I hope your worries are unfounded, Avi. My thinking is: The pipeline MLPs' revenue comes from the carriage of natural gas and petroleum products. While production and delivery may be down at the margins by 2-3%, this will have only a small effect on revenues. In particular, MLPs are NOT exposed to price swings of the underlying commodities. Unless they are over-levered, and cannot renew their financing, it seems likely that MLPs will be able to weather almost any economic downturn. Since natural gas and oil have inelastic demand curves due to their central role in a modern economy, it is difficult to see usage falling enough to damage the MLPs. Since I'm sheltering much of my IRA money in the MLP space, I can only hope my analysis is correct.
A Stellar Year for MLPs So Far [View article]