With oil's collapse, a lot of investor attention has been given to the financial health of midstream's customers that produce oil and gas. However, several midstream MLPs have refiner customers and/or refiner parents as shown in the table below. Notably, refiners have distinct profitability drivers, which are not necessarily dependent on the absolute crude price.
Refiners make money by processing oil into usable products like gasoline, diesel, jet fuel, and petrochemicals. The profitability of refiners depends on the difference between the price that they can sell their refined products and the cost of crude (referred