Low oil prices a plus for Buckeye

Article Excerpt

BUCKEYE PARTNERS L.P. $73 (New York symbol BPL; Income Portfolio, Utilities sector; Units outstanding: 130.3 million; Market cap: $9.5 billion; Price-to-sales ratio: 3.0; Dividend yield: 6.6%; TSINetwork Rating: Average; www.buckeye.com) operates 9,700 kilometres of pipelines in the northeastern and Midwestern U.S. Its network pumps gasoline, jet fuel and other petroleum products. In the past few years, Buckeye has steadily expanded its oil storage operations. It now has 117 terminals in the U.S. with a total capacity of 55.6 million barrels. The company also owns seven marine storage terminals that serve ocean-going oil tankers in New York City, Corpus Christi, Texas, Puerto Rico, St. Lucia and The Bahamas. These facilities have a combined capacity of 62.3 million barrels. Due to the recent weakness in oil prices, many producers are opting to store their crude while they wait for prices to recover. As a result, Buckeye’s marine terminals operated at 99% capacity in the three months ended March 31, 2016. That helped…