Crude is up roughly 10%, topping $80 per barrel, since President Donald Trump declared the Iran deal was "over."

But the biggest winners in the energy sector aren't the companies that pump the oil — they're the ones that turn it into fuel.

Four of the seven best-performing energy stocks since July 8 are refiners, according to market data.

Why Refiners and Not Drillers?

The 3-2-1 crack spread — the profit a refiner earns from turning three barrels of crude into two barrels of gasoline and one of diesel — is the single number that decides whether a refinery prints money or bleeds it.

It is now at a record.

Bloomberg analyst Javier Blas said on social media Thursday that the benchmark WTI 3-2-1 indicator was flirting with $70 a barrel, an all-time high, driven by the twin crisis of Hormuz and Ukraine's bombing campaign against Russian refineries.

The 7 Best Performers Since July 8

These are the top energy gainers from July 8 through July 17.

7. BP plc (NYSE:BP) — up 4.77% to $41.08. The cheapest of the European majors going into the escalation, and the one with the most beta to a Brent repricing.

6. Texas Pacific Land Corp. (NYSE:TPL) — up 5.44% to $416.05. Texas Pacific doesn't drill. It owns Permian acreage and collects royalties on whatever comes out of it, which makes it a leveraged bet on the price of a barrel with none of the operating costs.

5. Pembina Pipeline Corp. (NYSE:PBA) — up 5.49% to $50.96. The Canadian midstream operator moves hydrocarbons that never touch the Strait of Hormuz. In a market pricing the risk of a chokepoint, the barrels that avoid it get a premium.

4. Valero Energy Corp. (NYSE:VLO) — up 6.14% to $300.26. The purest refining play in the group and the most direct expression of the crack-spread trade.

3. Phillips 66 (NYSE:PSX) — up 7.19% to $201.32. Refining plus midstream plus chemicals, with the refining arm doing the heavy lifting this month.

2. Marathon Petroleum Corp. (NYSE:MPC) — up 8.97% to $305.85. The largest refiner in the United States by capacity. When the spread between crude and fuel widens, nobody has more barrels to run it through.

1. HF Sinclair Corp. (NYSE:DINO) — up 10.46% to $86.84. The smallest of the major U.S. refiners and the most sensitive to the margin. HF Sinclair outran crude itself over the stretch.