which has helped Enterprise continue generating relatively steady cash flow when times get tough.

That cash flow stability enables Enterprise Products Partners to pay a growing cash distribution to investors, which currently yields 6.4%.

Adding further support to that payout is that Enterprise covers it with cash flow by a comfortable 1.2 times, and it has a top-tier balance sheet, including one of the highest credit ratings in the industry.

While the company's metrics put its payout on rock-solid ground, Enterprise recently announced plans to further strengthen its financial situation by growing its distribution at a slower pace next year so it can widen its already conservative coverage ratio and generate more cash to fund expansion projects.

One-time $12 billion science project: world's largest-ever vessel is all set to go in 2018

• the Prelude is now stationed over a gas field off the north coast of Western Australia
• it should produce enough natural gas to power a city the size of Hong Kong
• the vessel is almost one-third of a mile long with a deck longer than four soccer fields 
• construction on Shell's huge floating liquefied natural gas (FLNG) structure began in 2012 and was finished in July by Samsung's Heavy Industries in South Korea, before being towed to Australia
• in 2016, Shell itself decided not to pursue a further three FLNG projects with Samsung
• fully operational, Shell says it will harvest at least 5.3 million tons per annum (mtpa) of liquids — 3.6 mtpa of LNG, 1.3 mtpa of condensate and 0.4 mtpa of liquefied petroleum gas
• Shell has never disclosed how much the vessel will cost, but industry analysts told Reuters that its price would sit between $10.8 billion and $12.6 billion 

***************************************

Only In America