Oil prices for near-term delivery are up $10 from a month ago. For crude producers, that math is worth billions.
We covered oil futures curves in two recent sessions of Oil & Gas Market Mastery. And those sessions happened to bracket the initiation of military action in Iran.
I shared with the group how the futures curve shifted. That’s the chart below.
The price of crude for April delivery is now $10 per barrel higher than it was a month ago.
December delivery is $3 per barrel higher.
If you took Oxy’s average production level for US crude in 2025, these higher prices would translate into an incremental $1 billion of revenue, almost all of which carries through to the bottom line.
📌 With total production of 13.7 million barrels per day, US crude producers in aggregate would generate over $20 billion in additional profit in 2026 because of this price spike.
There’s an important part of this hypothetical profit story that we’ll only learn about in hindsight: how many of these producers are hedging their future production?
I expect those board-level conversations have been happening continuously as the conflict has unfolded.
Hedging is one of the mitigating factors against price spikes further out in the futures curve.
While today’s oil prices are still far below 2022 levels, they’re the highest we’ve seen since the middle of 2024.
This kind of price move translates into real profit dollars for producers.
🔎 The question is how many locked these gains in while they were available—and how many watched the window close.
