The strength of the margin meant Forsyth Barr was upgrading its 2017 financial year reported profit forecast for NZR by $10million to $81million.
While the refinery to Auckland pipeline outage in September had no discernible impact on the margin for the period, it did dampen throughput which was about 10% lower than normal.
Given the recent depreciation of the New Zealand dollar against the US currency, Forsyth Barr remained positive on the medium-term outlook for the refinery and reiterated its outperform rating, Ms Howe said.
NZR said in a statement the gross refining margin captured processing fee income of $62.2million, compared with $63.6million for the July-August period. Year-to-date processing fee income was $278.3million, 33% higher than the $209million earned in the equivalent 2016 period.
As reported earlier, NZR expected to process 42million barrels by year-end, the company said.
"The pipeline has been in stable operation since September 27 and we are on schedule to return it to full capacity in the first quarter of 2018."
Ms Howe said the stronger oil prices were causing her gross refining margin estimate to dip as there was typically a lag between product prices and crude oil prices.
She expected the margin to improve again as the lag worked its way through the system.
Despite the strong growth, Forsyth Barr had left its dividend forecast unchanged at 14c per share as early in the new year, NZR’s significant maintenance outage took place. NZR shares yesterday closed up 2c at 2.52.
