So little time, so many contradictions. Kinder Morgan (NYSE: KMI) cuts short its affiliates’ decades-old run as MLPs and its share price goes up, its affiliates’ unit prices go up and every other MLP’s price rises for good measure.

Chalk it up to the latest twist of financial engineering, which will allow Kinder Morgan to save billions on future taxes thanks to depreciation that would otherwise have curbed the tax bills of the limited partners at its MLP affiliates.

Kinder Morgan will also save billions in distributions by buying out hi-yielding MLP units with its own lower-yielding shares, even as it accelerates dividend growth.

The other MLPs went up today in part because they’d been down so much the week before, but also perhaps because one of the biggest prospective buyers out there has just acquired a lot of relatively cheap currency for the next shopping binge. 

The only obvious losers in all this are long-term Kinder Morgan Energy Partners (NYSE: KMP) unitholders who could be on the hook for a big tax bill for previously unrealized capital gains.

Almost everyone else was a day-one winner in large part because the merged Kinder Morgan has strong growth opportunities that it can now pursue with cheaper capital.

The other takeaway here is that it still pays to align one’s interest with those of the MLP decisionmakers, because this deal is still likely to prove much more advantageous in the long run to Richard Kinder and the huge nest egg he keeps in KMI over some of  KMP’s longest-tenured limited partners.  For more on the how and the why’s, see In Focus.

Oh, and another thing Kinder has proved, as Energy Transfer Equity (NYSE: ETE) and Williams (NYSE: WMB) have as well, is that the size of a midstream player is no obstacle to rapid appreciation in this bull market.

Which is why we’re so excited about this month’s best buys, spying an attractive entry point in a large, financially secure, well diversified partnership leveraged to the surge in North American crude output. Plains All American Pipeline is a leading distributor of crude from the interior to the value-added markets on the coasts. And the proxy for its general partner, Plains GP Holdings (NYSE: PAGP), is poised to benefit disproportionately from future growth and from future acquisitions by PAA. For more on these new recommendations, see New Buys.

We also have the rundown on the pending Shell Midstream Partners IPO, which will mark the first midstream spinoff by an oil supermajor and could prove a hot ticket based on the depth of the sponsor’s dropdown inventory. For a description of the assets on offer, see IPOs.

The earnings season is upon us, and the crush of numbers has limited this issue’s Portfolio Update to the first sixth or so of the portfolio. The rest will appear online next week and also in the September issue.

What we can say at this point is that, despite an overdue correction in July, investors are still showing plenty of confidence in the sector’s robust growth story, proving willing to overlook any number of short-term disappointments and complications. That won’t always be the case, of course, but for now this focus on the fundamentally strong big picture still seems reasonable.

Of course one day the music will stop, it always does. But that probably won’t happen while North America is the only region meeting the world’s growing fuel demand, and very possibly not until Rich Kinder gets much richer.