Last things first. Portfolio Update is the last feature in this issue and the time it took to prepare it was the primary cause of this month’s later than usual publication date. I want to explain why.

During the first two weeks of this month, almost all of the partnerships and companies we recommend have reported quarterly results, many providing important guidance for next year and some offering the first glimpse of how the sector is adjusting to the slump in oil prices.

We wanted to take the time to properly hear, analyze and summarize all of that for every one of the recommendations in our portfolio. That’s 39 business entities not counting this month’s picks.

The hope is that you will find the end product considerably more useful than a cut-and-paste of the happy press release headlines. With MLPs more so than with most other sectors, the typical “record this, highest that” requires a lot of context. Was the growth powered by costly acquisitions or canny organic investments on the cheap? Is that yield a sign of value or the product of excessive borrowing and underinvestment?

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, how do all the numbers and management’s promises fit into the larger frameworks of financial markets, energy geography and industry competition? It’s hard to offer all that even in a few hundred words, but that’s the challenge.

The additional context should permit a quicker and more rational response to market-moving industry developments. And it should give you a decent idea of the most relevant issues for every one of our recommendations.

This month’s update includes one downgrade to a Sell and several upgrades to Buy, partly reflecting recent results that have been generally good to excellent for our picks.

But it’s important to note that the MLP sector remains under a cloud of suspicion that the weakness in crude prices will eventually take a toll on booming midstream profits.

Many of the industry’s top executives addressed such worries on the conference calls following the quarterly reports. This month’s In Focus feature considers their answers, which so far have amounted to an acknowledgement that drilling plans might be scaled back in spots, but a denial of a meaningful long-term impact on the midstream sector.

Our recommendation of Exterran Holdings (NYSE: EXH) and Exterran Partners (NYSE: EXLP) as two of this month’s New Buys is a bet that the world cannot in fact do without growth in U.S. shale production for long.

That’s based on the strong likelihood of continued growth in demand, and decent odds that overseas production growth will lag. Some of the current overseas supply may even be at risk with oil prices below $80. With US shale unit production costs still declining fast, it may in fact be costlier and riskier deepwater production that gets priced out eventually.

And so long as US shale development continues, Exterran will be in great shape as the leading supplier of outsourced compression. Long after the current drilling spree is but a memory, many of the wells will still require compression to limit production declines and extract the maximum possible resources. Adding compression can be a way to make more money without drilling more, and while past slumps have certainly hurt providers there’s reason to believe this one is providing a window of opportunity to buy an industry leader with plenty of growth in its future at a reasonable valuation.

The other New Buys feature in this issue hedges our bets a bit with Global Partners (NYSE: GLP), a fuel wholesaler and retailer that actually benefits from lower energy prices, as demand tends to increase and its margins expand. It’s a master limited partnership with very solid financials, growing scale and an ambition to rise from its single oil truck origins to nationwide, tri-coastal reach as a logistics provider.

The Northeast has become an energy focus because of the Marcellus, but it’s also a huge energy consumer, and in the bustle of activity among producer-facing midstream operations based in Texas, it’s easy to forget that finished fuels must still get distributed far and wide, a fragmented business in which economies of scale can make all the difference.

Global Partners is rapidly accumulating such advantages, in a thickly settled region with some of the highest fuel demand anywhere.

Whatever happens with crude, the midstream energy sector won’t stop delivering essential services because of it. And it won’t stop producing winners.