Count the barrels first
Refinery crude capacity utilisation was 94 per cent and total throughput 2.9 million barrels a day. Those are the physical numbers, and they are the ones that did not change much. The refining and marketing margin did: 36.33 dollars a barrel against 17.58 dollars a year earlier.[1]
The money followed. Net income attributable to the company was 5.1 billion dollars, or 17.73 dollars a diluted share, against 1.2 billion dollars and 3.96 dollars a year earlier. Adjusted EBITDA was 8.5 billion dollars against 3.3 billion dollars. Refining and marketing supplied 6.7 billion dollars of that against 1.9 billion dollars, while the midstream segment moved only from 1.6 billion dollars to 1.8 billion dollars.[1]
Volume held and margin trebled the profit, which is the signature of a product market that is short rather than a demand boom. A demand boom shows up as throughput the plants cannot meet; a shortage shows up as the same plants running flat out and charging more for what comes off them.[1]
The chokepoint that made it is now on the table
On Tuesday Brent fell 3.30 dollars, or 3.9 per cent, to 80.47 dollars a barrel and West Texas Intermediate 3.67 dollars, or 4.6 per cent, to 76.67 dollars, both touching their weakest levels since 13 July, after the Treasury Secretary said a deal with Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz could come as soon as Tuesday or Wednesday. The Secretary of State said no final agreement had been reached.[2]
A refining margin is a difference between what the products sell for and what the crude costs, so a cheaper barrel of crude on its own widens it. It narrows when the products fall faster than the crude, and that is what a reopened strait would do: crude and refined cargoes that the closure kept out of the market arrive together, and the product side has further to fall because it is the side the closure lifted.[1], [2]
It is worth being plain about who is on each side of that 36.33 dollars. The refiner returned 2.8 billion dollars to shareholders in the quarter and still has 6.1 billion dollars of repurchase authorisation left, while MPLX raised its 2026 growth capital by 500 million dollars to 2.9 billion dollars. The margin was paid by everyone who bought a refined product during a closure they did not choose. If the strait opens, that transfer reverses at the pump before it reverses in the buyback.[1], [2]