Over the last two weeks, oil companies have announced eye-popping profits from the spring quarter. Exxon Mobil pulled in $14.5 billion. Chevron landed $12 billion, its highest quarterly profit on record. Shell posted $9.8 billion — more than twice its earnings from the same time last year.
These profits are largely a product of supply constraints brought on by the war in the Middle East. With the Strait of Hormuz effectively blockaded, oil suppliers have rerouted shipments over land and through pipelines. The resulting supply shortages, constrained refining capacity, and higher transportation costs have driven up oil and gasoline prices, delivering windfall profits for producers.
TotalEnergies: The French oil giant’s earnings rose by 67 percent in the second quarter, its best quarter in nearly three years, backed by higher oil prices and strong profit margins for refining chemicals, offsetting weaker LNG earnings.
BP: Another United Kingdom oil major reported second-quarter profit of $5.73bn, more than double the $2.35bn it earned a year earlier and above analysts’ forecasts.
Saudi Aramco: The windfall extended beyond Western oil majors. Saudi Aramco, the world’s largest state-owned oil producer, also reported sharply higher quarterly earnings – rising 44 percent year-on-year to $32.69bn. Saudi’s East-West Pipeline has helped reduce the kingdom’s reliance on the Strait of Hormuz for exports.
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particularly in the West, also benefitted from stronger refining margins, as higher refined product prices and tighter product supplies – caused by disruptions to Middle Eastern exports – boosted profitability,” she added.
US oil futures had an average closing price of around $92 per barrel from April through to June, about 27 percent higher than during the first quarter of the year.
At least eight categories of the S&P 500, Wall Street’s benchmark stock index, are reporting double-digit earnings growth for the second quarter of 2026, led by the energy sector, which has recorded 135.3 percent year-on-year earnings growth, the highest of any sector in the index by a wide margin, according to data from financial data firm FactSet.
The surge reflects how soaring oil prices during the Iran war translated into profits for oil and gas companies.
Economists say that while average revenue in the sector rose because crude prices climbed, profits increased much faster as producers benefitted from operating leverage and stronger refining margins.
It resulted in a windfall for the industry’s largest companies.
Retired, living in the Scottish Borders after living most of my life in cities in England. I can now indulge my interest in all aspects of living close to nature in a wild landscape. I live on what was once the Iapetus Ocean which took millions of years to travel from the Southern Hemisphere to here in the Northern Hemisphere. That set me thinking and questioning and seeking answers.
In 1998 I co-wrote Millennium Countdown (US)/ A Business Guide to the Year 2000 (UK) see https://www.abebooks.co.uk/products/isbn/9780749427917
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