Gulf energy earnings split along one line: who built a way around Hormuz before the war started

The regional war’s biggest beneficiaries aren’t the companies with the most oil — they’re the ones with a way around Hormuz. ExxonMobil’s net income doubled y-o-y to USD 14.5 bn, Chevron’s rose close to 400%, and Valero Energy’s earnings increased more than fivefold, CNBC reports. But strip out the global majors and the real split shows up closer to home: Gulf and regional players that had already built pipeline capacity, spare vessel capacity, or rerouting options before the war are capturing the windfall; the ones that hadn’t are absorbing the disruption.

The first payout came directly through the price of the barrel. US crude futures averaged above USD 92 / bbl between April and June, up 27% from the previous quarter, before easing to around USD 79 / bbl from the start of July through 8 August — leaving prices elevated enough for producers to continue capture stronger realizations even as the initial war premium faded.

The boom was driven by a shortage of assets, not just crude. Wars in Iran and Ukraine have created a global refining deficit of around 6.5 mn bbl / d, including damaged plants and product stranded behind disrupted export routes, Goldman Sachs estimates. More than 1.2 mn bbl / d of Middle Eastern refining capacity remains offline because of physical damage, JPMorgan estimates.

That scarcity tightened gasoline and diesel markets even as crude flows began to recover — which is why Valero, whose refineries stayed operational, and ExxonMobil, which sold higher-priced crude while running its own refineries at high utilization, both benefited on the processing side, not just the wellhead.

A higher price still needed an exit: “The market is no longer pricing who sells oil. It is pricing

who can still deliver it. A pipeline you built 10 years ago is worth more in a crisis than a price spike you get this quarter,” former head of supply chain and transport industries at the World Economic Forum Wolfgang Lehmacher tells EnterpriseAM.

Aramco captured the price bump without absorbing the full export loss because it had another coast. Its net income rose 44% y-o-y to USD 32.7 bn in 2Q as higher crude, refined product, and chemicals prices outweighed lower production. The price uplift was monetizable because the company had already ramped the East-West Pipeline to its 7 mn bbl / d maximum, allowing crude to reach Yanbu without crossing Hormuz, while domestic and overseas storage kept customers supplied.

Adnoc Gas didn’t have that option — and 2Q made it worse. Export and traded-liquids volumes had already fallen 20% y-o-y to 202 TBTU in 1Q as Hormuz disrupted shipments of LNG, LPG, and naphtha. By 2Q, lower sales had halved net income to USD 664.6 mn and revenue down 33% to USD 3.1 bn.

Restoring gas production only solved half the problem. Adnoc Gas had restored gas supply at its Habshan complex to 85% by quarter-end, ahead of its previous recovery target, but restoring production didn’t remove the chokepoint sitting between it and overseas buyers.

Once barrels reached an export terminal, the next premium moved to the vessels carrying them. Bahri’s 2Q net income surged 574% y-o-y to nearly SAR 2.8 bn as revenue climbed 156% to SAR 6.3 bn, extending the freight-driven earnings jump that began in 1Q. “Capacity is the raw material. Speed is what turns it into margin,” Lehmacher says. Bahri captured the rate increase because it could lease additional tankers as soon as demand moved, adding working capacity to the market rather than just earning more on ships it already owned.

Adnoc L&S shows the capacity had to sit in the right business line. Net income surged 303% y-o-y to USD 951 mn in 2Q as shipping captured the tanker boom — tankers alone delivered USD 797 mn as revenue climbed to USD 1.7 bn from USD 460 mn a year earlier. Integrated logistics moved the other way: revenue fell 16% to USD 559 mn, and net income dropped 64% to USD 59 mn on lower material-handling volumes, higher fleet costs, and weaker jack-up-barge utilization, according to its financial presentation (pdf).

The same divide showed up at Emirati ports, but with business models determining how much of the disruption reached the bottom line. AD Ports’ net income rose 88% y-o-y to AED 836 mn in 2Q, even as UAE container throughput fell 65%, while bulk and general cargo volumes fell 67% y-o-y to 3.1 mn tons. Higher rates and warehouse sales helped, but the group had routes through Fujairah and Khor Fakkan outside Hormuz, while its landlord model left part of its income less dependent on cargo volumes.

DP World had less protection where the shock landed — net income dropped 39.1% y-o-y to USD 585 mn in 1H as disruptions at Jebel Ali drove the port’s 2Q throughput down 90.1%, even as group revenue rose 13.1% y-o-y and volumes outside Jebel Ali grew 6.5%. DP World’s planned Fujairah terminals show the redundancy it is now trying to build — adding capacity outside Hormuz after the disruption exposed Jebel Ali’s dependence on vessel access through the strait.

Milaha shows why a stronger freight market was not enough on its own. Net income fell 19% y-o-y to QAR 542 mn in 1H even as revenue rose 6% to almost QAR 1.7 bn, as the conflict cut container volumes and pushed costs up across its network. Offshore was the largest drag, down QAR 85 mn, with smaller declines across its other segments.

Fertiglobe shows an exporter could buy its way into the price shock without a permanent bypass. It trucked fertilizer from its UAE plants to ports outside Hormuz, accepting double handling and higher transport costs to keep production running, while expanding storage and exploring rail shipments with Etihad Rail alongside other alternatives. That kept 2Q exports at 56% of UAE production, avoiding any conflict-related shutdowns beyond scheduled maintenance. Geography helped too — Fertiglobe’s Egyptian production ships through the Mediterranean, avoiding both Hormuz and the Red Sea, while Algerian exports were untouched. Revenue jumped 92% y-o-y to USD 1.1 bn in 2Q, with higher prices partly offsetting lower volumes and the cost of the workarounds.

The bottom line: Proximity to Hormuz didn’t decide who gained this quarter — pre-crisis investment did. Aramco, Bahri, and Fertiglobe all had a workaround in place before the war started. Adnoc Gas, Milaha, and DP World are still building theirs.

What’s next: Refining margins already show the pattern the rest of the sector should expect — they spiked on reopening and are fading as crude resets. But the sunk cost of new routes, storage, and standby vessels doesn’t disappear along with the price spike. “Prices normalize on the news. Networks normalize on the balance sheet — and balance sheets do not read headlines,” Lehmacher says. The edge should shift back toward the companies still catching up on volume, but only if they keep the crisis-era workarounds running once Hormuz reopens fully, instead of dismantling them the moment the news improves.