It’s certainly been an exciting year for MLPs, much more so than we all would have wished.

After rallying to record highs as summer waned and holding up well in the early stages of the plunge in oil prices, most master limited partnerships have finally succumbed to tax-loss selling and buyers’ severe allergy to anything labeled “energy.”

What might 2015 bring? I’ve got a handful of predictions that have as good a chance as anyone’s of looking silly by January 15.

1. You Can’t Always Get What You Want

The betting here is on a recovery that stops well short of the past year’s records. Oil prices should by the coming summer find support from capital spending cuts by shale drillers, supply worries as exporters face economic pain and political instability and possibly a pickup in emerging markets demand. That should be enough to reassure investors about the staying power of most midstream services providers. But the shale boom hype that surrounded the summer highs isn’t coming back anytime soon. The Alerian MLP Index finishes 2015 at 490, delivering an annual total return of 15%.

2. Playing With Fire

Linn Energy (NASDAQ: LINE) and its $12 billion mountain of debt beneath the melting snowcap of $4 billion in equity never get back to $20 per unit without a reverse split. Linn’s 10-year note maturing in 2021 traded at 76% of face value and an effective yield of 13.7% on Dec. 12, the day it was named one of energy’s 10 weakest credits by the credit research firm CreditSights. With stubbornly high yields shutting it out of the credit and equity funding markets, Linn could continue to trade more of its most prospective acreage for current production. But with the partnership’s utility to Wall Street ebbing, at least two of the 14 analysts following LINE will get up the nerve to rate it something worse than Hold. And savvy investors not named Leon Cooperman will continue to stay away.

Source: FINRA/Morningstar

3. You Can Lean on Me

High-growth, low-yield MLPs like Phillips 66 Partners (NYSE: PSXP) and EQT Midstream Partners (NYSE: EQM) lag in 2015 as investors become less willing to extrapolate years into the future even in such promising sectors as chemicals logistics and natural gas. Diversified and higher yielding workhorses like Energy Transfer Partners (NYSE: ETP) should fare better as the market prioritizes income over growth.

4. Wild Horses

Mergers roll on as industry giants seek scale and depreciation write-offs. Kinder Morgan (NYSE: KMI) embarks on its hotly anticipated buyout spree by scooping up Targa Resources (NYSE: TRGP) for a little less than Energy Transfer offered last year. The latter expands its filling stations empire with a takeover of Murphy USA (NYSE: MUSA). Loews sells Boardwalk (NYSE: BWP) to Phillips 66 (NYSE: PSX).

5. Gimme Shelter

The first containerboard producer announces an initial public offering of an affiliated MLP, while railroads are advised to set up partnerships specializing in oil and coal transportation. More general partners try to arrange buyouts by the partnerships they manage.

Portfolio Update

Don’t Cry for Enterprise

There’s definitely not enough demand for yet another crude pipeline from a Williston Basin where production growth is likely to slow significantly next year. Enterprise Products Partners (NYSE: EPD) confirmed the obvious on Dec. 12 with a terse announcement that its proposed Bakken-to-Cushing, Oklahoma, pipeline project had failed to garner sufficient shipper commitments to proceed.

Good thing Enterprise has long-term, mostly fee-based commitments lined up for its gas processing and fractionation plants and natural gas liquids pipelines, as well as years of contracted growth ahead at Gulf Coast terminals exporting oil condensate and liquefied petroleum gases.

Source: Enterprise Products Partners presentation

The partnership is deploying some of its excess cash flow to invest in downstream diversification, such as the planned propylene plant backed by 15-year fee-based customer commitments.

Enterprise’s scale, diversification and top-self credit profile have capped its decline since Labor Day at 19%, a bit better than the Alerian MLP Index and less than half the loss sustained by its main NGL processing rival, Targa Resource Partners (NYSE: NGLS).

And should the oil price crash seriously crimp midstream infrastructure demand, Enterprise has the financial werewithal not only to continue raising its distributions but to take advantage of any opportunities that might turn up amid the dislocation.

With its secure distribution now yielding a tax-deferred 4.4%, EPD remains the #2 Best Buy below $42.50.