If you feel like you’ve got whiplash from watching the news around the geopolitical conflict in the Middle East, you aren’t alone. News flow out of the region seems to change direction quickly, and so do energy prices. It is hard to know what will happen next in a market so emotionally driven.
If you are considering investing in the energy sector, you may want to broaden your scope beyond oil drillers. One option is to stay close to the energy sector with high-yield Enterprise Products Partners (NYSE: EPD), a business that isn’t really driven by commodity prices. Or, you could look to the future of energy with a reliable dividend-paying utility like NextEra Energy (NYSE: NEE). Here’s why each one could be a no-brainer buy right now.
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Enterprise sidesteps commodity risk
Enterprise Products Partners resides squarely in the oil and natural gas industry, helping to move these vital fuels around the world. It charges fees for the use of its energy infrastructure assets, including pipelines, storage, and transportation. It is one of the largest midstream businesses in North America, a region that has the added benefit of being nowhere near the Middle East. The volume of energy moving through Enterprises’ system is more important than its price.
In the first quarter of 2026, Enterprise saw record volumes across its business, from processing to storage. Simply put, the master limited partnership (MLP) is doing well right now, but not because of high oil prices. Moreover, the big story with Enterprise is really its lofty 5.5% distribution yield. It’s a boring income stock you can count on to keep paying year after year.
The real benefit for long-term investors, however, is that the distribution keeps being increased. For 27 years, basically since Enterprise went public, it has increased its distribution. Adding to the safety of the distribution is an investment-grade-rated balance sheet and a distribution that is covered 1.7x by distributable cash flow. If you can’t stand the volatility of the energy sector today, Enterprise could be a smart, though boring, high-yield solution.
NextEra Energy takes you in a different direction
NextEra Energy isn’t involved in the oil and natural gas sector. It is one of the largest regulated utilities in the United States and also operates one of the largest solar- and wind-based contract power businesses in the world. It has just agreed to buy competitor Dominion Energy (NYSE: D), further increasing its scale and extending its geographic reach to include one of the largest data center markets in the world.