The Motley Fool Take

Poor Chevron (NYSE: CVX).

It managed to get $3.7 billion to its recent quarter's bottom line, but that's down 26 percent from year-ago levels.

As already has been the case with other big integrated companies such as ExxonMobil, falling refining margins have hurt. Indeed, Chevron's refining and marketing segment contributed fully 73 percent less to the company's income than a year ago.

Don't assume that higher crude prices brought about higher upstream results. As the company noted, "The benefit of higher average prices … was more than offset by the impact of lower production and higher operating expenses."

But Chevron was as busy as a cat in a sandbox this past quarter, spending $5.2 billion in its global quest to find and process oil and natural gas. It received long-awaited approval to undertake a big Australian natural gas project, and made operating and commercial progress in places as far-flung as Thailand, Angola, Indonesia and South Korea.

It's still too early to tell when refinery margins will improve sufficiently for Chevron and its peers to return to some of the bigger downstream earnings numbers of yore. But in the meantime, crude prices - which now are an amalgamation of complex financial and supply demand factors - continue to rise. That phenomenon alone makes Chevron and its peers a group that should be watched carefully.