Revenue during the quarter dropped 6.14 percent to $5,920.40 million from $6,307.90 million in the previous year period. Gross margin for the quarter expanded 88 basis points over the previous year period to 14.44 percent. Total expenses were 84.71 percent of quarterly revenues, down from 85.58 percent for the same period last year. This has led to an improvement of 87 basis points in operating margin to 15.29 percent.

Operating income for the quarter was $905 million, compared with $909.40 million in the previous year period.

However, the adjusted operating income for the quarter stood at $1,312 million compared to $1,348.60 million in the prior year period. At the same time, adjusted operating margin improved 78 basis points in the quarter to 22.16 percent from 21.38 percent in the last year period.

“Enterprise reported another solid quarter in light of the challenging environment for the global energy industry,” said Jim Teague, chief executive officer of Enterprise’s general partner. “We are proud of our employees for their untiring efforts in the commercial, operational and financial performance of the partnership. For the third quarter of 2016, Enterprise generated $1 billion in distributable cash flow, increased our distribution to partners by 5.2 percent and retained $124 million of distributable cash flow to reinvest in the business. During the quarter, we transported over 5 million barrels per day through our liquids pipelines and handled over 1.2 million barrels per day at our marine terminals. Increases in gross operating margin from many of our fee-based businesses partially offset the effects of lower earnings from our commodity sensitive businesses, lower volumes on our Eagle Ford crude oil pipelines, weaker ethane recoveries industry-wide, downtime and repairs at our Pascagoula natural gas processing plant and pre-commissioning expenses for certain new assets.”