Depends on large part on why prices are high. Here’s a (very brief) rundown – I’ll add to this as I think of stuff later.
Winners:
You’ve nailed the big winners – oil companies. As it happens, the less integrated an oil company is, the better under current circumstances where oil prices are increasing faster than the prices of the products made from them. That is to say, a little independent E&P guy in the Gulf of Mexico is seeing better earnings increases than Exxon. Exxon, as a net seller of crude, is seeing better earnings increases than an integrated oil company which is a net buyer (or less of a net seller). The national or independent oil companies associated with OPEC have actually been trying to get more integrated in recent years but are still very large net sellers of crude and thus are big winners.
Oil transport companies. The stories about supply problems aside, this run-up is in large part because of increased demand (though there’s a terror premium – see below). When demand is high, there is also high demand for transport. Pipeline operators (particularly those with unregulated pieces of their lines) and especially tanker companies beneft from high oil prices. In particular, movers of “clean products” – stuff like gasoline, jet fuel, etc. as opposed to crude or bunker fuel or heating oil are cleaning up (heh) right now.
Traders. Traders make money off of volatility, and high prices are usually accompanied by high volatility, at least until the market gets used to the high price, which it hasn’t in the case of oil just yet. It takes more capital to keep open positions, but those with the capital are eating pretty well right about now.
Providers of oil alternatives. Gas and NGL producers and coal are also up. In particular, gas is usually pretty well correlated with Oil on a BTU equivalent basis and is actually rich to oil right now.
Future providers of oil alternatives: The guys who make things like windfarms, shale-to-oil operations, etc. Some are actually making money, like the Canadian tar sands guys, but they mostly benefit from new capital – whenever oil gets expensive like this a ton of capital thinking the increase is permanent gets directed to these guys. Most of this capital will be lost, but if you’re an executive in this industry, you probably just granted yourself a nice bonus because you completed a new round of capital raising.
Ought to be winning but aren’t:
Oil Service Companies. Guys who construct rigs (onshore or offshore), supply them, do 3-D seismic, etc. usually benefit from high oil prices as exploration increases and as marginal fields become economic. But they’re not. This is because the market is not confident that the high prices are here to stay and are therefore conserving the capital which usually goes into exploration and exploitation at this point in the price cycle. As it happens, this serves to keep prices high for obvious reasons. So while the operators of ships which bring oil across the ocean are doing very well, the operators of ships which supply offshore rigs are going bankrupt around the world. Very, very odd times.
Mostly winners, sometimes losers:
Midstream providers. People like refiners, storage facilities which own inventory, etc. can make some money from inventory arbitrage but are at risk from the squeeze between crude prices and finished product prices. Earlier in the year everyone was doing quite well, but in the past month or so they’ve been seeing margin squeezes. If I knew how this movie was going to end, I’d be rich. (In fact, I’ve made a bet on how this movie will end and if I’m right I will be rich, but I can’t disclose the bet just now).
Losers:
Pretty much everybody else. In particular, the big losers are end-stream product manufacturers and salespeople. The gasoline retailers are getting creamed now, and plastic manufacturers, power companies which use oil or gas, and some fertilizer companies are having a tough go of it (though many fertilizer companies in particular were good buyers of gas and are sitting pretty – see below). And it goes without saying that now is not a fun time to run a fuel-intensive company like a trucking company or an airline or to be selling gas-guzzling products like SUVs.
However. However, the oil and gas and some finished products markets are pretty well developed at this point, and hedging or futures buying is frequent. So companies which bought forward much of their oil or related requirements are propsering as their competitors’ rising costs increase the cost of the average producer, sending prices up while their costs are locked in. Companies such as Southwest, which bought forward much of their jet fuel needs, have a distinct advantage over companies like the big airlines, which frankly don’t and didn’t have the balance sheets to make similar forward purchases.
I’ll add some more thoughts tomorrow.