Yes, refiners do well when price of oil is most volatile.
Also, as farmers well know, the price of a given commodity is not controlled by the producer. The producer is at the whims of the supply and demand market, but of all those involved here with energy...I am guessing it's the refiners that do more studying of the economics of consumer driven fuel pricing. Again, using farming as an analog, when farming and oil are good...it can be damn good if you can take advantage of the market. Everyone seems to forget that the last time Trump was in office, what may have been 3 of the top oil producers (Denbury, Oasis, and Whiting) in ND went bankrupt. Denbury eventually got bought out by Exxon, and Whiting and Oasis merged after their respective reorganizations from bankruptcy to form Chord Energy.
In these persistent high price environments, the biggest oil companies tend to do very well as they have economies of scale and degrees of freedom the small (sub $10 billion) oil companies. Smaller companies usually have around 85-90% of their production hedged going out a few years (this is demanded of them by banks when they seek operating loans. So, they aren't reaping it in like the big guys Chevron, Shell, Exxon, etc who hedge little to nothing in pricing. I would expect with the cash those big guys are making right now that they will use it to buy some of those smaller companies when the price of oil falters and subtracts a decent amount of value from their ledgers.
If Bibi eventually gets his way (changing of leadership in Tehran), the price of oil will fall through the floor. It just may take a little time to accomplish this.
