How Scott built the fortune
Scott Duncan's wealth is an inheritance from his father, Dan Duncan, the founder of Enterprise Products Partners. Dan Duncan spent more than four decades turning a small propane distribution company into a major owner of pipelines, storage, processing plants and export terminals. When he died in March 2010, his holdings passed into a set of trusts and family entities, and Scott, the youngest of his four children, became one of the beneficiaries.
The family's position is unusual among energy fortunes because it is tied to infrastructure rather than to oil and gas production. Enterprise earns most of its income from fees charged for transporting, storing and processing hydrocarbons and petrochemicals. That steady cash flow has allowed the partnership to pay and gradually raise distributions to unitholders over many years. As the largest owner, the Duncan family receives a significant portion of that cash and also benefits from any long-term rise in the value of the units.
Because Dan Duncan died in 2010, the one year when the federal estate tax was suspended, his estate passed to his heirs without the tax that would have applied in almost any other year.
The decision to keep the business whole rather than divide it among heirs was deliberate. Dan Duncan placed voting control of the family's entities in a trust structure designed to keep Enterprise under unified management after his death. That choice has protected the partnership from the kind of family disputes that have split other inherited companies, and it means Scott's fortune moves largely with the performance of a single asset rather than a diversified portfolio of his own making.
Companies and holdings
Scott Duncan's main asset is his share of the family's units in Enterprise Products Partners, a master limited partnership traded on the New York Stock Exchange, held through trusts and private holding companies established by his father. The family also controls the partnership's general partner. Enterprise's leadership includes his sister Randa Duncan Williams, who chairs the board of the general partner, while professional executives run day to day operations.
The partnership's asset base includes:
- tens of thousands of miles of pipelines for natural gas liquids, crude oil, refined products and natural gas
- underground storage and fractionation capacity at Mont Belvieu, Texas
- marine terminals that export liquefied petroleum gas, ethane and crude oil
- propylene and other petrochemical production facilities
Public filings indicate that Scott and his siblings participate in governance arrangements for the family holding entities.
Early life and career
Scott Duncan was born in 1983 and grew up in Houston, decades after his father had started Enterprise in 1968. By the time he was a child, the company had grown far beyond its origins and was preparing for its stock market listing, which came in 1998. He was in his twenties when his father died.
Unlike his eldest sister, he has not taken a prominent public role in the business, and he rarely appears in the press. Little has been published in detail about his education or working life. His name surfaces mainly in connection with the family's ownership structures, Houston civic life and occasional reports about real estate.
Being the youngest child also meant that Scott was still in the early part of adult life when the family's ownership was reorganized. Much of what is publicly known about him comes from court filings and partnership disclosures connected to that transition, rather than from interviews or business coverage, which helps explain why his public profile remains limited.
Philanthropy and public life
The Duncan name is well known in Houston because of the family's philanthropy. Dan Duncan made major gifts to Baylor College of Medicine, where the comprehensive cancer centre is named for him, and to other hospitals and educational institutions in the city. The family has continued that tradition through private foundations after his death.
Scott Duncan's own charitable giving has not been widely publicized, and he generally avoids interviews and public appearances. He is not known for political activity or public advocacy. In profiles of the family, he is usually described as one of the less visible heirs to one of the largest fortunes in American energy infrastructure.