March Madness Round 1: Disney Vs. General Electric

March Madness Round 1: Kinder Morgan Is A Slam Dunk Over Duke Energy

March Madness Round 1: ExxonMobil Vs Chevron

This piece is part of InvestorPlace's 2015 Stock Market March Madness contest. Follow the link and vote for your favorite stocks.

I'm torn as we enter Round 2 of InvestorPlace's Stock Market March Madness, as I have to choose between two of my favorite energy stocks, ExxonMobil Corporation (XOM) and Kinder Morgan Inc (KMI).

Exxon beat rival oil major Chevron Corporation (CVX) in Round 1. (You can read my Round 1 pregame predictions here.) While I consider Exxon to be the better buy of the two majors because of its better potential for dividend growth and its massive holdings of Russian drilling rights bought for a song, Chevron was no pushover. The fan voting made this one of the tighter races.

Kinder Morgan's win over Duke Energy (DUK) was a blowout, however. Kinder Morgan took 81% of the vote, and justifiably so. Kinder Morgan is a blue-chip pipeline operator in position to buy up assets from distressed shale producers on the cheap, whereas Duke is a slow growth utility that will face very serious headwinds once rates bond yields eventually start to rise.

I expect Round 2 to be a close game, but I'm going with Kinder Morgan. Let's take a look at each team.

Kinder Morgan

Kinder Morgan is not an “oil major,” per se, as it has little international reach and little in the way of upstream energy exploration, but it is the largest energy infrastructure company in North America with about 80,000 miles of pipelines in operation. And while Kinder Morgan has not been completely immune from the effects of falling energy prices, the damage has been pretty minimal. About 85% of KMI's cash flows are fee-based, meaning they have virtually no exposure to falling energy prices, and most of the remaining 15% of cash flows are hedged.