Eight of the world’s largest oil majors reported almost $93 billion in profits over three months to the end of June, nearly double their combined earnings from a year earlier, The Guardian reported on 4 August.
The April to June period marked the first complete financial quarter following the war, which hit the market with a supply shock unmatched in its history.
Aramco, BP, Shell, Equinor, TotalEnergies, Eni, Chevron, and ExxonMobil earned above $700,000 for every minute of the war for three months, while their combined valuation rose by some $600 billion to push past $3 trillion.
Aramco posted the largest single haul at over $33 billion, even as Iranian and Yemeni forces struck its facilities with drones and missiles during the three-month period.
ExxonMobil followed with $14.5 billion, and Chevron with $12.2 billion, five times what it earned a year earlier.
Shell landed $9.84 billion, its second-strongest quarter ever recorded, despite war damage running into the billions that throttled gas output at its Qatar plant, while BP took $5.73 billion and Equinor $3.2 billion.
Patrick Galey, who leads on fossil fuels at Global Witness, said that “BP’s sky-high profits are a scandalous reminder of who’s been cashing in on human misery this year.”
US President Donald Trump accused Chevron and ExxonMobil of “making too much money” from his war on Iran, saying the public would be getting those profits back.
Galey said, “You know big oil is taking us for a ride when one of their biggest allies, Donald Trump, is telling them to rein their profiteering in.”
The same months brought the severest heatwave Europe has ever registered, one scientist traced to human-caused global heating, with roughly 20,000 deaths attributed to the heat and the UK accounting for nearly 3,000 across May and June.
The oil giant’s profits soar “while wildfires threaten communities across the world, drought bites and energy costs spiral,” Galey said, adding, “ordinary families are paying the price for big oil’s prioritization of shareholder wealth over a livable planet.”
No corporation assessed by the Carbon Majors database has released more carbon over its lifetime than Aramco.
Research published last September calculated that any one of the 14 leading fossil fuel producers had, by itself, emitted enough to generate upwards of 50 heat events that would have otherwise been “impossible” without human contribution.
Scientists warn the sharpest heat is still ahead, with Berkeley Earth climate scientist Zeke Hausfather putting the odds of 2026 overtaking 2024 as the hottest year ever recorded at 35 percent, a figure he has revised upward almost every month from seven percent in March.
“The world is now on fire again with climate change in a way that’s increasingly difficult to ignore,” Hausfather said. “It’s going to keep getting worse.”
Source: The Cradle
