Crude is up roughly 10%, topping $80 per barrel, since President Donald Trump declared the Iran deal was “over.”
But the biggest winners in the energy sector aren’t the companies that pump the oil, they’re the ones that turn it into fuel.
Four of the seven best-performing energy stocks since July 8 are refiners, according to Benzinga Pro data.
Why Refiners And Not Drillers?
The 3-2-1 crack spread — the profit a refiner earns from turning three barrels of crude into two barrels of gasoline and one of diesel — is the single number that decides whether a refinery prints money or bleeds it.
It is now at a record.
Bloomberg analyst Javier Blas said on social media Thursday that the benchmark WTI 3-2-1 indicator was flirting with $70 a barrel, an all-time high, driven by the twin crisis of Hormuz and Ukraine’s bombing campaign against Russian refineries.
The 7 Best Performers Since July 8
Per Benzinga Pro, these are the top energy gainers from July 8 through July 17.
7. BP plc (NYSE:BP) — up 4.77% to $41.08. The cheapest of the European majors going into the escalation, and the one with the most beta to a Brent repricing.
6. Texas Pacific Land Corp. (NYSE:TPL) — up 5.44% to $416.05. Texas Pacific doesn’t drill. It owns Permian acreage and collects royalties on whatever comes out of it, which makes it a leveraged bet on the price of a barrel with none of the operating costs.
5. Pembina Pipeline Corp. (NYSE:PBA) — up 5.49% to $50.96. The Canadian midstream operator moves hydrocarbons that never touch the Strait of Hormuz. In a market pricing the risk of a chokepoint, the barrels that avoid it get a premium.
4. Valero Energy Corp. (NYSE:VLO) — up 6.14% to $300.26. The purest refining play in the group and the most direct expression of the crack-spread trade.
3. Phillips 66 (NYSE:PSX) — up 7.19% to $201.32. Refining plus midstream plus chemicals, with the refining arm doing the heavy lifting this month.
2. Marathon Petroleum Corp. (NYSE:MPC) — up 8.97% to $305.85. The largest refiner in the United States by capacity. When the spread between crude and fuel widens, nobody has more barrels to run it through.
1. HF Sinclair Corp. (NYSE:DINO) — up 10.46% to $86.84. The smallest of the major U.S. refiners and the most sensitive to the margin. HF Sinclair outran crude itself over the stretch.
